I have been thinking more on what to do with my garden to pimp it a little bit more. More greens, more evergreens, less maintainance and more colour and less concrete. You know the way a garden should be.
One of the trees that never lets me down in this is the magnolia. Already when the frost is still there you can already see that some buds are starting to grow and you always wonder how they will survive if it gets any colder again.
After the initial 'budding' weeks, then all of a sudden there is this period of time where the flowers start to bloom and that is just the most awesome week there is. Yes, you are reading this correct...A week
Because after this period of time the flowers will die out and the leaves of the tree will start to come in and these will remain throughout summer time. If you are a lucky soul there will be a second bloom but I have not had this every year.
Autumn maintaince is really easy as you just need to chop off to the root where you want it and eventually it will head up again.
FOMO
I read this little article earlier in the week about 'blossom FOMO' and it is all about exactly this period of time that people are wanting to have colour in the garden again.
The article is giving all kinds of suggestions on where you can see the best stuff, but if you ask me...this is just the period of time where you only have to walk outside to see it all.
In just a small period of time where there is some decent sun and a drop of rain passes by is already enough to see some change by the daily.
You don't need an article to realise this, you just need to step outside for a bit.
I am still on the hunt for some decent evergreens though. I tried transplanting some rhodondendron branches which had rooted and I wanted to put them in a shadow corner, but it doesn't seems like these guys have survived.
Maybe this is the cheap Dutchy in me, I really don't want to buy any plants if you can also harvested them in another kind of way. This transplantation didn't work out, but the weeks are coming where it is time to put some new stuff in the ground that it has some serious time to root before it gets too hot.
Advice on some everygreens bushes that decently survive in a shadow part are always welcome ;)
Until then, let's enjoy the magnolia while it still has a couple of days left of blooming