One of the puzzling landscape features we inherited with this house is a big round garden-ish spot in the middle of the drive. It is divided in half, with black lava rocks on a mounded area and granite rocks on a flatter half. I suspect there used to be more plants as the ones there now are a bit spotty.
The lava rock section has a big pear tree with a forsythia growing right underneath, miscanthus perennial grass and some heather spilling over big rocks to blend into the granite section. We need to do something with this because the weed barrier is shot.
Center Garden in Snow April 3, 2016
No matter what we do, I want to keep the heather. I like how it grows over the big rocks and cascades down the small slope. The plants green up nicely in spring and cloak the rocks with deep evergreen sprays. Some years it needs a bit of trimming.
Heather Spilling Over Rocks March 2016
Here it is in full bloom from last April.
Heather Blooming in Early Spring
Ours must be Erica, the winter/spring blooming varieties, as it starts flowering around Christmas – at least it has the years we had little snow and could see the plants – and keeps blooming into summer. Erica is amazingly tough when you realize we live in Michigan where zero degree (or lower) nights are common.
It snowed last night (today is April 3) and the flowers are still there, the plant is perfectly happy!
Heather in Snow April 3, 2016
I’m not a bit worried about my heather surviving even late snow. Quite a bit died off a couple years ago after a winter with weeks worth of sub-zero days and colder nights – remember the polar vortex? – but enough survived to grow back and once more take over.
Dead Heather Early Spring
We think of Scotland when we think of heather, a plant happy in the windswept cold north of Great Britain. It is a great addition here too!
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