A spring stroll around my garden has led me to discover some casualties of winter. We had a rough winter. And the casualties are some Japanese maples I put in late in the fall.

Japanese maples can be persnickety even on a good year. I have lost many over the years and it’s always been either extreme heat or extreme cold.

One maple I had planted on the berm bed alongside our driveway. A lovely Acer palmatum “Crimson Queen”. Completely dead, and I didn’t realize it until today and I had even fed it yesterday, and don’t I feel dumb. But it happens, and I have stopped getting tremendously upset when a plant croaks because I just realize that when something doesn’t work out in a spot there’s something else that will work better.

I am replacing the deceased “Crimson Queen” with Acer palmatum “Tamukeyama”.

I have another little one which also bit the dust sadly and I’ve also picked a replacement for that. Acer palmatum “Waterfall”.

I have one more that I can’t decide if it’s going to live or die, so I have a third Japanese maple coming just in case. Acer palmatum “Rhode Island Red” Dwarf Bloodgood.

There was nothing wrong with the trees I planted late fall. They were lovely, but this was a hard snowy winter and bitterly cold at times. It’s quite possible they just didn’t have enough time to settle in in the fall before the winter started.

This garden has had many triumphs. But it has had a few tragedies. And the tragedies have predominantly been Japanese maples and also a couple of azaleas and rhododendrons. But I keep trying. It’s the nature of gardening: sometimes things don’t work.

I have planting ahead of me. Not as much as prior seasons, but planting to do. The garden will tell me where the new shrubs will go definitively. I have a rough idea, but once the plants arrive that’s when I make the final decision. It’s all about the evolution of the garden.

Happy gardening.