Tag Archives: Heatherwood

Patches of Spring Color

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“Spring Vignette”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

Spring is a beautiful time in our Heatherwood Japanese garden. The various trees and shrubs blend together to provide a beautiful patchwork of colors. As I peek through the trees, my eyes take a circuitous route through the vignette. They first focus to the left on the bright pink of a Shin deshojo Japanese maple, then move up to the magenta of a flowering crabapple. They move to the right corner to see the deep purple of a Bloodgood Japanese maple and then down to the rhododendrons that are just about ready to burst in bloom. They next move up to the center to see the white flowers of a fothergillia. Finally they move up a little more and see the chartreuse of a Shigasura Japanese maple. I squint my eyes and see a blurred impressionistic patchwork of color.

The image above is from the most mature area in our Japanese garden. The flowering crabapple was here when I moved in during 2016. The first tree I planted in the garden in 2016 was the Bloodgood Japanese Maple. The following year, I received the Shin deshojo Japanese maple from wonderful friends. In 2018, I added the rhododendrons and the Shigasura. And then in 2019, we planted the fothergilla. Now after three years, we have an intriguing combination of colors, shapes, and textures.

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Here Come the Dogwoods!

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“White Kousa Dogwood”
Heatherwood Spring

Here come the dogwoods joining the blooming crabapples and redbuds. Individually each tree has its unique character. Together they yell out “Its Spring” in our Heatherwood garden!

Over the years, I have become addicted to dogwoods. The first dogwood tree I remember is a small pink one that Dad planted in our yard in the early 60’s. I received my first real appreciation of their collective beauty when we moved back to the Washington, DC area in the early 80’s. We planted a white Florida dogwood as a center piece in our front yard. It was so little when we left. Years later in the late 90’s, I drove by our past home and saw that it had matured into a beautiful tree that had was the star of the front yard. Since then we have planted several dogwoods in our Kent, Woodinville, and Fountainville homes as we moved back and forth between the East and West coasts. And now in Heatherwood, we have planted ten dogwoods. I can’t get enough and plan to plant several more throughout Heatherwood as the years go by.

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Redbuds for J. Charles

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“Blooming Redbuds”
Heatherwood Woodland Garden

The woodland is coming to life with the blooming redbuds and the new understory that we have been planting during the last two years. It will take 3-5 years for trees to get large enough and the understory to fill in to be able to start to get the feeling that we are walking through a woodland. In the meantime we will enjoy the blooming young trees and understory highlights and dream what it will be in the years ahead. Patience! Patience! Patience!

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Trying to Preserve a Little History

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“Irrigation Flume Section”
Heatherwood Garden

Our neighborhood was sad to see the historic Selah Naches irrigation flume taken down. What is left is a scar along where the flume gracefully stood for over 100 years. It will take many, many years (longer than my lifetime) for the scar to transition to a natural vegetation state.

Several of our neighbors were able to get a section of the flume and preserve a little history in our gardens. At Heatherwood we will add additional trees and shrubs that will highlight and frame the flume segment. We also plan to add trees to shield the scar that remains in areas where we had previously created windows to view the flume .

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Complementary Trees and Sculpture

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“Hokkeji and Japanese Maples”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

The early spring color of our Japanese Maples highlight our garden. These two frame in the Hokkeji lantern beside the Japanese garden entry path. We enjoy the nice flash of contrasting color as we enter the garden.

Japanese maples are one of my weaknesses. Heatherwood has several throughout the garden. However, whenever I see something a little different, I want to add it. We are at the stage in our garden development that I need to have patience and wait for some of our shade trees to grow to provide the right condition for some of the less sun tolerant species.

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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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