2023 Manhattan EMG Garden Tour

I'm not sure, in these days of 5G cellular and massive bandwidth, whether anyone needs the warning anymore, but I suppose there are those still out there on 26K modems, so Warning:  picture heavy!  Click on the individual pictures if you want to see them in more glory then these small blog photos!

Yesterday, June 10th, was our annual Manhattan Area Garden Tour, and Thursday, June 8th was the "pretour" for the EMGs, so ProfessorRoush was on picture duty.  I took about 290 pictures on Thursday evening and over 600 hundred on the Tour and kept 836 for the homeowners and EMG's to view.  A handful are here for your enjoyment.   Each garden on the Tour gets a commemorative stone like the one above. I'll bet, however, that unlike this homeowner most of you don't think about painting stones to look like ladybugs in your gardens!   The rain prior to the Tour was a little tough on the flowers, but this 'Peach Drift' seemed to take it in stride.

This year's Tour was cloudy and took place after a hard rain the night before, while the pretour was pre-rain and sunny, which made for some gloomy tour photos that were challenging.   The photo above, my favorite of the entire set, was taken at the Thursday pretour, and the evening light through the redbuds was a happy accident which I tried my best to recreate on Saturday.   It's just impossible, however, to follow good photography principles when the light doesn't cooperate (tour photo at right).   This pair, taken of the same area in different light, is quite illustrative of the importance of good filtered light in photography.

The Garden Tour had the usual distribution of features and focal points around each garden.  One house had both a running water feature and a koi pond.   The artificial heron at this water feature looks at home in the environment but is perpetually disappointed at the lack of prey in this short waterfall.

I always make sure I get photographs of the views through garden gates and at entrances to gardens.   The gates that lead us into the garden are often as beautiful as what lies beyond them, and they often reflect the character of the garden to come.

A couple of houses had deep enough features to support water lilies, but on the actually cloudy day of the tour, it was difficult to find one blooming.  I struggled just for you, however, taking multiple exposures to grab this photo for your enjoyment.

There's always a potting bench here and there among the houses, and this Tour featured two of them tucked away from sight.   This one is my favorite of the two, although it's a little too tidied up to be believable among the garden!

The garden containing the potting bench above really needed it, however, since it contained a vast multitude of container plants in a shady sitting area.  I loved the garden but I'm glad I'm not the one who has to keep all the containers watered there, containers including wall pots and window pots and porch containers and hanging pots.

Live fauna were lacking on this year's Tour, the cloudy and cooler weather keeping bees and flies and butterflies all suppressed.  In the pretour sunny evening I was able, however, to catch this swallowtail indulging in a large planting of milkweed.  He left me a little frustrated even then because he wouldn't climb up to the top of a bloom but kept hanging off the bottom.

Garden tours are always learning events as well, and at this one I learned that my iPhone 13 can identify almost any plant and completely free of charge.  I overheard a conversation between a gardener and a visitor complaining that his ID app needed an expensive upgrade and so my world just became a lot easier.  If you haven't discovered it, take a picture, like the one at the right, and then open it in Photos.  At the bottom, you'll see an information icon "i".   Click on the "i" and it gives information about the photo, but it also has a link to "Look Up--Plant" which correctly identifies this picture as "Veronica". 

Some gardeners, as always, are really good a creating vignettes and themes in their gardens.  Bunnies and Beatrix Potter held sway in the garden containing this bench.

I finished off, as always this year, at the K-State Gardens where plants and expensive bronze statues mix as one perfect unit to show off the things that grow best in Kansas, like Mr. Crane here in the fake swamp with milkweed beside it.   Yesterday, my thought here was that if I survive the Apocalypse, be it zombie- or diety-driven, I'm coming here soon after to make sure these bronze statues have a good home and are well cared for, especially the "Rose Girl" statue who graces the entrance to the rose garden and who would make a good companion to the cement maidens in my own garden.

I bid you, at the end of this long post, adieu, until we meet again, with Old Glory as it proudly flew over one of the gardens yesterday, gardens and gardeners alike expressing their freedom of expression and the beauty of creation on the 2023 Extension Master Gardener's Manhattan Area Garden Tour. 

Purple Poppy Pain?

The little devilish side of ProfessorRoush sometimes enjoys asking the uncomfortable questions, just to watch the answer-maker squirm a little, to make them question themselves.   I'm not at all above playing devil's advocate either, espousing opinions with which I don't agree, just, once more, to draw out that philosophical moment of realization.

So I ask today, how many of you would give up the beauty of a nice stand of Purple Poppy Mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) in order to attain that perfect thick sheen of uninterrupted blue-grass of fescue that seems to be the suburban ideal?  Purple Poppy Mallow is a sprawling wildflower in my lawn, a smothering thug which makes it hard for the buffalograss to truly compete with it for light and water, but one which blooms in drought and in rain, reliably opening to sunshine and shutting down at night.   Yes, many, myself included, weed out the dandelions and thistles from our lawns, and some even fight a continual battle against clover, and many readers here would be horrified at the stand of Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius) that I'm letting grow in the "rain gardens" of taller grass in the side yards, but I believe we should and would all draw the line at purple mallow.  

One of the benefits of simply mowing the prairie grass and not starting a "lawn" when we built our house is that I've always had a long section of Purple Poppy Mallow (left) near the driveway, which is slowly expanding across the cut lawn and has jumped this year into adjacent areas.  I suppose I'm selecting for it by mowing high, and this year I'm mowing higher than ever with my new lawnmower.   Right or wrong, my old lawnmower, set at 4 inches, mowed a lot lower than the new one at 4 inches, and I'm taking advantage of the high cut to conserve moisture and to try to help the buffalograss to spread.   The mallow seems to like being mowed high as well, the sprawling or "reclining" stems surviving each mowing.

Despite the almost-complete perfection of Mrs. ProfessorRoush as a spouse, she does lack in her environmental awareness and has in the past complained about the mallow as a weed in her vision of lawn perfection.   We'll see this year if she notices as the Purple Poppy Mallow achieves June dominance in my blooming landscape.   Although she doesn't or rarely gardens, she's not above lodging complaints with the Gardener-In-Residence if she believes something doesn't measure up to her standards.

Are you squirming at the site of the mallow stand, pictured above?  Feeling a contentment that the world is still okay, or having a little discomfort or pain?   To Purple Poppy Mallow or not, that is the question!

Blush Hip

'Blush Hip'

Friends, ProfessorRoush had every intention of running another beauty pageant this week, perhaps one among red roses or irises or peonies, but I'm a bit addled by all the roses blooming and wanted to show you a surprise standout this year.  Most years I would keep her hidden in a closet, tending the stove or the boiler, but this year 'Blush Hip' is the debutante of the ball, Cinderella with her slipper.

'Blush Hip'

'Blush Hip' is an old Alba that's been growing and slowly dying in my garden for 20 years.  She's a small lass for me, never over 3 feet tall, and since she is sited next to a taller 'Therese Bugnet', she has always struggled for sunlight.   She has also been out-competed by an invasive Woolly Verbena (Verbena stricta) that grew up in her center and tried to smother her.  The verbena has roots that grow up to 12 feet down and it reaches 5 feet tall so it  competes for water and light and nutrients and I have a devil of a time exterminating it where it chooses to grow in the best of circumstances.   I pull it and pull it and it just comes back from those deep roots, and glyphosate or 2-4-D is not an option in the middle of a valued rose.  I wage a constant battle on behalf of this rose and last year I doubled my verbena-cidal efforts in an attempt to rejuvenate 'Blush Hip' and ensure her survival.

'Blush Hip'

Thankfully, it seems I'm winning at present because 'Blush Hip' has responded and bloomed its heart out this spring with only a small clump of verbena still hanging on.  'Blush Hip' deserves the victory, for she is a rare Old Garden Rose of unknown provenance.  She was known to exist before 1834, but introduced in Australia as 'Blush Hip' 1864.  Her flower is as described and as pictured, nicely double and light pink with a strong fragrance, but both helpmefind.com/rose and Peter Beales in his Classic Roses describes her as a 6-10 foot tall rose, so either I was sold a pig-in-a-poke or she simply doesn't like the Kansas environment.   She is reliably winter-hardy here and free of disease, so I'll take what I have, especially when she blooms like she is this year.   Despite her name, however, she doesn't form seed hips, just the "hips" or "buds" of flowers.   My Botanica's Pocket Roses, itself a misnamed 1007 page monstrosity that doesn't fit in any pocket, says that many rosarians describe her as the best of the Alba roses.   

'Leda'

I can't agree, however, with "many rosarians", if indeed 'Blush Hip' is what I have, for although the flowers are pretty, there's just something I'm not crazy about with the color of the "blush", the pink having a blueish tinge that leaves me cold.  Or maybe I just like my pink on the edges rather than in the center.  I much prefer the blooms of  her near neighbor, 'Leda', 3 doors down, another Alba blooming well this year, although I've also had my frustrations with 'Leda', truth be told.  Wait two minutes too long in bright sunlight and those ruby-edges fade to white and she's just a gangly white double rose.   Or catch her after a rain or a heavy dew and the edges of the petals are already browning and she inspires no love at all.  But, once in a moon, if you catch 'Leda' blooming just at the right moment, usually a newly-opened bud at mid-morning when its not yet too hot and it hasn't rained and you're very lucky, then she has no equal.   Like the jewel pictured here.   Beautiful, but one of only two or three on a bush with hundreds of faded blossoms present at the moment this was taken.

Beauty Pageants

'Marie Bugnet'

ProfessorRoush, at the beginning of a new gardening year, believes he has hit on a new theme that will at least temporarily increase his post frequency and simultaneously provide you with fitting flower pornography to fill your fancy.  As things bloom, I am simply going to run a series of beauty pageants of each grouping, leaving you to judge the winners for yourselves.  I'm optimistic that minstrels will indubitably hereafter sing songs of this season and look back on 2023 as, "The Year of the GardenMusings Beauty Pageants." 

'Marie Bugnet'

This week, as a start, we'll set aside any accusations of color bias and go with a simple "White Rugosa Pageant."   So, you get to look, you get to salivate, and you get to choose;  which one is the "Miss Gardening Universe" of the years' white Hybrid Rugosas?

'Blanc Double de Coubert'

First up this year is, as always, 'Marie Bugnet', she of shy nature and short form, blooming first for me in the annual garden race, nearly 2 weeks ago.  Marie struggles annually a bit, lacking vigor but persistent nonetheless, and I think she's doing better now that I'm pampering her with a little extra water and care each year.  She holds perfect white blooms without a spot of pink or brown on healthy foliage.  Is she your choice to win the double crown this year, the race to be the first to bloom AND the most beautiful?   Just look at that delicate center above, golden pistils held in perfect pristine order surrounded by stately stamens. 

'Blanc Double de Coubert'

Marie was followed quickly a week later by my 'Blanc Double de Coubert', a rather stocky gal of medium height, as round as she is tall.  Blanc has obviously bloomed out of her bloomers, as you can see from all the petals on the ground, although there are plenty of bountiful flowers left to fall.   Gertrude Jekyll, as I've noted before, thought Blanc was the whitest rose in existence and I won't quibble over that title when this rose is blessed by sunshine and heat as she blooms.  Sadly, a little rain and she turns from the purest virginal bride to the browned wilting and damaged unfortunate that fate decrees, turned out and soiled by the fickle weather of spring.  I'm a little biased, but isn't the pistil area in Blanc a little messier than Marie's?   And what a mess she leaves on the ground!

'Sir Thomas Lipton'

Tall and stately 'Sir Thomas Lipton' has recently joined the ball, the perfectly white blooms of the 123-year-old gentleman (introduced to commerce by Conard-Pyle in 1900) held higher than my head atop the lean and thorny canes.   I like Sir Thomas more than most rose aficionados seem to (particularly Suzanne Verrier who called him "ungraceful...with the nastiest thorns imaginable"), but I think he probably does better in my arid Zone 5 climate than elsewhere in the US.   As a gentleman, he perhaps shouldn't be part of the pageant, but I'll choose not, in this moment, to be sexist and deny him an equal chance for pageant glory.  After all, a rose is a rose and their flowers contain both male and female organs, whatever gendered moniker we chose to hang on them.

'Sir Thomas Lipton'

Those are your contestants for the week.   Hybrid Rugosa 'Polareis' has started a few meager blooms but the night chill keeps them more pink than white, so I'm leaving her out.  And some of the Pavement roses that are near-whites are blooming, but I'm holding them for inclusion in a Pavement Rose Pageant.  Of the three presented here, which is your choice, my gardening friend?  Will you stand against the opinions of well-known garden writers and go with 'Marie Bugnet'?  Disdain the Canadian-born and stick with 'Sir Thomas Lipton'?   Or follow the herd supporting the strumpet, 'Blanc Double de Coubert'?