Bookish Gardener

Bud by bud

Afghan iris. I saw this flower open last spring. The blossom was furled in a tight, pointed whorl. I looked away. When I looked back, one of the falls had snuck out from behind the curtains, as if to say "Ta da!" with its tongue out. I vowed to stay and watch the pot come to boil. (My patience would be rewarded sooner than I expected.) As soon a gnat-sized flying something-or-another alit on the bud, the petals sprung open with a whfft and the minutest of tremors. Then there it stood, in pristine glory, sky blue and heaven-scented.

Oriental poppy. This treasure emerged last spring from the one-inch crack between concrete patio and concrete foundation, the product of my poor aim in scattering seed two seasons before. The petals are softer than tissue, but saved from preciousness by the edgy, contrasting, lush, weedy foliage. The purplish-black stamens undulate in the breeze like the tendrils of a sea anemone, guarded by Haman's hat. In twenty-four hours, the petals are gone with the wind.

Blackberry lily. I don't know why, but I think this flower's botanical name, Belamcanda chinensis, is indescribably luscious. The provenance of my garden's blackberry lilies is the garden right next door, courtesy of my neighbor friend's gift of a generous stalk of blooms gone to black-berry seed. All the seeds were meant to be scattered near the stand of Russian sage in the perennial border, but one must have slipped out of my hand right here, just outside the back door, where it took root behind a trellis container and, last summer, flowered more vigorously and more colorfully than its brethren (who keep getting elbowed out by the Perovskia).

Worth the wort

The dowdy shrub in the background is shrubby cinquefoil. Cinquefoil, used to be Potentilla fruticosa...and now (depending on the source) Dasiphora fruticosa, or Dasiphora floribunda, or Pentaphylloides floribunda. (Ahem...taxonomists! This kind of thing does nothing...nothing!...to bring those skittish about botanical nomenclature into the fold.) But, as I was saying, this potentilla is mostly a disappointment on its own. It's unable to thrive in the deep shade and chalky soil of this north foundation bed, and bears a paradoxical habit of being too upright and shapeless at the same time. It's never thickened up enough to allow its tiny yellow flowers to accumulate any visual impact, and demands too much pruning of its tiny gangly winterkilled stems every spring.

The shrub in the foreground—Hypericum 'Hidcote', or St. John's Wort—is helping uncover the potentilla's potential. (And as beautiful as it is, the hypericum doesn't have the stature of a specimen, so the potentilla's contrasting foliage color and size repay the favor.) The hypericum's stems arc elegantly to soften the unkempt bristling of its neighbor, and draw attention to the five-petaled miniature blossoms of the potentilla through the amplified echo of its oversized, waxy, warm yellow single blooms.

Flutter by

Yes, it's the obligatory butterfly-among-summer-flowers picture...

Good sports

Light green Nicotiana alata 'Limelight', started from seed three years ago, has helpfully reseeded everywhere it's needed, every summer since. Last year, one of the volunteers showed up in pink-purple, and my wish that there'd be more of it this year has come true. I'm seeing a few this year that are leaning red (confirming my suspicion that this wasn't a spontaneous sport, but a souvenir of cross-pollination with the store-bought red miniature nicotiana I had in one of the whiskey barrels a few summers ago), and even one which seems quaintly old-fashioned, with tea-stained petals.

And this? Mutant Rudbeckia hirta, crinkly and green. I'd love to get a bunch of these into a green glass bottle, surrounded by the nicotiana of many colors.

Astilbe my heart

Astilbe x arendsii 'Bressingham Beauty' (tucked in the middle) and 'Erika' (to the right). These shade lovers are thriving in southern-exposure full sun, thanks to the steady effluence from the sump pump hose into the sump garden. 'Erika' is a single plant that's grown into a clump the size of a small shrub, and is a year-round highlight, from the time its perfect, glossy bronze fronds appear in early spring through the stately display of its dried plumes all winter. 'Bressingham Beauty' is a contrast in size (smaller), plume shape (arched), and scent (vanilla).

The sump garden is jam-packed now, a mere two years after the lawn was dug up to make it. A smaller astilbe will be coming into bloom soon, to be accompanied by black cohosh, the plant whose foliage looks like a black astilbe. (Yes, we all came to know it as Cimicifuga racemosa, but now it's been reclassified as Actaea racemosa. Taxonomists, stop that right now, please.) Ligularia dentata 'Othello', with its leaves of oversized spoons with purple undersides, is pushing its neighbors aside. Its neurasthenic cousin, Ligularia stenocephala 'The Rocket' stands brave and unwilted in this site, with a new yellow spike that matches the yellow in the blooming Lysimachia ciliata (fringed loosestrife), which is happily taking over the bed, and whose matte reddish brown foliage is complemented by the glossy brownish red foliage of hardy hibiscus 'Kopper King', which has grown four feet in two months. Darmera peltata (umbrella plant) bloomed pink in early spring (and won't it be nice if it reblooms late summer, just like it did last year). No sign, sadly, of the "reseeding biennial" Angelica gigas, which turned out to be an expensive annual.

This garden will go dramatically tropical soon, as the black elephant ear (from the farmer's market) and the green elephant ear (from a bocce-ball sized bulb, acquired for the cost of a latte from the always-always low priced store) upsize, the siren-red cannas unfurl, and the castor beans called 'Carmencita' join the party, in the garden that never needs watering.

Hollyhockopolis

The hollyhocks in the east bed are in fresh, tall bloom. This bed's still dominated by the progeny of the three original Alcea rosea 'Nigra' plants with which this bed was started three summers ago, even after significant (or so I thought), deliberate culling at the end of last year. But the Alcea ficifolia (fig, or Antwerp, hollyhock) is stepping up with lovely contrast and balance in a variety of hues:

(fig, fig, fig, nigra, fig)

It's only a matter of not very much more time before the (pfft pfft pfft) Japanese beetles (which descended last week upon the native roses in the bed on the other side of the house) arrive to wreak their destruction, but for now this site is peaceful and pristine.

Deep in the high-rise hollyhock jungle, the miniature hollyhock Sidalcea malviflora 'Party Girl' blooms almost undetected:

 

But the hollyhock I'm waiting for is right around the corner, almost but not quite in bloom yet. It's the perennial hollyhock Alcea rugosa. I sowed a packet of it in situ last spring, and two plants, sited perfectly behind Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle', have shot up tall with deeply lobed, fat-fingered foliage and the promise of many yellow blooms.

Peoniamania

Photo credit: John Roll

(longtimenoblogsosorrycrazybusy)

This year's peony season opened on Memorial Day (May 29) with M. Jules Elie (Crousse 1888). The Monsieur always looks fabulous in the first few days of opening, but this year the first set of blooms flounced off the stage after a flamboyantly short appearance (much like the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince). But plenty of second-round side buds, so enough with the complaints.

The garden's been bathed all spring with sweet, steady rains, and I have never seen peonies this tall before. Supergirl/peonygirl Veronica is standing next to James Pillow (Pillow 1936), who opens pink, mutes to cream, is full and fragrant, stands tall, blooms long. He reminds me every year that he's just about my favorite peony of all time.

A poppy grows in Parkwood Hills

Success (at last, and none of my doing) with the oriental poppy. I'd become resigned to thinking of the perennial poppy as a flower that I could admire only from afar, in someone else's gardens. About three seasons back, I'd bought and planted a few potted ones, in their late summer dormancy, and they didn't care to stay. What happened?

During the period in which the poppy is getting itself entrenched the gardener will be sorely tempted to stick in a few other things—a peony here, a redwood there—since the poppy is not occupying as much room as the gardener thought. No. And it never will, either, if we start plopping in other plants over it.

Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman

Urp...guilty.

Then, two springs ago, I scattered the contents of a couple of seed packets in the eastern annual bed—a small rectangular strip of unredeemable soil, bounded by concrete foundation on two sides and by concrete patio on a third. These were oriental poppy seeds, bought in my earliest gardening days before I learned to become intimidated at the prospect of attempting perennials from scratch. These seeds were old, and were being weeded out (so to speak) in one of my all too infrequent de-cluttering sprees...so I figured they could just as well be thrown out into the garden as thrown out.

Early this spring, foliage from this plant (and from a second plant, in the garden bed proper) emerged, large and alien. Having had no real-life, up-close experience with a healthy oriental poppy, I almost thought these were weeds...a cross between a dandelion and thistle. But some instinct stopped me from pulling them. Then, a few weeks later, in a visit to Allen Centennial Gardens, I came upon the same foliage, with the plant tag Papaver orientalis.

The poppy pictured will have salmon-colored (if I remember the seed packet correctly) blooms, as frilly and delicate as an antebellum debutante. Henry Mitchell advises that an oriental poppy requires a bushel basket (a "thirty-inch circle," to be precise) of space to thrive. But given that this plant has somehow made it in the space of a three-centimeter crack—a veritable botanical snail darter—I think we'll need to reroute our plans to install new steps on this side of the patio.

Early spring's bulbs

Photo credit: Jessamyn Roll

From top left, anti-clockwise, Crocus tomasianus and Iris reticulata 'Pixie', 'Harmony' and 'Cantab', which opened day by day in the gravel garden in this sequence, starting about ten days ago, in an arc of violet—purple—royal blue—flax blue. (They were briefly kept company by Puschkinia scilloides var. libanotica until the latter was served up for lagomorph hors d'oeuvres.)

At day's end these days, the light is golden amber, calming the mood and elevating the spirit. Yesterday, the first daffodils began to bloom.

Snowdrop

Photo credit: Jessamyn Roll

There is a time when nature seems to make
A stern determination not to wake;
When the snows melt, and swollen streams run deep,
And plashy pools the sere brown herbage steep;
When first the snowdrop dares the storm endure,
The only thing on earth which then looks pure...

from "The Sons of the Soil: A Poem," Sarah Stickney Ellis