Sucker for Stripes

At any given garden store, there are two plant characteristics that will nearly always guarantee a sale to me.  The first is any flower that approaches the sky blue pigment characteristic of the Blue Himalayan Poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia).  The second is nearly any red and white striped flower.  I'm a complete sucker for all of them, particularly roses, whether it's 'Fourth of July', 'Rosa Mundi', 'Scentimental', or one of a hundred others.  Modern breeders have caught on and increased the numbers of these beauties recently so other gardeners must be bitten by the bug as well.

One of my favorite roses has long been the well-known Bourbon 'Variegata di Bologna'.  A consistent performer here in my Zone 5B garden, 'Variegata di Bologna' often reblooms in the Fall, but I really don't care because the Spring bloom alone is enough to carry me through a year.  Probably the most scented rose in my garden, this beauty has a nice consistent vase-like shape. It grows to about 6 feet during a season and has a little winter tip-kill back to about 4 feet, but it doesn't need special winter protection here in Kansas.

Last year I added a particularly beautiful striped herbaceous peony, 'Pink Spritzer' to my garden. I saw the famous Roy Klehm give a lecture at the National Arboretum during a trip to Washington D.C. two years ago and I had picked out 'Pink Spritzer' as one of the "must-have" additions during the lecture.  Subsequently, I ordered it straight from Klehm's own nursery, Song Sparrow Farm (http://www.songsparrow.com/), and planted it during the Fall as suggested.  This year, it gave me the first blooms, an unusual and beautiful single peony of red and white and a little green that makes a splash in the front of my peony bed.  Song Sparrow Farm doesn't offer it online right now, so if you can find one and plant it, guard it carefully.  Gardeners are gentle folk but they aren't above the sin of envy and a little pilferage in the pursuit of beauty.

93; Not Fahrenheit

Yesterday afternoon we hit 93 here in the Flint Hills; that is, a 93 MPH sustained wind gust.  I've often lamented the windy nature of Kansas in the past and I've seen 70MPH sustained winds, but I don't know if I've ever seen a 93MPH sustained gust.

The occasion was a summer storm initiated by a cold front moving in to break our month-long streak 100+F weather, and since I was in a meeting in the interior of a very large K-State building, I missed it entirely.  I emerged to see the end of a fabulous but short rainstorm that brought about one inch of rain to break our month-long drought, to the site of limbs down over the KSU campus, and to a phone message from Mrs. Professorroush that the power was out at home. 

On the bright side, my garden survived the wind intact.  I've spent some time over the past few years learning how to prevent wind damage to the structures in my garden and it has paid off.  That knowledge was hard-won and primarily consists of over engineering structures in my garden to resist an atomic blast, to trimming trees and shrubs to encourage compact form, and to frequent prayer during storms.  I was most pleased to see the several wire towers for vining plants (honeysuckle, Sweet Autumn clematis, bittersweet) in my garden came through without a dent.  Before reinforcing them this spring, a gale like this would have left them looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  And my 2 year old, handmade/homemade octagonal gazebo is still standing.  During its construction, I knew better than to use a flimsy commercial kit, lest I someday have to search for the remains of the gazebo in Missouri, so it's anchored with 8 four X four posts that are cemented in the ground and so far, it's survived the worst of the Kansas weather.

My minor casualties consisted of a few splayed ornamental grasses (Panicum virgatum ‘Prairie Sky’ seems to be the worst of these), a snapped off Caryopteris 'Blue Mist',   and a broken-off rose, Griff's Red, that was down to a single cane and had been struggling anyway.  With a little luck, the only permanent damage was the Griff's Red loss and I tried to minimize that impact by planting some stem cuttings from the cane.  Time will tell.

The Satisfying Sound of Crabgrass

I have a confession to make to all my readers and to the Higher Powers of gardening.  I absolutely love the sound of crabgrass.  "Wait, you say, what do you mean? Crabgrass doesn't have a sound!"  Of course it does, you silly gardener.  It simply makes the most delicious scrunching sound imaginable when I rip it out of the hot dry ground at this time of year.  It's really one of the most joyful sounds I know.

We seem to be fully in the midst of a crabgrass epidemic this year in the Flint Hills.  The cool wet spring followed now by the usual hot and dry July and August weather has tufts of crabgrass forming everywhere in my garden beds.  I'm resigned to a little crabgrass now and then, but this year the clumps seem to be destined for world domination.  The crabgrass most prevalent in my garden seems to be Digitaria sanguinalis, also known as hairy crabgrass, if I've got it identified correctly.  Some sources list it as a native grass in the United States, while the Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses website (http://www.kswildflower.org/) tells me that it was introduced from Europe and is now naturalized.  It spreads and re-roots along the culm (stem) nodes, almost growing fast enough for gardeners to see the expansion as we watch, starting out as a single star-shaped grass clump and then moving on to cover full beds in the span of a few days. It's pretty useless as a forage grass, although apparently the seeds are eaten by wild turkey and some songbirds. Regardless of its value to wildlife, though, in my garden, it's about as welcome as Darth Vader.

Use "The Force."  Feel AND Hear the satisfaction as you rip out that crabgrass.

Sentimental Plant Names

Rosa 'Prairie Star'

As a plant-collecting gardener, I often run across and purchase plants whose name has some connection with people or places in my life.  For instance, years ago we participated, with our neighbors, in naming the newly-created road we now live on.  Since we live in the Kansas prairie where yearly burning of pasture is a way of life, there was some sentiment for naming the road "Prairie Fire," but ultimately none of us wanted to be on the phone to the fire department shouting "there's a prairie fire out of control on Prairie Fire!" and so we chose to name it Prairie Star Drive.  Come to find out, Dr. Griffith Buck of Iowa State had bred and introduced in 1975 a rose named 'Prairie Star', so I, of course, purchased and planted the rose at home and it's become one of my favorites.  'Prairie Star', a fully-double light pink rose, is perfectly cane-hardy without winter protection and disease-resistant without spraying here in Kansas and it blooms continually through the warm seasons. 

Phlox paniculata 'David'

Another happy accident has been the 'David' phlox (Phlox paniculata ‘David’) that I purchased only for the reason that I have a son of that name.  'David' is a pure white phlox with light green foliage that grows well and blooms spectacularly for about 6 weeks in my climate.  It has the added benefit of being a little rampant in my garden, self-seeding true to form in a number of places it has found to its liking, and it is quite pleasantly fragrant. Most of the white blobs that appear in my landscape in July and August are, on close examination, either a cloned 'David' or self-seeded version. It has only a single drawback, a tendency to mildew in moist years as this year has been, but I use it as a mildew indicator plant and spray when the lower leaves turn a bit grey and the mildew is thus easily controlled.    

Of course, not all sentimental experiments turn out nearly so well.  I've had a couple of attempts to grow a namesake for my wife, the white hybrid musk rose 'Kathleen', but alas, either the rose is not hardy enough in my Zone 5 climate or perhaps it detects that its namesake won't tolerate any competition for affection in my garden and it commits horticultural self-suicide.

Given human nature, I suspect that other gardeners also have a weakness for familarly-named plants.  So what's in your garden?