Plants in the ground

That was the goal for this weekend, and I did pretty well. Had three great mornings of gardening and accomplished the following:

*planted the fothergilla and the hydrangea 'Annabelle' in the shrub border by the house

 

*grubbed out the ivy by the fence (a simple phrase that covers an hour of heavy, sweaty digging to get all of the roots out), then dug up the white azalea and moved it there. It looks much better against the fence, airy and Japanese-y.

 

*planted the containers front and back with colocasia, white caladiums, white impatiens, begonias, and coleus

 

*found a spot for each of the beautiful plants - and their equally beautiful soil - left on my doorstep by Martha, who's clearing out her wonderful garden in anticipation of her move. Wild ginger (the lovely mottled form), hellebores, epimedium sulphureum, mazus reptans, ferns, Oenothera Biennis (evening primrose), black and blue salvia - what wonderful presents! I will think of her when I weed, mulch and (inevitably) move them.

 

 

 

I also planted the last of the WFF tomatoes, along with some parsley and basil. And all in time for the rain this afternoon - which didn't amount to much, but one lives in hope.

A day in the garden

I've had even more than the usual number of plants waiting to get in the ground and finally had a day to do that. I planted the Mr. Stripey tomato from WFF in my new cedar barrel, surrounded by basil from the sale at Rappahannock Area Adult Activities earlier this month. The Mortgage Lifter tomato went into the walkway garden, where I really need to get a grip - at the moment it's become a holding place for a bunch of stuff, though I do have a tiny vision for it (butterfly bush and a few shrubs to go in next to the aucuba). Still to be planted - where? - is the Riesentraube grape tomato. And they all need tomato cages, which I ruthlessly weeded out of the shed in a fit about a year ago.


One of the colocasias ('Black Magic') is now in the ground next to the aucuba, and I have high hopes that it will make a dramatic black/purple statement there (thanks for that idea, Martha and Becky). I noticed that McClure & Zimmerman's label advises me to plant it responsibly. Somehow I doubt that it will become invasive in our dry heat. The other is slated to go into the pot on the front steps, along with some white caladiums and probably some coleus.

Pruned the forsythia vigorously and felt like a woodcutter in a fairy tale as I bundled the branches together and tied them with twine to put out with the trash (experience tells me forsythia branches are too whippy to go through the chipper/shredder successfully).

Planted the May apples and Jack-in-the-pulpits from Judy's garden under the oak tree.   

This is what they look like in her garden.
The Kirengeshoma palmata that I bought at Merrifield is doing well there, its maple-like leaves waving in the breeze. I'm glad I didn't put it in the front garden, which was the original plan, where it would get too much sun and be out of scale. Planted the forget-me-nots from Judy in front of the akebia.

Planted a Jackmanii clematis to one side of the trellis, and a moonvine from C&T at the farmer's market on the other. Thanks again, Becky and Martha! Will see how they do in the partial shade.

Weeded most of the bishops weed (aka Goutweed, aka 10 Plants You Should Never Buy (Because I Guarantee Someone Will Just Give Them To You) from around the leucojum, though I didn't really get all of the underground roots, so of course it will come back. The kind I have, thanks to Judy's compost, is not even the variegated kind that This Garden is Illegal can find a place for. Luckily, it's not too hard to keep it at bay as long as you keep at it. And anything taken from this part of the garden is never transplanted elsewhere lest it spread.

Looking at the above, it's hard to believe this was four hours of hard work (including mowing the lawn), but it was!

What I did on my gardening vacation - Part I

A long overdue account of what I accomplished the week before last...

Questing after shrub borders against the fence, I've been reading "Continuous Color" by Pam Duthie.

She recommends shrubs with more than one season's interest. For each one she lists all the relevant details, including some gushing comments that undercut her authority just a bit. Nevertheless, based on her recommendations, I headed first to Merrifield and then to Colesville Nursery.

At Merrifield (in the pouring rain), I ended up with a Kerria japonica 'Golden Guinea,' which has single yellow roselike blooms and offers "bright green stems showy in winter." It's not an exciting shrub, but its yellow flowers are sweet. I was heartened to read Henry Mitchell calling it "common and unexciting" but going on to say,

And yet I well recall decades ago when I first saw this bright canary-yellow creature - golden quarters spangled the length of bright lime-green stems - in a Mississippi garden...I could not think of many good plants that would survive in dry shade, and besides, I wanted the green stems to be there in winter. Indeed, they are just as cheerful on a January day as I expected they would be.

Also at Merrifield, after surveying the yews


 






and the English laurels
 

with an interested eye, I came away with a Kirengeshoma, something I'd been interested in since planning the refurbished front garden. I've planted it under the oak tree in back and look forward to its leaves and blooms. It doesn't hurt to see Henry Mitchell saying

What could be grown in such a space, dampish and half shady, between brick pavement and the concrete wall of the pool? Well, if I moved the wild irises (Iris versicolor from a local swamp) out and dug in a barrowful of leaf mold and some peat moss and let it all settle down nicely, I could grow Kirengeshoma palmata. This is a perennial posing as a small shrub, growing three feet or so, with leaves like a Norway maple's and hanging yellow bells or trumpet flowers in October. I have never seen a photograph of it that would make anybody desire it. And yet I have never heard of any gardener who, seeing it in the flesh, did not want it. It's not the leaves and it's not the flowers -- it's the way the plant is put together with such refinement and freshness.

Here it is:
 

Also five Mahogany bugleweed to go under the oak leaf hydrangea, three white caladiums for pots, a Rex begonia, and a 'White Lady' hellebore to go somewhere...
Here's the wagon full:
 

Fall cleanup

It's been sunny, warm and dry - almost drought conditions - all month until finally, Thursday night, we had about .3" of rain and a cold front moved in. Frost warning for Stafford County tomrrow night (October 19), so I moved things and transplanted things and cut things back.

First, the big pot on the front steps got its annual haircut. By fall, it's usually spilling over, and this year with the purple fountain grass (Pennisetum 'rubrum'), it also waved in your face. I decided to move the grass, along with a smaller version that had been in a pot on the steps, to the other side of the walkway, where they can wave in the breeze without attacking anyone.

In the pot I put some hastily chosen bulbs from Roxbury Mills: 5 each of February Gold narcissus, Apricot Beauty, Beauty Queen (said to be pale salmon, we'll see), and Black Beauty tulips. I topped it off with these pansies,

 

which echo the color of the dark red chrysanthemum in the front garden.

From the pots in the back, I took out the two caladiums, knocked off the dirt, and left them on the table to dry in the sun. Theoretically, you can then store them in vermiculite and start them next year, though one source said they're not as vigorous the second year. I have loved them in pots this year and noted that Dave's Garden people suggest a Florida company, Caladium Bulbs 4 Less, as a good source.

The gorgeous dragonwing begonia I cut way back, as Mom suggested, and brought inside. I also potted two of the pink Babywing begonias and brought them in. I'm not too hopeful that they'll make it through the winter, but it's worth trying.

Finally, I made cuttings of the two coleuses I liked this year, 'Dipt in Wine' and another whose name I've lost.  

I'll try to root these and pot them up.

Most beautiful container contest

My own contest, run by me, judging my containers - and the winner is this pot by the shed:

This container is closely modeled on the "Red, Green and Ice" annual combination offered by White Flower Farm this spring. The 'White Christmas' caladium and 'Dipt in Wine' coleus are their suggestions. I'm very pleased and will have no compunction about stealing their ideas again next year.


The runner-up is a similar pot with pink angel-wing begonias and white impatiens and without coleus. I love the dark purple of the begonia leaf:














Okay, and the loser is this poor little pot, which has some height and a nice trailing effect with the sweet potato vine, but whose colors are muddy and not so great. It started out looking okay:


...but by now it's looking a little raggedy:

Too bad - better luck next year!

Container Gardening

I'm never satisfied with my containers, so this year I decided to steal from the ideas in the new White Flower Farm catalog. They show several containers for shade that appealed to me, so I made my list and went out seeking their recommendations locally. I admire some caladiums but have trouble making them work for me. The WFF container with caladiums, though, had a restrained green, white and pink palate and, more to the point, I was able to find the varieties they recommended.




Here is the result. I like the way the caladium leaves wave in the wind. And they show to advantage on the new steps (a saga there for another post).

Here's another attempt, using pink, green and purple. Not so sure this one works but will give it time.

Good Taste

Anne Raver, well, raved about this book in the New York Times, and I agree that the photographs are awe-inspiring. Several of the photos were taken at Heronswood, with their combination of cool good taste and sly surprises. I was particularly struck by the use of negative space, as in empty pots or pots filled to the rim with water that looks black or mirror-like.

Rogers concentrates on color, form, texture, and other qualities that make up good design, so it's more of a design book than a practical guide (not that these things aren't important). He's a huge fan of cordylines like the ones pictured here, tropical Australian palms with striking colors and architectural foliage, as well as other tropicals like Agave.



His favorite container plants will not easily be found locally but would be worth seeking out.

This is fun to look at but not a book to own.

The hot July garden

Hot, hot, hot and no rain, not a bit. There's not a whole lot happening right now, but here's a look at what's in bloom.

A month on, here's what the pot on the steps looks like: dusty miller has vanished, wave petunia is crowded out by the purple sweet potato vine, which is covered with tiny holes because I did not drench it with Merit (though I'll do that today). Also, the coleus is a coarser variety than I had realized. Nevertheless, I still like this for the color scheme and its lushness.


Here's what it looked like in May, with lots more petunia blossoms in evidence:

The datura self-sows every season. I think my neighbors enjoy it more than I do, since it blooms around the corner in the sad side garden (see below). I think this came originally from Lee, several years ago. Notice the tiny spikes on the bloom, perhaps signalling its poisonous nature. According to Wikipedia,

Common names include jimson weed, Hell's Bells, Devil's weed, Devil's cucumber,
thorn-apple (from the spiny fruit), pricklyburr (similarly), and somewhat
paradoxically, both angel's trumpet and devil's trumpet (from their large trumpet-shaped
flowers), or as Nathaniel Hawthorne
refers to it in the the Scarlet Letter
apple-peru. The word Datura comes from Hindi dhatūrā (thorn apple);
record of this name dates back only to 1662 (OED).

And here's the sad side garden. Sad because it was meant to be a cutting garden, but then I planted the white gooseneck loosestrife (Lysimachia clethroides)and some lemon balm (Melissa officinalis). Anybody want some? They both spread like crazy. I'll get a grip on this garden some day, but not this year.

 
Here is Aunt Betsy's day lily blooming with the Russian sage (unknown Perovskia variety), which I remember falling in love with twenty years ago on a trip to California. I really need to either cut back or move the sage - it's totally crowded out by the daylilies. It does well in this hot, dry location, and I need to give it some room to grow.


The benefits of pruning - although I dissed this book a while ago, I did take her advice and cut back the foxglove just after it finished blooming. And now, six weeks or so later, a new (though small) flower stalk!

The hostas are all in bloom right now - the kind someone somewhere refers to as "the mundanes." But it's fun to watch the bees bumbling in and out of the flowers. Look really closely at the left-hand side of the right-hand flower...

Gardens in Maine (long)

On a short but wonderful trip to Camden, Maine, we saw beautiful gardens everywhere. In zone 4, they enjoy low humidity and cool nights but a shorter growing season, of course. They must be almost a month behind us - their peonies were just blooming while ours have gone by weeks ago. Most gardens featured stone either in walls or as enormous boulders (see below). Absolutely breath-taking.




The garden at our B&B in Camden was almost an acre of partial shade sloping down from the house to a small stream with a granite slab bridge. Lots of hostas, woodland phlox and ferns, but in sunny spots Juanita had tucked in bachelor's buttons (centaurea) and other sun-loving perennials. The shrub on the left is bridal wreath.
 
I think the hosta on the right is Gold Standard, which I've come to like more and more, despite my aversion to most variegated hostas (especially those dark green ones with white edges).

 
Rhododendron was in bloom everywhere, mostly the common pale purple ones (but looking 1,000 times better than mine), but Juanita had this gorgeous red one in her garden, and it sparkled in the sunlight.

 
And here's the climbing hydrangea I'm thinking of for my new trellis, growing on the side of the shed next to the rhododendron. Juanita says she feeds it twice a year and it has now bloomed after three years of this treatment. I guess it is slow, but how beautiful!

 
I think this is pink gaura and an enormous geranium.

 
A simple arrangement of pots of pink and purple on a wooden garden cart. Charming but escapes being cute, maybe because of the spiky purple and the aged pots.

 
Here's a view of the slope up to the house, with bachelor's buttons, alliums and huge clumps of alchemilla.

 
We saw other gardens to admire as we tooled around. This garden, on the way to the Mount Battie trail, featured enormous boulders, green grass, and well-manicured vegetable beds.

 Here's the upper part of the same garden, with evidence of the gardener at work.

 
We saw these peonies growing along the side of a house as we walked back to the Maine Stay from town. Could they be more outrageously gorgeous? I don't usually like these dinner-plate clematis - they look artificial to me - but they're so effective here.
 
The library had a beautifully maintained bed right by the entrance. Here's a shot at dusk, with Siberian iris glowing and the harbor in the background.

 On the way out of Camden towards Rockport, we had to stop by this garden. Poppies, lupines and daisies, with rocks and a white picket fence, of course.
 

Ferns were everywhere, growing wild in the woods and cultivated in gardens. These are ostrich ferns in Juanita's garden.