Gardening ideas...

The flowering crab blooms the same time as my apple tree, in May.

I'm expecting delivery of a salmon pink hybrid peony,which will be put just at the edge of the flowering crab's shadow. *

Note the similarity in coloration with the that of the crabapple's.

May I suggest a flowering quince - or two - as a companion planting for the mugo pine, should you decide on one.

chaenomeles

It should provide a delightful and modest-blooming ground cover. It's usually trained to be a low,ground-hugging shrub, not fully grown as shown on the Google page.

I hope my suggestion is helpful.
*edited - shrank the picture a bit - nn

The link I showed before on mugo pine says that it grows best in full sun but tolerates light shade. I am still not firm on how much shade Soz is dealing with under the elm - it might be moderate, not light. The mature width of a mugo seems quite big for the space too.
I'm also a bit concerned about how it would look next to what I remember as the rather delicate looking conifers that are already there - I want to look harder at that.
http://www.mnpower.com/treebook/fact68.html



Still thinking..

Where are we.... Soz, do you have any specific questions? I am feeling lost.

I have a question -

Soz, could you cut a bit of a branch from the conifers in front and take it to your best local nursery and ask if they know what it is? (Just in case it makes sense to put another one back in that spot..)

littlek, I'm not sure, I think soz is looking for some inspiration.

I've reread some of soz's pms, and the place where the hole is, if I understand right, does get more sun than where the hydrangeas are - the conifers shade the hydrangeas. So the mugo pine might be fine, if it would look ok next to the conifers, and not be too big eventually. Which brings up that there are some smaller low pines, whose names fail me right this minute.

I still like hydrangeas, as I said. I have one with flowers that start out sort of burgundy and turn, over the summer, a darkish purple-blue... my biggest of those is about 4 feet high and wide.. Unfortunately, I have no idea of the exact variety and if it grows there in Ohio.

Anyway, unless some new light dawns on me, given that you have the conifers and hydrangeas and the irises, if it were me I'd go with a tall hydrangea, some ferns on the yard side of the conifers and maybe toward the house from the low hydrangeas, and more irises or divide the ones you have..

ever go out there? how about a bench..

Here is an image of the typical tended P. mugo mughus. It can be kept to about four feet high. This one appears to be around six feet.

Downside: it takes forever to grow if you buy the budget-priced potted cutting/seedling. I have one out front on its fourth year, and it doesn't look noticeably larger than when I put it in.

Its upside is that it's really suited for the suburban residential lot. My scots pine out back has reached the point to where I need to hire out a tree guy to keep it from becoming a menace to the house.

Ooooh, soz, wish I'd seen the picture you posted.

Neko, that mugo pine image is lovely. I suspect there was a great deal of selective pruning to get it to look like that. It gives me hope (and ideas!) for the one I put in my own garden a year ago, July.

I paid 50.00 cdn for mine, but it's already doubled in size, and I pruned every candle, in an effort to stop it from becoming monsterously huge, too quickly (it's in part of a border that shadows the hardscape). I worried I might kill it. Ha.

It gets abundant sunshine.

This pine, if it grows in Soz' area and doesn't have problems I don't know about, may work better visually with her conifers because of the more intricate texture...


http://www.monrovia.com/PlantInf.nsf/715018c0a554020088256f1600604920/38944d38e4de3ff18825684d00720bac!OpenDocument

dwarf white pine
(pinus strobus nana)

On mugo, I seem to be seeing that there is a compact form of it, though I'm not sure of that yet.

That dwarf white pine is a showstopper.

Beautiful.

I liked your other idea about repetition, too, osso. If I had mine to do over again, I'd plant a third Japanese Bloodgood Maple. I love them.

Hiya,

Thanks!

Sorry, no urgency or open questions per se, just remembered that both of you were busy when this first came up and it occurred to me that the photos would expire soon.

Questions about hydrangeas:

- Any color suggestions?

- While I've been saying I have three, I actually have five. Three healthy ones in a row on the north side of Illinois, somewhat shaded by this 'n' that (including the now-defunct pine); and two out in the open more on the south side. Those other two aren't doing very well an I'm concerned about how that bodes for planting new ones there, as opposed to a more sun-loving, shade-giving plant.

Will find a pic with views of the "bad" hydrangeas, just a sec...

OK, these are the healthy, happy ones.



(The pine tree used to be immediately behind them.)

Hmph, couldn't find a good picture of the sad one. It's here, immediately to the left of some iris leaves at the far right of the photo, but you can't see it really:



Compared to the others it's short (~16 inches tall), scraggly, and hasn't bloomed.

There's another just like it out in the open, amongst the vinca, a few feet south of the elm trunk.

So that's part of my worry that the area is too sunny, but could be something else.

Too sunny would make a hydrangea wilt with great vigor. But, it would try to be blooming all the same.

They try.

Pretty wilty and scraggly -- "failure to thrive" comes to mind.

Yes, that may well be the reason for the hydrangeas that are doing poorly -
http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/planting_fert.html

And, you're right, if it was the "pine" acting to give shade to them, then it could be dumb to put a regular hydrangea in the hole (on the other hand, how about an oakleaf hydrangea.... see the link)

Which brings me back to another of the same conifer, whatever the heck it is. (Then if you really like the idea of more hydrangeas, fatten illinois in the afternoon shade part... and either transplant the presently miserable ones, or
add new ones.)

So then, what goes where the miserable hydrangeas are?
Will think about that.

I would consider relocating the bad hydrangeas. I still want to put a variegated dogwood shrub (a blight resistant one - like a Kousa) behind the hydrangeas. But, that dwarf white pine Osso linked to is gorgeous! Hmmmm.... or maybe a witchhazel (expensive) or a rhodo-azalea.

Another consideration for the 2 miserable hydrangea could be lack of water. I imagine that elm is consuming a lot of water.

That definitely could be it. The happy ones take a lot of watering, and the other two are kind of out of the way/ don't get as much water when I do water. (The one well south of the elm, especially.)

If you do transplant to hydrangeas, add some of that new water-retaining stuff to the hole. And, lots of manure.

(Part of this whole process is definitely learning what to look for -- I'm now tempted to wait a year and coddle the sad hydrangeas with water and making sure they're not overpowered by irises and vinca and see how they do then, whether it is any of those factors or if even with that there is too much sun for them.)

New water-retaining stuff?