Spring is coming! I can feel when I’m out walking with the dog. The birds are singing, the geese are flying, and my fingers are not frozen. It just feels different, doesn’t it? I better get moving with what looks good in my yard in winter before I run out of winter. So we’ll do a two-fer today. You know, two-fer the price of one – hardscaping and Rose of Sharon.
Lets get hardscaping out of the way. See that cast iron table and chairs under the pines? Lovely in the winter. And the pines have up-lights. Even lovelier. Moving on to the Rose of Sharon.
I didn’t really expect much from Rose of Sharon in the summer, let alone in the winter. Its one of those shrubs that everyone has. Average, typical, expected. It does not have to be so.
Usha gave us several that self-seeded in her yard, and they went into our so-called vegetable garden for a several years. I started cutting off the extra branches till I had just one stem. By the time I moved the Rose of Sharon to more decorative spots, these fast growers actually looked like trees.
In winter, anything that snow can rest on can look good. That’s a Rose of Sharon.
Anything that hangs onto things that used to be green is good. That’s a Rose of Sharon.
And a tree that blooms in mid-summer is good. That’s a Rose of Sharon.
As a reminder of what we are missing this time of year, here is the same area in the summer. I am so ready!
This is an installment in the OhWhatAWednesday series, where I dare to take on the task of finding something in my garden that looks good even during a Chicago winter.
Hi Carol
Good read.
When I used to work in garden centers,I can’t tell you how many customers would return a rose of sharon they had purchased the year before.”It’s dead!”,they would complain.
Well,it wasn’t dead.As you know,they are just about the last plant to leaf out in the year so one may think its dead.I would scratch off some bark and show them that it was still green beneath.Alive.Well,I still gave them their money back.Customer is always right:)
I love them.Either as a specimen planting like yours or as a nice informal hedge/screen.
Cheers
Not only beautiful blooms, Carol, but what other shrub blooms in July/August for several months? There is a new cultivar , a dwarf named Lil Kim that is great for urban gardens.
[…] Last night, our garden was pelted with almost 7″ of rain. The beautiful Rose of Sharon looks even better when it hasn’t been mistreated like that. Not your average Rose of Sharon, you say? Au contraire, mon amie. Tis your average Rose of Sharon, just not your average presentation. It’s all in the trimming. We got ours from Usha, who, like so many gardeners, had tiny volunteers popping up in her garden. I trimmed it to keep it to one stem, and now this ‘tree’ blooms beautifully for a good month. You can see it here in last year’s Rose Of Sharon Surprise. […]