A whole lotta garden-coaching is going on over on the garden-center blog I write for.

First up, I show off my favorite and most-recommended shrubs for turning a yard into a garden with big, showy ones, most of them fast-growing.  Cheap, too.  Like the Weigela above – ‘White Knight’ on the left, common pink on the right.

I’ve also compiled my favorite perennials and shrubs that brighten even the darkest of shady spots. Like the Euonymus ‘Emerald Gaiety’ above left or the Bottlebrush Buckeye on the right.  Recommended perennials include Euphorbia amygdaloides, Solomon’s Seal, Hardy Begonia and Hakonechloa grass.

On a cool, drizzling morning in May, I check in with the ever-changing mosaic of groundcovers and think:  Me likey!  Especially compared to the thoroughly boring turfgrass it replaced.  Much prettier, more interesting, and it even offers up blossoms to the local pollinators.

Just don’t let anyone tell you it’s less work because it most definitely is not.  Lawn care in this little oval meant a five-minute mowing about 10 times a year, and that’s all.  Now I weed and I fiddle and if I’m adding anything new, I water.   But you know, it’s gardening -  hands-on and creative – and I love doing it.  Lawn care?  Not so much.

Here’s lots more more about this lawn-to-garden makeover.  The dominant groundcovers in this video are Creeping Jenny, Creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla), Sedum spurium ‘Dragon’s Flood’, Sedum acre, assorted creeping thymes and some Alyssum self-seeded from last year.  The main shrubs on view are the low Euonymus ‘Emerald Gaity’ and filling out the corner, Spirea nipponica ‘Snowmound’ blooming in white.

Happy Gardenblogger Bloom Day, and this time I’m going to play by the rules by showing you what’s actually blooming today in my actual garden.  Here we go.

Salvia ‘May Night’ (above left)  is super-common – because it does so well here.  On the right, the spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana) may be considered an obnoxious weed by some, but with the right care it’s a winner.  The key to making this native plant garden-worthy is to whack back its foliage after the first bloom, when the foliage looks like crap.  Then new leaves appears and the gardener is happy once again.

Speaking of weeds, here are two more of my favorite garden plants that some consider a weed.  First, creeping Sedum acre is at its bright-yellow best.  It arrived here as a weed and does so well, I chose it as one of my top two lawn-replacement plants.  The Evening primrose blooming in pink is another volunteer.  It does seed freely and because I wanted it, that’s a good thing.  Free plants and plenty of ‘em!  Also shown here in the photo above are some lambs’ ears and the lovely ‘Ogon’ spirea in chartreuse.

Above in my adopted garden (next door) is a short-lived but stunning pairing of Siberian iris with peonies.

Above are two of the lawn-substitute groundcovers in my front yard at their bloomingest.  On the left is creeping cinquefoil and on the right, a Thyme – not sure which.  (Sorry – I moved them too many times to keep track.)

Also in the front yard, anchoring a corner quite nicely, is the Spirea nipponica ‘Snowmound’.  It blooms after the more common bridal wreath-type spirea and in a more angular, less fountainesque shape.  Both are do-ers and as close to no-maintenance as plants can be.

My Floral Carpet and Knockout roses are all blooming and they’ll keep it up til Thanksgiving or so.

The Takoma House and  Garden Tour is one of my favorites, partly because I know so many people either touring or proudly exhibiting their house and garden, it’s actually a social event.  For many years I also enjoyed getting ideas for renovating and decorating my home but these days, I really don’t care.  (Is this a bad sign?  I DO worry.)  Honestly, the houses on this year’s tour were nice but I kept wondering, “Where’s the garden?”  Yep, not much to see in the garden department.

Except for this one, the home and garden of an outstanding contractor I hired years ago to do the renovations I used to care about (only because my 1925 house really needed them).  And though not a garden designer himself, Neil Mozer had the good sense to consult with one (Colleen Bugler), and it paid off.  And best of all, it’s a lawnless beauty that’s right up my alley.

Seating in the Front Yard!

In the front (above and right) Neil solved the slope problem with some stunning stone walls, and created a central seating area in the now-level, shady spot.  It looks so natural and inviting, it didn’t occur to me til later that we hardly ever see this done but man, what a great idea.   With the help of the existing trees and some modest shrubs, it feels pretty darn private.

Then in the back yard most of the space is taken up with a large out-building (Neil’s studio) but connecting everything is an interesting mix of fieldstone paths and well designed pocket gardens.  Plenty of evergreens, I see.

Very sad day today.  Marv Hurwitz, one of my oldest and closest friends, died this morning at the age of 77.   It was sudden and fast, so a good dying for him; a shock to everyone who loved him.   I blogging about him because it may help, and I don’t know what else to do.

We met back in ‘73 when we both worked at Common Cause headquarters, and we became and remained friends through one of his marriages and two of mine.  Through Marv I met lots of other people who became good friends, including PamJ pictured above, her husband Doug and even one of my husbands.  We traveled to England together – as just friends.   Marv was like that – a good friend to both men and women, an incredibly good listener who also collected guns and loved motorcycles.  A dealer in antique scientific instruments whose independence from a boss we all admired.

I hope you can tell from the photos that he was also fun, though he never drank as much as the rest of us.

I’m happy that in the last years of his life Marv became close to his daughter Dana and got to see his granddaughter Gillian every week.  And he was pretty darn healthy til the end.  So really, life was pretty good to Marv, and he was a wonderful friend to me.  But shit, who am I going to call at the last minute for dinner or a movie?  And who’s going to encourage me and tell me how silly I am to worry about money?

Take a gander at some super-common English Roseums on the shady side of my front garden.   Just posting this photo, I notice how much better they show off against the new fence than they ever did against the ivy-covered chainlink.  Big improvement!   (Though I DO hear from neighbors who “miss the ivy”.  I bet they wouldn’t miss the constant cutting back required to keep it off the beds and the sidewalk.)

But about rhododendrons, they sure don’t do well around here – except when they seem to flourish, and I may never understand why.   But even when they stay alive, my shrubs look great one year and then lose half their scrawny stems over the winter, and I start all over trying to nurse them back to a nice shape.   And this particular rhodie is often recommended as the most likely to succeed in this region.

On a positive note, the temporary nature of their perfection makes them all the more awesome today.