In my neighborhood, one of the things that truly announces that spring has arrived is the beautiful blooms of the Magnolias, Redbuds and flowering Crabapples.
We already had pink crabapple, so when one of our River Birch trees died about 10 years ago, we replanted nearby with a Redbud. It has grown beautifully and puts on quite a spring show. This year it was a favorite of my first-ever Northern Oriole in the backyard!
We sadly had a Freeman Maple die a few years back (So Long Beautiful Maple Tree), and three years ago decided it was time to add some more flowering trees. We picked a Jane Magnolia (Magnolia “Jane”) to add to our garden collection in this now very bare spot.
I had done a bit of research and was really hoping to add a yellow magnolia, but that year it was just too late to find one. I ultimately decided on Jane Magnolia, one of the “The Little Girl Series,” and is a hybrid between a lily magnolia ‘Nigra’ (Magnolia liliflora) and star magnolia ‘Rosea’(M. stellata). The “Little Girl Series,” was named because each hybrid plant was given a girl’s name. I chose the hybrid Jane because it was the right color (reddish-purple outside and white inside), size (10 to 15 feet tall and wide) and with the late spring bloom time it is less likely to suffer frost damage in spring.
Since we were already doing some replanting, we also decided to remove a couple of unwieldy yews in the front bed and put in another magnolia and some grasses.
Where the yew closer to the front door was, we decided on a Star magnolia (Magnolia stellata). This magnolia is more shrublike than most magnolias so it was more amenable to a smaller area like a front bed. In the other spot we planted three Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses (Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) to add year round interest.
In they went and I couldn’t wait for the next spring. But in the meantime, we had a very dry summer and a very tough spring. Despite my attentive care, neither transplant survived 😔.
Because I had them planted from a local nursery, both were covered by a warranty, so they were able to be replaced. All seemed well until they bloomed….
Uh oh, I had white blooms in the backyard and pink blooms in the front yard! No doubt that this is wrong! Somehow the specimens had been mixed up and now my replanted plants needed to be replanted again😔 Magnolias are pretty hardy plants once they get going, but they can be a little finicky about being transplanted. Pretty sad to make the call to my landscaper to have them switched, but there’s no way I can have a Jane magnolia in the small bed by the front door.
Fast forward to this spring. The Jane magnolia in the back looks great, had plenty of nice pink blooms and and is starting to shoot up lots of new growth. I think it’ll be ok!
The front yard Star magnolia, however didn’t fare as well. It had plenty of buds, but many didn’t bloom and many branches were dead. But enough stayed alive that I think it’ll eventually it’ll be ok. It also looks like it recently started sending up new sprouts near the base. Wish it had done better, but it’s been through a lot and I only get one replacement. We’ll see how it looks next year.
Do you have magnolias? Any problems getting them to take off?
Lovely photos! A neighbor has a star Magnolia that looks very happy. I hope yours recovers. We used to have a small Magnolia, not sure the name, but it became infested with scale and sickened until I took it down.
Good luck with the magnolias. There is a lovely star magnolia in our neighborhood I look forward to each year.