The Japanese Maples Are Coming Out!

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“Shin Deshojo & Kotoji”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

The Japanese Maples are finally leafing out! It may be my lack patience, but our Japanese maples seem to be late in leafing out this year. Their leaves are still in their opening phase, but it looks like all our Japanese maples made it through the bitter cold weather we had earlier this spring.

The Shin Deshojo is one of my favorite Japanese maples. I first saw one in a good friend’s yard in Seattle and fell in love with it. A little later my friends and I were walking through the Washington Arboretum and saw a mature Shin Deshojo in full spring glory. It was breath taking. A couple years later when my friends came to visit, they had a wonderful surprise for me. They brought me their Shin Deshojo as a gift for my fledgling Japanese garden. It struggled a couple of years during its transition from the mild Seattle climate to the harsh dry Yakima area. But it has survived and is now doing well. I added my second Shin Deshojo as our cornerstone tree when we built our waterfall and pond. It proudly graces our sitting area next to the pond.

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Today’s Challenge

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“Woodland Garden”
Heatherwood Spring

Today’s challenge is where do we place all the new perennials, ground covers, and understory shrubs that we will start to plant this morning. I ask myself many questions. How do I accent and outline the garden path? Does this plant need filtered sun or can it withstand the harsh summer sun of Central Washington? Will it complement the existing plantings or interfere with them? How can I create special little vignettes that draw special interests for viewers? Where do I need to block views from the street and where do I need to create windows looking through the garden?

I better stop thinking and start laying out plants. The crew gets here at 7:00 AM!

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Looking In

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“Front Yard”
Heatherwood Spring

As well as view windows looking out to the surrounding hills from our garden, we have also designed windows looking into Heatherwood from outside the garden. This one is from our driveway looking down through our front yard. The bright green of the spring grass snakes through the various planting areas. Most of the perennials are showing their fresh new growth while the deciduous trees are just starting to leaf out. It is May 1, time for the spring explosion of life!

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Blooming Together

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“Crabapple Grove”
Heatherwood Spring

Last year our crabapples bloomed one at a time in sequence. This year five of seven have bloomed together. The remaining two in addition to the original one that came with the house when we moved in should be blooming any day now.

Today we finished our first week of spring planting, hopefully we will be able to finish late next week. We have about 2500 plants to put into the ground. Most are small ground cover plants, but they still take a lot of time. We are also adding several small shrubs to fill in the mid-tier in our Japanese and woodland areas. We are not planning on any additional planting in the Crabapple Grove area. We still have to decide how we want to cover the area covered with daffodils once they have bloomed. This is a project for another day.

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Almost Passed Me By

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“Crabapples in Bloom”
Heatherwood Spring

I have been so busy getting ready for and executing our spring planting that I almost missed the peak bloom on some of our crabapples. Today we took the time to take an early morning stroll before we started planting. As the daffodils in the grove fade, the crabapples start to bloom. This is the second blooming season for our new crabapples. They are gorgeous, even though they are still in their youth.

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Planting Plan

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“Garden Entry Before 2022 Planting”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

We are starting day 3 of our 2022 planting project. We are currently planting in this area. Kinnikinnick will cover the foreground area, blue rug creeping junipers will cover the mid-ground area, and thyme will cover the areas close to the entry path. In two to three years most all of this barked area will be covered with vegetation.

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Time to Plant

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“2022 Spring Planting”
Heatherwood Spring

Our driveway looks like a garden nursery. The plants for our spring planting project arrived last Friday, two weeks later than what we had originally planned. The crazy early spring weather has put us behind schedule. We have a zillion plants to layout and plant during the next couple of weeks. The weather has turned warm. We will need to carefully stage our planting with our irrigation system modifications. Wish us luck!

Planting starts today!

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A Favorite Perspective

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“The Waterfall”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

I have posted several images of our Heatherwood Japanese garden waterfall over the last couple of years. This angle is one of my favorite perspectives. Last year, we built two stepping stone paths leading to this intersecting view point.

The sound of the falling water draws my attention up the hillside. My eyes stop and pause at the Kotoji lantern before they continue to move to the Mountain lantern where they pause again. After the pause, they move to the yellow Chief Joseph lodgepole pine and pink phlox and then back down to the lower waterfall. And then they start to make a counterclockwise move up and around the hill again.

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Up to the “Perch”

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“Stepping Stones Up to the Perch”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

On this day I decided to take the back path up to the “Perch.” From the entrance of the stone steps, I can see the Adirondack chair and the small mountain lantern. I can hear the sound of a rushing stream, but cannot see anything. A surprise waits at the top.

My mission for this day’s photo excursion was to record a baseline for the state of the Japanese garden before we start our spring planting project. I want to have before and after perspectives of the different vignettes in the garden. Our objective for this area will be to encase the area around the path with various ground covers and maybe a couple of deciduous shrubs.

Since this post talks about the path up to the “Perch”, I decided to change the overall web site header to the surprise at the top of the steps.

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Beautiful Spring Day

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“Waterfalls and Pond”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

It’s a beautiful early spring morning. The sun came out and the clouds cooperated. Heatherwood beckoned me to come out and walk through the Japanese garden with my camera. I enjoy this perspective looking over the waterfalls up over the developing Japanese-style garden area. This area has been in place now for three years. The trees and shrubs are slowly growing along with the ground cover. Each year we have been and will continue to add ground covers, a few trees and shrubs, and other accent vegetation to enhance the garden. It will be a never ending evolution. Next week we start our spring planting!

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