Hydrangea Heaven

Kansas gardens are living proof that not all hydrangeas are created equal.  I have always been a miserable failure at growing the more common blue or pink Hydrangea macrophylla, countless numbers of which I have purchased, watered, fertilized, protected, cursed and eventually mourned over.  My experiences with the more cold- and drought-resistant panicled hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata) have been much more promising, however.  Here in the dry sunny Flint Hills, these large shrubs are dependable focal points for the August garden.

 

 

 

'Limelight'

Without a doubt, the most floriferous display in my garden this week is 'Limelight' a fabulous panicled hydrangea that dominates its corner of the garden.  'Limelight' is an introduction from Holland patented in 2002, and it can make an enormous eight foot tall deciduous shrub in the garden, although mine seems to have maxed out at approximately 5 foot tall and wide.  The drought of the past two years seems to have worked in my favor this year, bringing the plant into a display that surpasses any other year.  'Limelight' grows in full sun and on an exposed site for me, completely unprotected from the Kansas climate, and it is cold-hardy to the tips.



'Limelight' Hydrangea

Some of the cone-shaped flower panicles of 'Limelight' are almost a foot long and 6 inches wide. They start out light lime-green and then fade to white and finally gain some pink tones in the fall, and the foliage seems to be resistant to insect and fungal damage here, although the leaves occasionally get a little crisped on the edges by the hot July and August sun.  I only regret that there is only a negligible fragrance and that the shrub is seemingly sterile in its environment, unattractive to bees and other valuable garden residents.

'Pink Diamond'

I grow several other panicled hydrangeas.  'Pink Diamond', pictured to the left and below, was labeled at purchase as a Hydrangea microphylla, but I can't find H. microphylla as a recognized species and online sources list it as H. paniculata.  'Pink Diamond' also provides a good floral display, and individual flowers turn pink quickly at the base of the panicles.  My 'Pink Diamond' shrub is about the same size overall as 'Limelight', and it sits at the opposite end of the same bed, forming white bookends at this time of the year for the other plants in the rest of the bed.

'Pink Diamond'

'Vanilla Strawberry'

H. paniculata 'Vanilla Strawberry' grows almost in the center of the same bed, and this has a much more subtle display than its show-off cousins.  At maturity, it is around four feet tall and wide, a little smaller than the H. paniculata cultivars, perhaps because it grows in the shadow of a towering  'Sweet Autumn Clematis' (seen to the left of the picture below) that also insists on trying to colonize everything within it's reach.  A note of caution is in order about the H. paniculata's:  Wikipedia states that hydrangeas are moderately toxic if eaten, with all parts of the plant containing cyanogenic glycosides.  Human beings sometimes try to smoke H. paniculata leaves, an often fatal action due to cyanide inhalation.  So, kids, don't smoke hydrangeas.

'Vanilla Strawberry' covered by C. paniculata

Although I've previously neglected to mention the garden usefulness of H. paniculata and other hardy hydrangeas as stalwart shrubs in Kansas, I would never leave them out of my next garden.  Right now, I've got high hopes for a yet small 'Pinky Winky' cultivar that I planted two years ago, although it has struggled in the drought and heat of its first two summers.  I'll also disclose that I've failed previously with H. paniculata 'Quick Fire', and with 'H. quercifolia', and 'H. quercifolia 'Little Honey',  but I think the latter native species deserves another try before I give up on it entirely.  It is supposed to have nicely-colored fall foliage that would be a good addition to my October garden.

  

Perfumed Prairie Sunrise

'Prairie Sunrise'; typical bloom

Have you ever had a rose that begged you to photograph it every time you passed?  One that you couldn't stop photographing even when you try to resist its siren call?  One of my new roses this year is 'Prairie Sunrise', and I think I might have taken at least one photo of every bloom it has developed since this rose grew from a tiny little band.  The latest photograph, of several solitary blooms (see the bottom photo of this entry), was taken on my iPhone this week.  As you can see,  'Prairie Sunrise' is just flat gorgeous, aptly named for the full blooms of pink, orange, and amber tones.  And also aptly named for its resemblance to a prairie sunrise such as the one below that I captured on 6/27/13:



'Prairie Sunrise'; first bloom for me

'Prairie Sunrise' is officially an apricot blend Shrub rose bred by Dr. Griffith Buck prior to 1992, but it was not introduced by him.  Helpmefind.com notes that this rose was introduced in 1997 by Sam Kedem Nursery and Garden, the latter a Minnesota-based mail-order nursery that I frequented in years past. Listing the rose as "apricot" doesn't really do justice to the coloring of this very double (50 petals) rose.  In colder weather, I see a lot of pinks and yellows in this rose, while in very hot weeks the blooms are almost amber, with pinkish tones banished to the outer petals.  The large (4 inch) blooms display as singles or in small clusters and are very fragrant, among the most fragrant of the Griffith Buck bred roses.  They are so full as to be quartered when fully open, with an occasional confused golden-orange center.  The bush is healthy, with dark green glossy leaves and the rose develops minimal blackspot.    At maturity, 'Prairie Sunrise' is supposed to be approximately 3 feet tall and wide and winter hardy to Zone 4.  Mine is about 2 feet tall at the end of its first summer.  'Prairie Sunrise' is an offspring of 'Friesia', a Kordes-bred Floribunda, and 'Freckle Face', a 1976 Buck rose.

'Prairie Sunrise'; after a week of cool nights

'Prairie Sunrise' has already won a permanent place in my garden and likely will be a rose I propagate to proliferate across my garden wherever I need a compact shrub rose.  Between the camera-catching blooms and the unbeatable fragrance, you can't go wrong by trying this one, which Sam Kedem described as in the running for the title of Rose of the Century.  I'm going to have to agree with you, Sam.

Best Laid Plans

The best laid plans so often lay an egg, don't they?  Several weeks ago, the hummingbirds arrived to my garden, resulting in a massive increase in the amount of time I spend staring out the window at the feeder, enjoying their grace and acrobatic flight.  My hummingbirds often seem to arrive late in the summer, coinciding with the bloom of the blue sage on the prairie and in my garden, and this year was no exception.  My only regret as I watch the hummingbirds has always been that I don't have the proper long-range camera equipment to get a decent picture.




Wait a minute!  I've got a game camera in my garden that's pretty good at candid photographs of impromptu garden visitors!  Why haven't I trained it on the hummingbird feeder?  I'll bet that I get thousands of great hummingbird pictures in just a few days!  Imagine my excitement as I set up the camera just a few feet away from the feeder below my bedroom window.  Imagine my anticipation as I witnessed (from the window) hummingbird after hummingbird visiting the feeder, right under the "nose" of the camera.

Alas and curses.  My execution of an excellent plan had a few flaws, not the least of which was that a game camera is not made for close-up photography.  I knew that the near focus was probably farther back then I wanted, but I was too lazy to search for the pamphlet to tell me the correct focal length of the lens, so I guessed.  I guessed wrong and placed the camera too close and thus got a number of semi-blurry photographs.



You also likely already have realized that the birds in these pictures are not hummingbirds. It seems that I also experienced the minor problem that hummingbirds don't seem to be either large enough or warm-bodied enough to trigger the game camera.  Despite the frequent visits of hummingbirds to my feeder that I was witnessing with my own eyes, all I captured over two weeks was these repeated visits of American Goldfinches (probably females or males in non-breeding plumage) to my feeder, visits that I never witness in person.  On the chance that this particular question keeps you up at night, you should know that I have decent evidence that the Goldfinches were not just perching on the feeder, but they were occasionally sipping the droplets of feeder juice spilled by tipping the feeder with their weight.  Who knew?

In two weeks, I collected 50 pictures of drab Goldfinches (why couldn't there been at least a few golden-yellow males in breeding plumange) and, finally, a single blurry picture of a Ruby-Throated hummingbird.   The latter was way too late and way too unimpressive for me to get excited about.  All I really gained from this experiment was a good excuse to give to Mrs. ProfessorRoush when I drop a wad of cash on a new digital camera and a big long-range lens.

As a consequence of my failures, I've moved the camera back to other parts of the garden, where it can document more exciting discoveries than the syrup-pirating drab Goldfinches.  The photograph below was taken just before I moved the camera from its original spot and it is remarkable for two reasons;  First, the presence of the coyote, captured at 9:58 a.m. in my garden.  Coyotes are supposed to be primarily nocturnal, a fact that I can confirm since they frequently awaken me by howling at night.  Second, please observe the date and the temperature printed on the photo.  Who has ever heard of Kansas being 63 degrees at 10:00 a.m. on the 8th of August?  Now there's an oddity worth documenting! 

'Knock Out' Purgatory

I suppose that I should have expected it, should have foreseen the horrors. Once 'Knock Out' became ubiquitous in the suburban landscape of America and moved beyond usefulness to cliché,  I should have known that this paradigm-changing rose was inevitably destined to be even more misused, abused, and perverted; to ultimately be used in manners so hideous as to defy the imagination of gardeners born with a vestige of good taste.

I was still shocked, however, to stumble across the mutilated specimens shown here, these professionally scalped and shaped green rectangles and balls that I fleetingly mistook at first glance for privet or yews.  These, my friends, are not evergreens, yews, privet, or box.  I was horrified to realize that these monstrosities were 'Knock Out' roses, identifiable by the sparse murky red blooms visible at the back of the rectangular-shaped specimen.  For a fleeting moment that recognition caused me to reach for my eyes in a fruitless effort to gouge out the offending images from my soul, but alas, I was too late, my sensibilities pushed over into the abyss, plunging into the bottomless pit of 'Knock Out' purgatory.

What was he or she thinking, this misguided landscaper?  I assume this job was "professionally" done since these misshapen demons lay next to the door and walkway of a large medical center whose working doctors and nurses are not likely to moonlight as hedge-trimming psychopaths. But these blobs were even trimmed "wrong" as hedges; the tops and sides wider than the bottom, shading out the lower leaves and destining them to naked stems and thorns.  Why remove the blooms?  'Knock Out' cycles rapidly enough that spent blooms go unnoticed amid the off-red tapestry of current flowers.  Does no one realize the value of orange rose hips for winter appeal?  Where do we go next to misuse this rose?  'Knock Out' topiary?  A nice 'Knock Out' elephant with a red saddle on its back and a red stripe along its trunk?  A 'Knock Out' clown face with bright red hair?

Please, I beg of you, those who just must plant 'Knock Out', at least give it freedom to still be a rose; to branch stiffly and awkwardly, to bloom a spine-grating red shade and to retain dingy orange hips.  Give it the freedom to be more than another green gumdrop in our landscapes.  We've got enough shrubs that can be shaped at will into your favorite football mascot.  If 'Knock Out' it must be, leave them unfettered and free to grow as they were meant to, as random unshaped colorful masses in our lawns.  Please.