The Earth Laughs in...Milkweeds?

Almost every gardener has surely read or heard the famous quote of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Earth laughs in flowers," lifted from his 1847 poem Hamatreya.   Most of us equate this line with a calm and loving Mother Earth, gently expressing her warmth and love.  Within the context of the poem, however, the Earth is laughing at the silliness of man, who believes he is master and owner of the Earth, but who will nonetheless end up beneath the earth, pushing up daisies.  Whatever his good qualities were, Emerson was also a cynical old fart.

The tallgrass prairie laughs at me, I suppose, also in flowers, but they are the flowers of milkweeds.  This area of my pasture (see, there I go, believing I'm the owner instead of a temporary part of the scenery) is the area we used in construction of the barn, first to pile all the dirt from the excavation, and later scraped clean again as the dirt was used to fill in around the foundation.  Somewhere, deep in the soil of the prairie, an infinite number of milkweed seeds must be waiting, biding time until the stubborn grasses give ground.  

This milkweed is Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, a member of the Dogbane family and poisonous and inedible as forage.  I've always viewed it as a two-foot-tall weed in my pasture, tolerated by me because of its usefulness to monarch butterflies, but it does have some other positives.  A couple of years back I found it was growing in the K-State Native Plant Garden and didn't recognize the magnificent five foot tall, very fragrant plants.  I was embarrassed when the director told me what it was.  Seriously, a mass of Common Milkweed has the same affect as an Oriental lily on the air in its vicinity, but the milkweed fragrance is far sweeter and somehow less smothering.  I've also learned to my surprise that Asclepias syriaca is a perennial.  If I'm going to be laughed at anyway, I need to allow a few of them to grow in MY garden.  I might as well make them feel welcome if they're going to be lurking around anyway.

I hope Ralph Waldo Emerson (why do we always use his middle name...how many other famous Ralph Emerson's are there anyway?) doesn't mind me calling the garden, "MY garden."  I may be borrowing the soil and sunlight and rainfall and the air, but I maintain nonetheless that the garden is mine.  I arranged it, I defend it against all marauders floral or faunal, and when I go beneath it, it will soon also cease to exist.  For a while, I suppose, to become a milkweed patch, but eventually the milkweed will lose too.  This is the prairie, and on the prairie, the grasses always win.   

Pleasing Combos, Native or Not

A recent post by Gaia Gardener about nice combinations of native prairie plants was timely and I made a mental note to blog this combination, of butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and catnip (Nepeta cataria) that sprung up voluntarily in my back garden.  This one is for you, Gaia!   I now have 8 or so Asclepias volunteers around the yard and I've blogged before about my accidental combination of Asclepias and a 'Fiesta' forsythia.   The catnip simply grows everywhere.  I fact, I weed out more of the catnip than I permit to  grow.   I wonder if the daylily in the foreground will bloom in time to add to the display?








Gaia's post also reminded me to occasionally look beyond the roses and view the rest of my garden, and while I was in a mood to appreciate plant combinations, there were several other combinations that were particularly pleasing to me at this time of year.   Here is an iPhone photograph of a couple of  recently planted lilies against the backdrop of tall, stiff 'Karl Foerster'.  I'm not that fond of "Karl", but even blurred in the Kansas wind, as it is here, it makes a good foil for the flowers.  The pink blooms intruding at the lower right are Griffith Buck rose 'Country Dancer'.








You should always assume that any pleasing plant combination in my garden is the result of a happy accident because, well, because that's exactly what it is.  I'm a plant collector by heart and I tend to plop down any new plant that tickles my fancy into the next open available spot, full speed ahead and ignoring the dangers of clashing colors and inappropriate size differentials and wildly differing growth patterns.  They can always be moved if they prove they can survive the Kansas climate, right?  Here, one of the more colorful lilies has opened up against the fading 'Basye's Purple Rose'.  The deep reddish-purple rose makes a nice contrast to the more orange-red lily.






It's probably now obvious that within the past couple of years, I realized that Asiatic, Oriental, and Orientpet lilies are useful to fill in the dreary period between the end of the first wave of roses and the cheery summer daylilies.  I'm seeing the payoff from planting a lot of lily bulbs into the beds the past two summers.  Here, a nicely colored lily blooms in front of a Yucca filamentosa 'Golden Sword', both in the foreground of a nice, light pink 'Bonica' shrub rose.

Soon, the lilies will fade and other accidental combinations will quietly bid for my attentions.  The next round of blooms will be the colorful daylilies against other neighboring plants, and then the late summer flowers such black-eyed susans and daisies will hold center stage, and finally grasses will become the focus of the garden.  And then another growing year, along with all its fleeting combinations, will be gone. 

Persicaria polymorpha

Now that's a mouth full of Latin, isn't it?  I believe that you'll find that if you say it fast three times, Persicaria polymorpha is easier, however, than repeating "giant fleeceflower" quickly three times.  This beast of a plant lives in my front landscaping, near the walkway, and it always causes a scene when a visiting gardener sees it in flower.

I discovered it myself several years ago while on a gardening tour in the neighboring county where it was shining brightly and stealing the show at a friend's garden.  I immediately left the tour and proceeded to my then-favorite garden center to ask if she had any.  Thankfully, she had one small plant left over from a custom order for a landscape job and I took it home and planted into a nice spot.  One thing to admire about Persicaria;  a small plant will flower and one year later it will be spectacular!


I called my giant fleeceflower a beast, but, other than its size, it is an impeccably well-restrained garden citizen.  Actually a strain of knotweed, Persicaria polymorpha might flop on some more diminutive neighbors after a heavy rain, but it will soon stand itself back up (mostly) as it dries.  It helps if you don't ever fertilize giant fleeceflower, starving its growth to stay within the constraints of its genes.  It doesn't spread by runners or self-seed, as far as I can determine.  I've recently divided my now 5 foot diameter clump to start others in my garden and it is as simple as dividing a daylily.  Well, perhaps similar to dividing a slightly tough-rooted daylily.    I'd certainly recommend putting it among shrubs or perennials.  Standing alone in a lawn, Persicaria will just look like a big weed you should have removed.


Persicaria polymorpha was formerly known as Polygonum polymorphum.  Because of its good behavior, some speculate that it is a hybrid, rather than a species.  It grows about 5 foot tall, takes all the drought and sun you can throw at it, and is hardy in the worst of my Zone 5 winters.  A perennial, all the care that giant fleeceflower needs is to cut it to the ground each spring.  No pests seem to bother it, it blooms all summer long from early June through mid-September, and those creamy white panicles don't brown and enter an ugly phase.  Even in my hot Kansas sun, I might call them a little "toasted", but they primarily stay creamy for a long time and then turn reddish-brown in fall.  I leave them on all winter to provide some structure in the snows.

Queen of the Irises

ProfessorRoush has a favorite iris.  Hand's down, no question about it, a definite favorite.  I grow all colors and types of irises.  I maintain approximately forty different varieties that still survive my neglectful gardening.  I'm partial to the purples like 'Superstition', so deep they are almost black.  I fancy the bright sky blue irises such as 'Full Tide'.  I love the soft pink refined splendor of 'Beverly Sills'.  But it is bicolored and vivacious 'Edith Wolford' that holds my iris heart.

I fought long and hard to obtain 'Edith Wolford'.  Every year at the local iris sale I would rush to her spot in the alphabet first, only to be beaten to the spot by a purse-swinging senior lady or to find that all the divisions had been sold privately before the public sale.  A friend finally took pity on me and set aside a fan for me.  Or, as a second friend pointed out, I acquired 'Edith Wolford' by cheating.  A gardener can only sustain the bruises from heavy handbags and bony elbows a few times before he must take preemptive action to end the abuses.

'Edith Wolford' was a 1984 introduction by the late Ben Hager,and she has received all the top American Iris Society awards including the Dykes Medal of Honor (1993), the highest award given.  Hager was the owner of Melrose Gardens in California, and he also hybridized the above-mentioned 'Beverly Sills' (1985 Dykes Medal of Honor).   'Edith Wolford' is the perfect contrast of soft yellow standards and gentle blue falls.  Her beard is a brighter yellow, a beacon to the insects who would steal her pollen.  She even occasionally reblooms.  'Edith Wolford', however, does not always photograph well since cameras tend to make the soft blue falls more purple than they really are.  For example, the top picture on this page was taken on my "good" Canon camera, and the picture at the right was taken on my iPhone.  Both are a little purple-tinged, although the top picture does more closely capture the quality of the canary-yellow standards.

I won't entertain negatives in regards to 'Edith Wolford' in my garden since she grows so well here, but to be fair, other gardeners dismiss her as sickly, sparing of her blooms, slow to grow, and prone to rot.  To those who would be her detractors, I will mangle a quote from the The Hunger Games and suggest, "May your odds with irises be never in your favor." 

Volunteer Opening

Another mystery of my garden was revealed last night when a volunteer peony seedling (sapling? stalk? plant?) opened for the first time.  Until I first noticed this little gem in 2012, growing where it shouldn't be, I was unaware that some peonies would self-seed if they weren't deadheaded.  There were 6 or 8 ancient peonies near the orchard where I was raised, and I never noticed any distant seedlings, but perhaps that was because we mowed around each peony and never gave them a chance.  In contrast, my cypress-mulched and partially shaded front garden must be perfect for peony babies, because I've now got three small new peonies where none was planted.

My natural approach of live-and-let-live for self-seeding plants paid off perfectly this time.   This little girl is presumably a self-cross of 'Kansas' or 'Inspector Lavergne', or a cross of the two, since there are several of each in the bed.  Regardless of the parentage, I'm pleased at the almost bright-red coloration, the prominent yellow stamens, and the semi-double form, and I think I'll keep this one around under an appropriate study name such as 'Roush's Red'.  The blue foliage at the top of the picture, if you're wondering, is a blue-green sedum, 'Strawberries and Cream'. 

If you recognize the foliage of a volunteer plant, and it isn't a weed, don't pull it up.  You just never know the gifts you've been given until you, in turn, give them a chance to shine.

 

Stellar Magnolia

Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star'

Despite the lack of much rain, there is a bright spot in my garden.  I've mentioned it before, but a nine year old Magnolia stellata is once again the center of attention in my garden...or at least it was yesterday.  A "center stage" performance, even though it is positioned in the wings of the garden, east of my peony bed.

My M. stellata is a cultivar named 'Royal Star', according to the label.  Those wonderful waxy white blossoms began opening a week ago and seem to be peaking today.  I believe this year's performance is the best of its short lifetime in my garden, and perhaps because it is reaching towards the heights promised at maturity.  My 'Royal Star' is about 5 feet high and 3 feet in diameter, a bit below its advertised 10'X8' maturity, but still a respectable size to make an impact.  She's reportedly hardy to Zone 3B, and I've never worried about her health, only about whether a late spring freeze would shorten the life of these blossoms.

M stellata's best input to my garden is undoubtedly sensory.  During these showy days, a unique fragrance wafts across the garden.  Although I'm not a "fragrance expert", I'd describe this one as dense or heavy, warm, moist and musky, a suiting aroma for a genus that first made sugar from sunlight in company with the dinosaurs.  If I were to make a dinosaur park, a playground reminiscent of Crichton's The Lost World, I'd surely fill it with magnolias from edge to edge.  Those thick heavy petals also echo the mists of time and the presence of swamps and humid breezes and dark jungles. Creamy white at first glance, if one looks closely at a flower, one also sees a slight pink blush when the flower first opens, as if it were embarrassed to be caught in such an immodest display.  Born new into a world when asexual means of plant reproduction were old and unfashionable, and pollen and stigmas and flower sex were new and "hot", magnolias exude sex, from the heavy musk of their fragrance to their brazen display of desire.  "Come up and fertilize me sometime," says this early Mae West.

So, if there's a plus side to not yet having spring rains, its that M. stellata is blooming in peace, petals unstained, perfect and beckoning in the sunlight.  It is a sad thing to think that I'd trade all this beauty for a measly inch of warm spring rain.

Update:  I wrote this before things turned bad yesterday.  This morning my 'Royal Star' is almost stripped clean by last night's wind.  Plus it's below freezing out there.  A fleeting moment of beauty followed by bare nothing.  I'll bet the dinosaurs went out the same way.

Hollyhock Hunger

Friends, I really miss my many hollyhocks.  Yes, I pine for peonies and rave on roses, but today I'm thinking only of light, cheery, woolly hollyhocks.  They bloom at the end of the roses for me, staring down the barrel at the coming heat of summer, but they've never failed to brighten up the borders as the early garden wanes. 

Stubborn and unknowing gardeners lump hollyhocks with other heirloom plants and disdain their contributions to today's gardens, but our grandmothers, as always, were sound and wise with the few ornamentals they chose to trouble with. 

Alcea 'Black Beauty'

We garden today with a multitude of companion plants for roses; of the value of clematis for complementing the bloom of a rose, of the tidiness of phlox and verbena and bulbs to extend the flowering season of a rose border, of the solid background of an ornamental grass.  But many have forgotten the lowly and coarse hollyhock in their rush to modern garden design.  Forgotten the height and structure and texture contrasts that hollyhocks provide against the shiny new rose leaves.  Forgotten the bright blooms that open wide each sunny morning and then fall cleanly to the ground a few mornings later.   








I sing today of the wonders of my hollyhocks.  I sing of the ethereal beauty of those cupped blossoms, translucent against their backgrounds but colorful and substantial in the border.  I sing of the large light green leaves, fuzzy and rough, hardened against drought and wind.  I sing of their rapid reach skyward, to tower for a brief time in the sunlight, to fade into the fall background of foliage and seed.  I sing of their carefree nature, self-seeding themselves into the perfect niche to complement a rose, requiring neither deadhead nor cultivation for procreation or survival.

Witness the delicate membrane of petal, fragile as glass.  Notice the feathery stamens and glistening pistil, aching to join forces. See the play of form and color between rose ('American Pillar') and hollyhock as pictured to the left.  Hail the vibrant crimson of 'Charter's Double Red' to the right.  Alcea all, rosea some, tough and proud faces turned to scorching sunshine, defiant and strong to wind.

I choose and covet my hollyhocks by their survival and their deep color.  I have long friendships with  'Charter's Double Red' and 'Black Beauty' and a beautiful pink variety whose name I've lost to the depths of time.  I've been briefly acquainted with more fickle visitors such as 'Charter's Double Yellow' and 'Queeny Purple', who have disdained my hospitality and faded on.  But if they live, they stay, and if they stay, they serve.  What more can I ask of a plant that can outshine a rose?

Bye Bye Bye, Boltonia

As I have decided not to regrow a seemingly marvelous particular perennial next year, or at the very least decided to move it out of my sight and out of mind, I believe that I at least owe the plant a parting blog. Oh Boltonia, my lovely, I just couldn't take any more.

I spent the late summer of 2012 driving to and fro near a fabulous specimen of this plant at the parking lot entrance to the KSU gardens.  Shining and thriving in the midst of the drought and 100° temperatures that August, it was unlabeled at the time, but I suspected its identity after running across it here and there in plant catalogues. I had long read about the drought tolerance and hardiness of this perennial, and I decided it was time to give it a try, especially since it was almost the only plant in flower during that fiery August.

Boltonia asteroides, the White Doll's Daisy, or False Aster, is a native perennial to this area of the country and the Eastern United States.   It is an erect plant, with blue-green foliage, growing from 12 to 60 inches tall according to references, and its cheery little daisy-face is always bright and happy just as a daisy-face should be.  Hardy to Zone 3, and blooming at the very best time for it to be noticed in the garden, alone in August and September, it is even listed as "clay tolerant."  What more could I ask for?

Well, I could have asked for it to grow less vigorously.  My Boltonia, planted in 2012 and having its first full season in 2013, became a rampaging monster, 6 feet tall and 4 or 5 feet wide, cascading and smothering every other plant in the vicinity, which included a struggling 'Dragon's Blood' rose and my beloved 'Vanguard'.  This, despite the lack of soil enhancements and without added water. Yes, the flowers are gorgeous close up, but farther away the plant just has the appearance of a white cloud.  And no reference ever suggested that it might need support, although I later learned that the Missouri Botanical Garden suggests cutting it back by 1/3rd in late spring to early summer to reduce plant height. 

Boltonia asteroides is a nice, dependable perennial, but I'm banishing it this year from my garden.  I might still give it a chance to survive among the tall grasses at the periphery of the garden, however. Borrowing lyrics from "Delilah," the classic hit by Tom Jones (a favorite crooner's of my mother's during my childhood),  I could also sing;  "My My My, Boltonia.  Why Why Why, Boltonia?  I could see that plant was no good for me. But I was lost like a slave that no man could free.  Forgive me, Boltonia, I just couldn't take any more." 

Unlike Sir Thomas John Woodward (Jones), though, women probably won't be throwing their hotel keys at me while I sing.  It's a pity, but gardening just has no star quality.

Pink Poppy Perfection

During the three short years of existence of this blog and its 520+ entries, I can't believe that I haven't written about or shown you a single photo of one of my favorite garden plants.  At least, I think I haven't, because one sometimes loses track of 500 blog entries and searchable text can only carry me on its back just so far. 

This beautiful salmon-pink pompom is present in my garden as a legacy, a descendant of seed given to my father by the father of a childhood friend of mine, who grew them in a large garden en masse for their "wow" effect every year.  I'm not positive of the exact species, but I suspect that this is a plant sometimes described as Papaver laciniatum, a highly double and deeply lobed variant of the bread poppy.  Notice how carefully I'm dancing around the likely accurate species name?  All I know for sure is that here and there in my garden, when the cold, wet soil is disturbed enough in early spring to allow this annual to take hold and grow, I get these gorgeous flowers back as a gift in mid-summer.  They pop up at random spots for me, often near desirable plants where I slow down my weeding enough to identify what living thing I'm uprooting.  They self-seed effortlessly, and all I have to do is to avoid hoeing them out when they are mere babies.

The plant itself  has a nice blue-green shade and healthy foliage, rarely shows insect damage or fungus, and doesn't care if rain comes often or doesn't come at all.  The leaves are lobed enough to be a mite prickly, although I can pull the plant bare-handed when I need to.  I don't pull them bare-handed though, because if you do, your hand gets covered in the sticky, white sap of the plant.  As they begin to flower, first you see these swelling, drooping buds, which later stand up proudly on their short day of open life.  After the petals fall, the seed head magically becomes a shaker that opens when the seeds dry so that a few seeds are flung by each gust of wind or nudge of a passing animal.  What a perfect plant to place in Kansas; a drought-tolerant self-sowing annual weed that is distributed farther each time the wind gusts get stronger!  Even better, they bloom at the height of heat and summer, as other flowers are fading and before the ornamental grasses claim the garden for their own.

I only regret that I am terrible at sowing them to come up where I want them.  I've tried mass plantings, but I sow them too thickly and they don't thrive, or I sow them too late and then they don't grow, or it is not wet enough for them to get established.  I also suspect that they may need a period of cold stratification to make them start to grow.  Someday, I'll figure out the formula and then I'll have a "wow" factor in my garden too.   Until then, I'm thankful for this passalong plant and the Kansas winds that spread it far.

Three-Season Alliums?

Are you kidding me? 

This morning's edition of our local paper reprinted an article that caught my attention big time. Caught my attention and made my eyes bug out.  From the Daily Press as written by a Ms. Kathy Van Mulleskom, it was titled Alliums Provide Color For Three Seasons.

Really? Are you kidding me?  I don't know what planetary eden Ms. Mulleskom comes from, but the first two lines of the article stated that (I'm paraphrasing here), "Planting alliums is one way to realize the dream of a garden that's colorful spring through fall."

Now, truth be told, I like alliums in a spring-bulb sort of way.  They're colorful, they're healthy with little care, some varieties are very large and very tall, and they draw butterflies to them like they were made of pure sugar.  My 'Globemaster' alliums, pictured here, draw all the attention in my garden at their peak and Mrs. ProfessorRoush never fails to comment when they're blooming. 

But alliums are, without doubt, a one season plant for Kansas.  Ms. Mulleskom does correctly note that by selecting among the varieties, the bloom season can be extended to six to eight weeks.  She also cheerfully points out that the height of some varieties can be an architectural feature.  But we differ on the value of the second and third season for these marvelous bulbs.  In the article, she says "after bloom, the dried golden brown allium seed heads stand tall amidst lush late season flowers."  They also last "sometimes into winter." 

Let me tell you, whether they are "brown," or "golden brown" by July, neither is a real color for the garden.  Brown is okay on a desert landscape painting or on the Mona Lisa, but in the garden "brown" is the color of death, the Final Color, and it doesn't add anything to the garden palette.  And winter?  I just went out to take a picture of the brown-headed remnants of my alliums and here, in early September, I could find a few remaining allium stems laying on the ground, marking the resting spot of the subterranean bulbs, but there is nothing left of the globes to be picturesque or even present when the snow falls.  Perhaps the Kansas wind has swept them away already.

Mrs. Mulleskom, who is evidently an accomplished gardener and who blogs here, quotes Hans Langeveld of Longfield Gardens as saying "the seed heads (of alliums) are every bit as cool as the flower."   Maybe, just maybe, I'll agree that they are "cool" to myself and to my fellow gardening nerds, but if they're a three-season garden stalwart, then I'm a garden toad.

Sedum Smorgasbord Served

ProfessorRoush, why do you grow sedums as an edging plant?

Because, my Dear, they are drought-resistant and make nice tidy foliage clumps and they have disease free foliage and they bloom brightest and best after the roses are tired and also because the deer leave them alone.

But ProfessorRoush, why then have you clipped off the blooms on all your sedums this late in the season?

Because, as you so often make me aware, Mrs. ProfessorRoush, I was wrong.  Again.  I didn't clip them, the deer ate them.  The deer love them.  Indeed, if you search the Internet or books, there will be any number of websites that list sedum as a deer-resistant plant (including a pamphlet from a local gardening store that I based my decision on), but many of those were written by evil gnomes and are dead wrong.  As usual, I should have looked to the Universities of this fine land for definitive information.  Rutger's University has a very well laid-out webpage that lists sedum as "occasionally severely damaged."  North Carolina State Extension has a nice pamphlet as well, listing them as "occasionally damaged".   As a Extension Master Gardener, I should have known better than to trust a non-research-based source.  I am expecting a hit squad of Mossy Oak®-camouflaged EMG's to show up at my door at any minute, demanding my trowel, Felco's and my EMG name badge.

I don't wish to be full of sour grapes, but what the heck kind of a term is "deer-resistant" anyway?   I understand the evolutionary advantages for Lamb's Ear, for example, to have developed a fuzzy surface that is distasteful to deer, but the plants don't really resist the deer, the deer just resist eating certain plants. Until, in the midst of a drought, they're hungry.  After that, Watch Out, Nellie, because the stupid large furry rats won't even leave the junipers alone. 

Lesson learned.  By edging a nice rose bed with 'Matrona' (Sedum telephinum) divisions, I have merely set out a smorgasbord of sweetly-flavored succulents during a drought.  HEY THERE!  DEER!  LOOK OVER HERE!  Don't bother with all that tall dry grass, come get these velvet-lip-wetting candy treats I've set out for you.  And please, nibble on the roses on your way through, pretty please?   To quote Charlie Brown, "Good Grief!"

See, This Is Why...

This is why I encourage the growth of the Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) in my garden. Yes, the so-called "Prickly Poppy" or "Crested PricklyPoppy" is an invading weed in dry, barren soil, but it certainly catches the eye.  Look at those white petals, the cleanest perfect white ever created, and made out of the finest parchment.  Experience the cloud of yellow stamens floating above the petals like the center of the sun.  Notice the purple cross (stigma) at the center of the bloom, a royal receptacle waiting to collect the golden pollen.  And look at the attendant honeybees in the pictures on this page.  In that overall shot of the whole plant, every single open bloom has a bee in it.  Count them.  Imagine a garden bed full of white poppies and honeybees.


On the recent day that I took them, just past the worst heat of the hottest summer on record, nothing else was blooming in such perfect form in my garden.  Nothing else was even close. There were a few decrepit drought survivors trying to bloom, but they played second fiddle to this beauty.  I know that I've written a tribute to this plant before, but witness again an opportunistic plant  that deserves more than to be called "just another weed."

Perfect blooms in the heat of summer? Healthy blueish foliage during a drought? No pests? Nectar source for bees?  Xeriscape worthy?  Someone (maybe me?) should spend half a lifetime in a worthwhile manner trying to breed these weeds into a decent and refined garden plant.  If this plant lost a few prickles and maybe gained some foliage density, gardeners would fall all over themselves trying to buy it.  Imagine the possibilities if it could be developed with some color variety or variegated foliage.  Why, it might even make the cover of Fine Gardening.  Now that would be something.

Passed Along Pleasures

It's always a great joy when somebody gifts you a plant or when you can pass along a favorite plant to a friend.  Witness "Greggo's Sedum", a gift from Greggo when he visited my garden a few weeks back.  In the midst of drought, with everything fighting for survival, there could be no more useful gift than a succulent, even if it is one purloined from a distant garden during the travels of a friend. 

Greggo, as you can see, the sedum clippings survived, rooted, and are even getting ready to flower.  It's somewhat sad to be fearful about the drought resistance of a succulent, but I think I'll hold off planting it out into the garden for awhile until I'm sure it can survive the drought.  I don't want to risk this memory of friendship, any more than I would risk the divisions of sedums from my maternal grandmother that have grown for years in my garden.

Almost two decades ago, in the infancy of my gardening education, I came across a delightful book named Passalong Plants, authored by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1993.  As the title suggests, Passalong Plants is a descriptive collection of heirloom plants that are often gifted from gardener to gardener, mother to daughter or father to son in the gardens of the South. It's about old plants and old friends, varieties that aren't often found at nursery centers, but which can anchor a regional garden because they've survived the climate of time.  These beautiful plants are all described in, as the foreword by Allen Lacy states, "a distinctive voice, folksier and colloquial and playful."  If you can find a copy, it is one of the most delightful reads of "modern" gardening literature.  Along the way, amidst the humor and joy of gardening in the words, you'll learn about plants that need to be found for your own garden, about the delightful stories of their provenance and value to the gardeners who grow them, and you'll be reminded of all the wonderful plants you already have that represent friends and family in your own garden. 

Yellow Border

I had promised, long ago, to portray the front of my home, and in the next week or so, I'll attempt a couple of posts to do just that, starting today with my "yellow border", the northwest corner of the house, which hides the unavoidable garage behind a yellow and green progressive hodgepodge.

I didn't consciously set out to create a yellow border, I intended for a mix of yellow and sky-blue, but my timing happens to be entirely off regarding the mixing of the colors.  That, and the blue plants tend to die, while their yellow counterparts seem to keep on keeping on.  The sunny fate of this portion of the garden was sealed a few years ago with my planting of Oriental lily 'Yellow Dream' on a whim.  A few smallish bulbs,and now, two years later, I've got four clumps of enormous fragrant lilies who demand to be both seen and heard.  

Early in the spring, the light blue of Scilla and Puschkinia are visible, but they soon fade as the cheery faces of daffodils take over and the yellow begins.  Alongside and in front of the yellow-tipped Thuja orientalis ‘Sunkist’, the daylilies and lilies and Black-eyed Susans form in long succession, 'Happy Returns' and 'Stella de Oro' followed by more regal daylilies and the yellow buttons of Centaurea macrocephala.  We reach a climax of yellow upon yellow now, at the end of June, as 'Yellow Dream' oriental lilies take center stage.  I shouldn't complain, for they are beautiful, fragrant, and healthy, a triple play of floral excellent.

The occasional blue of Clematis 'Romona' blooming on the brick wall, a blue Babtista reaching stiffly skyward, and a blue Clematis integrifolia have their brief moment, but they are drowned out by the endless yellow.  Even daylily 'Beautiful Edging', pictured at the right, while not strictly yellow, fulfills the daylily curse of appearing as all yellow from a few feet away.   In the hot sun, the pink edges never appear at all, let alone long enough to notice. 

I know it's not Sissinghurst's White Garden, but it is still pretty satisfying to little unknown me.  Right now, this year, this part of the garden is my shining accidental triumph, a yellow bright spot to reflect back the Kansas sun.  If you can't beat the heat,  at least you can join it.

Lavender Lessons

"There’s flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun,
And with him rises weeping; thes are flower
Of middle summer, and I thek they are given

To men of middle age."

William Shakespeare The Winter’s Tale, iv.4

There are not many of these flowers given to THIS man of middle age, but I do GROW some of them.  I don't rightly know of all the places on the six habitable continents where lavender may grow well, but the Kansas sunshine and heat certainly don't hurt its survival prospects here. 

  

I did have some trouble, back in my Zone 5B years, wintering lavender through to Spring, but those troubles seem to be gone now that I've been magically transported, garden and gardener, into Zone 6.  I grow several varieties as a sort of short hedge along a rock wall in a very exposed and wind-swept area, and I've got a couple of other bunches of lavender in my outer garden beds. I am a big lavender fan, but I am probably a poor second next to the butterflies pictured here, in my admiration for it.  I depend on it, after all, for luxury and indulgence, but not for my sustenance.

The majority of my soil is clay, and I was skeptical about growing lavender here since it is supposed to like well-drained, sandy or gravelly soils.  What I believe I have learned from growing it here in Kansas, is that it may not require good drainage if the soil doesn't get wet enough or stay wet long enough to be a bother.  Certainly the soil is solid clay next to the rock wall but it does have decent drainage and anyway, we haven't had enough rain to wet your whistle, let alone drown lavender.

I unfortunately haven't keep track of the cultivars along the wall.  Ten cultivars have lived or died or been divided into a hedge that now appears to be composed of three.  In flat areas of my garden, many of the lavenders I've planted have died out, but the lavender pictured in such blue splendor at the bottom of this blog grows in a clay bed with little drainage and it is the best bloomer of all of its cousins this summer.  I don't know its name either, because its identity was lost when I lost my notes of new plantings last year.  It may, however, be L. intermedia 'Grosso', a memory supported by the vivid color and prolific bloom.  I believe that most of the other survivors in my garden are L.augustifolia cultivars as those always seemed more hardy.

So, Kansans, try some lavender.  Keep it dry and treasure it well. The return in flittering beauty alone makes the effort worthwhile.

Clematis Interruptus



'Guernsey Cream'

If you happen to be waiting for the roses to come back onto my blog, you should indeed have faith for their return, but at present, the cooler weather has halted most of my roses in bud stage.  'Marie Bugnet' is my sole rose with most of her beauty now exposed to the world.  Poor 'Harison's Yellow' shows some bright yellow flowers, but it is still spotty and underwhelming at present.  Almost every other established bush was aroused by the warm March weather and has opened one or two buds as teasers, but the climax of the season now seems to be a little bit farther into the future than I recently anticipated.  Wait a minute? Beauty exposed? Arousal?  Climax?  Could it be that I'm a little too excited about this upcoming rose season?

In the meantime, just so that all my readers know that I occasionally grow something besides roses, allow me to present the early-blooming clematis 'Guernsey Cream', which currently brightens the path near my front door.  'Guernsey Cream' is a single clematis, with creamy white 5-inch wide blossoms and anthers, and oh, what a show it is putting on right now!  Mine is a young plant, only in it's 2nd full season and never yet pruned, although 'Guernsey Cream' belongs to pruning group 2 and should be pruned lightly only after flowering anyway.  I planted 'Guernsey Cream'  near bright scarlet clematis 'Rebecca', and although both are on separate trellises now, I hope to have them intermingle someday into a stunning display, flush with red and white early in the season and again late in August.

Clematis montana rubens 04/08/12

Clematis (Clematuses? Clemati?) are a smidgen difficult for me to grow well in Kansas (no surprise there), because of the hot summer sun and the ripping winds.  'Guernsey Cream' and 'Rebecca' are up against a wall near a house corner in my front bed, protected from two directions from wind and from the western hot afternoon sun.  I also grow, for those who are interested, blue 'Romona' and white 'Alabast'  against other house walls with north and east exposures respectively, Clematis montana rubens (left) in a more exposed position but against a low stone wall, and 'Jackmanii', a second 'Romona', and Clematis paniculata out in the open unshaded spaces of my garden.  Well those, and a couple of Clematis integrifolia in my front beds who constantly threaten to seed themselves to the western horizon.  The latter seem almost a little too well adapted to Kansas, and I don't recommend their drooping faces for most gardens.  Please note, however, that assessment hasn't stopped me from potting up and spreading their bounty to other unsuspecting local gardeners (insert evil Professor grin here).  Kansas misery loves company.

Thank you, Milady

Sorry everyone, I've been in a bit of a posting funk this past week, probably as a result of the lack of green vistas or other garden stimulation to get me moving.
 

'Milady Greensleeves'

Thankfully, I was momentarily rescued last evening by an email from a daylily hybridizer/AHS volunter asking to use my 'Final Touch' daylily picture to serve as the picture of that particular cultivar for the online AHS database.  I got a little excited about the thought that, however anonymous and unanticipated, I am able to make a contribution to the database.  That got me to looking at my other daylily pictures from last season, which led further to this post.

A standout daylily picture that caught my eye this morning was that of 'Milady Greensleeves'.  I captured 'Milady' on the 3rd of July, just at the beginning of our summer heat wave.  She is a delicate but large blossom, 7 inches in diameter, and fragrant as a rose.  I love the gradation of the green throat morphing into yellow and leading to the pastel lavender petals, marred in this picture only by the orange pollen staining the top petal. 'Milady' is a dormant midseason daylily, and despite her size is supposed to be only a diploid.  Hybridized by Lambert in 1978, I think she displays her color better on cloudy days here in the Flint Hills, where a harsh mid-day sun will bleach her out in minutes.

It interests me that I have used a number of pictures of daylilies from this 2011 group, but that until now this picture had escaped my notice.  Am I so hungry for color and the start of the new garden season that I've widened my criteria of beauty?  Or did I just get overwhelmed last year in the midst of all the blooms and photos and miss this delicate prize?

Unknown Yellow Daylily

Regardless, if there was ever a perfect yellow daylily, it is pictured at the left, another forgotten photo that I ran across.  This one is an unknown for me, but the soft yellow hue and perfect form has no peer in my garden.  Those frilly petals and ribbed sepals rival the finest ladies lingerie, I think.

 Gracious, what am I thinking about?  I most definitely must need some warm weather, sunshine, and flowers to work off my pent-up winter energy.  For now, still in the grip of January, a cold shower and dreams of daylilies will just have to do.

Christmas Cactuses (or is it Cacti?)

I feel that I must confess.  I'm a crazy collecting Christmas Cactus closet connoisseur. (Yes, I also have a fondness for alliteration).  I can't help but purchase any new color of Christmas cactus I run across.  There surely must be some twelve-step program to help me.  Hi, I'm ProfessorRoush and I am a Christmas Cactus addict....

There is, in my estimation, no easier houseplant to grow than the Schlumbergera sp. epiphytes, otherwise known as Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Crab Cactuses (Cacti?). I should reveal that at one time I grew over 30 orchids, 15 Christmas Cacti, a handful of African Violets, and some assorted other houseplants.  When we went away for Christmas one year, somehow the heat for the house got turned off and upon our return one week later, I found one frozen upstairs toilet that had to be replaced and a whole bunch of dead orchids and violets.  The supposedly tropical Christmas Cacti survived somehow.  Or maybe it wasn't such a miracle since one plant hunter has described collecting specimens in areas of overnight temperatures down to 25F.  I've got one fuchsia Christmas Cactus that's been alive for 20 years and has produced umpteen offspring.  How many other houseplants do you grow that can claim such longevity in the face of the desert-like house conditions and the poor care of a typical homeowner?

Most of the year, they sit there in my windows, dark green and healthy, needing water only about every other week and a repotting in organic matrix every third year or so.  But now, around Christmas, they bloom forth to add to the colorful holiday.  I know there are lots of instructions available for bringing them into bloom by exposure to cold nights and decreasing photoperiods, but mine are right on schedule this year, aided only by the decreasing light level of the insulated windows they sit next to.  They're even quicker to bloom if you've got them in an old house with single-pane old-style windows.  If you have to resort to trying to force buds, flower buds will form reliably by providing 16 hours of darkness daily for 8 days at 61F temperature. 

I've seen no insect predators on the plants and the biggest danger to their survival is by overwatering them;  remember that these are succulents and treat them as such.  An overwatered Christmas Cactus will shrivel up and become limp, which just encourages more watering by the unwary, killing the plant.  Most sources say to keep them away from strong light sources such as South-facing windows, but yet mine seemed to thrive this Summer outside, placed in a corner of the house where they got full Eastern and Southern sun exposure from sunrise through about 1:00 p.m. 

The easy reproduction by rooting stems of Christmas Cactus makes me look like a genius to the friends who have benefited from the divisions I've given away.  To propagate them, twist off pieces of stems one to three segments long and then allow them to dry for 3-4 days to allow formation of a callus at the broken end.  Planted into a suitable humus-rich medium, they'll usually then root quickly in warm environments.

Native to the moist coastal mountain forests of south-eastern Brazil, Schlumbergera are leafless epiphytes with segmented green stems.  The tubular downward-facing flowers, composed of 40 or so petals that are actually "tepals", are adapted for pollination by hummingbirds, although my Christmas Cacti won't ever benefit from the arrangement here in Kansas.  You can find named cultivars, but typically all the cacti we ever see for sale locally will be labeled only by color.  The white Christmas Cactus above is, however, named "White Christmas", and I think the true red one at the left may have been "Kris Kringle".  But, whatever their names, at this time of year when everything outside is bleak, brown and drab in Kansas, I welcome the color they bring to the interior of my house.  And at least I can say that I'm able to keep a houseplant alive. 

By the way, according to the dictionaries I can find, either "Cacti" or "Cactuses" is the correct plural.  Evidently, for once, we're allowed to choose.