Some early tulips

The first tulips to bloom this year bloomed in one of the unprotected cold frames. Their congeners in the open garden are only now coming into bloom.

First above is one of the many forms of Tulipa humilis. These do well here if given a dry summer. There are five or six readily available cultivars of this species, and even more are available if you search around a bit. There is a raised bed in the garden where a collection of these tulips grows: year after year they bloom freely and make a happy beginning to the tulip season.

Tulipa kaufmanniana is even earlier in the open garden. This year I'm trying a new cultivar named 'Ice Stick'. It's blooming today in the garden. If you know Tulipa kaufmanniana itself or the so-called kaufmanniana tulips (most of which garden cultivars are hybrids with Tulipa greigii), you know that they are characterized by very low growth: the blooms appear just above the foliage. But 'Ice Stick' has a typical kaufmanniana flower on a tall stem. I'm still getting used to it, and for now it's nickname is "the giraffe tulip"..

Gymnospermium altaicum

This odd looking little plant, Gymnospermium altaicum, is an interesting departure from the usual run of "bulbs". It's not closely related to any of the usual bulbs; it's not even a monocot. What it is is perhaps even more surprising: it's a member of the Berberidaceae. It grows from a round, corky corm and requires careful protection from summer moisture.

There are other species of Gymnospermium, and there are several related genera; and few will probably ever be grown outside the collections of confirmed collectors.

Yet more reticulate irises

Here are three more reticulate irises. Top to bottom: 'Cantab', 'Gordon' and 'Harmony'.

'Cantab' must be nearly a century old by now; 'Harmony' was in commerce about a half-century ago and 'Gordon' is a more recent cultivar.

I grow other reticulate irises, but the ones shown in these recent posts give a good idea of what is readily available. These little plants are worth a bit of extra fussing; once you have had them for several years, and have learned to look forward with confidence to their annual return, you will feel that that bit of extra trouble to keep them dry during the summer is worth it.

I hope I've got the names right on these reticulate irises: I keep hearing rumors that the commercial stocks are sometimes not true to name. The plants are no less beautiful with the wrong name.

More reticulate irises

The reticulate iris season is over by now, but this year a nice, representative selection bloomed in the cold frames. Three are shown above in images made the second week of March of this year. The top one is the cultivar 'Natascha', not quite white but rather a soft gray or skim-milk blue.

Next is one called 'Sheila Ann Germaney', and she is followed by 'Katharine Hodgkin'. Not shown is another one very similar to 'Katharine Hodgkin', this one known as 'Frank Elder'. I have plants under both names, but the flowers look alike to me.

Until recently, all of these were scarce and expensive. Now they can be purchased at the local garden center, and they are less dear than tulips or daffodils.

Reticulate irises in general seem to persist well in the garden, but they rarely bloom well after the first year or two. On the other hand, plants grown in pots or in the cold frames and kept dry during the summer do bloom well year after year.

Fritillaria raddeana

March 2009 was not all bad. The first of the Fritillaria showed easily counted buds by March 11. This was Fritillaria raddeana, and by March 18 it was in full bloom. This plant has bloomed for the last four years here. It's never been more than about a foot high, and it grows from a walnut sized bulb.

Last fall I received some comparatively huge bulbs of Fritillaria raddeana. These are emerging now, buds first, the same way the small form described above does. The sprouts from these new bulbs are big, like those of the crown imperial.

The two images above show the small form on March 11 and on March 18.

March 2009

March 2009 was a big disappointment to me. That brief mild spell we had at the very beginning of the year raised great expectations; March dampened most of them. Not only was the month cold, it was also dry and windy. There was a bit of rain towards the end of the month, and last week we had several days of slow, gentle rain which gave the garden a good soaking - and brought on a surge of growth.

Spring peepers have been in chorus now and then since March 8. Last weekend Wayne and I stopped by the local "peeper central" to check out the action. The peepers were singing in their hundreds, maybe thousands. Through the din of the peepers we could also make out chorus frogs and wood frogs. Today I heard toads calling, too.

It puzzled me that there have been no toads at the waterlily pool in the garden. Today I found out why: as I approached the pool today I heard a loud splash, the sort of noise turtles sometimes make. I didn't see anything - then. I decided to sit and watch. Several minutes passed and then suddenly, so suddenly it startled me, a muddy brown cylinder nearly as thick as my forearm shot up to the surface of the water, grabbed a quick breath, and just as suddenly disappeared. It was a snapping turtle, evidently not a small one. That no doubt explains the disappearance of most of the fifty gold fish I put into the pool last summer. Yesterday I noticed some small gray feathers floating on the pool surface.

So March this year came in like a polar bear and went out like a snapping turtle.

Reticulate irises

Forget the old line about March coming in as a lamb or a lion: this year it’s coming in as a polar bear. It’s mid-day now; we woke up to a light dusting of snow. This afternoon and evening we’re expected to get several inches. How many inches is that? To the east of us it might be as much as 10-12”; in the immediate area it will probably be about 4-5”.

Last week the first of the reticulate irises began to open, open slowly over a period of several days. Two are shown above: above is ‘Pauline’ and below one which came under a now obviously incorrect name. I don’t know what this one is - yet.

Hundreds of thousands of reticulate iris bulbs must be sold annually in this country, and I’ll bet most of them get planted out into the garden. There, they bloom well the first year, maybe even for a few years after that; but most gradually disappear or fail to bloom again even when they persist.

Certain cultivars persist indefinitely and bloom annually: the old original form of Iris reticulata has been blooming here for over forty years; ‘Pauline’ also seems to be very persistent. In general, if they don’t persist on their own and re-bloom annually, we assume they are not for us. In fact, with a bit of help a nice array of these can be enjoyed annually.

Part of the problem is that they are ridiculously inexpensive: that in itself removes much of the incentive to try and learn to grow them. The formula for these is the familiar one: a bit of lime and dry conditions after the foliage ripens.

Adonis vernalis

When the first flowers of this Eurasian wildflower, Adonis vernalis, open, it's as if the sun itself were rising from the soil of the garden. It has the same greenish-yellow color of the winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis. The same color is seen in a very few daffodils, too. It's a yellow which has a glowing quality, soft and very appealing at this time of year, especially in dull weather. The blooms of this Adonis are not large, but it has no competition in the same color range at this time of year - although a particularly well-nourished dandelion, should it produce an early bloom, might be just as big, if not as subtle.

The Adonis is very tidy when it blooms, but it soon sprawls laterally: give it some room.

The propagation of this plant poses some challenges. Division works and is probably the easiest way. Seed is set freely, but there seems to be no agreement about how to get it to germinate. Evidently, even sowing freshly collected seed does not guarantee germination.

The plant shown in the image above is growing in one of the unprotected cold frames. These frames provide protection from browsing animals and bad weather, and on sunny days keep the temperature within the frame a bit above what prevails outside - but they do little if anything to moderate the temperature at night.

The dog days of winter

The walk with Biscuit this morning provided some unexpected entertainment. Biscuit has been very attentive to all other dog noises lately: if she hears another dog barking in the distance, she immediately stops and listens. If the sound is nearby, she intently searches for the source.
Well, this morning she heard some barking nearby, looked around and didn’t see a dog. I heard the barking and was similarly confused. We moved on a few paces, and the barking resumed. Clearly it was very close, but both Biscuit and I could not locate the source. I expected a door to open nearby any minute and see some little yapper come dashing out. But no dog appeared.
We moved on a few paces, and the barking resumed. This time, we both took the time to carefully figure out where the barking was coming from. Once we realized where the barking was coming from, it was apparent why neither of us had figured it out before, and it was also apparent why we had not seen a dog.
The barking was coming from a place about thirty feet away: from the branches of a tree. Biscuit and I both looked up: was she as surprised as I was? The barking was not coming from a dog. It was a crow, a crow doing a very convincing imitation of a yappy dog bark. It was not the only crow in that tree, but it seems that it was the only one which had mastered the dog bark.
During the summer we have plenty of cat birds; now we have a dog bird, too.

The Lenten Rose

The history of the garden hellebores is a bit of a Cinderella story. I wonder how many of the current enthusiasts for these plants realize that they are nothing new in our gardens. Mable Cabot Sedgwick’s The Garden Month by Month, compiled early in the first decade of the twentieth century, mentions several species of Helleborus and even a named garden cultivar, ‘Frau Irene Heinemann’ of H. orientalis (what we today call H. × hybridus). Sedgwick lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, so her month by month sequences are of course a bit out of line with what we experience here. But this is a wonderful book, evidently carefully researched and wondrously detailed. Boston area gardens of a century ago must have been very well stocked indeed!

And by “our gardens” I don’t simply mean our eastern North American gardens, I mean more specifically our greater Washington, D.C. gardens. Hellebores have been growing in local gardens since at least the time of the First World War. They were growing in the Washington, D.C. garden of David Griffiths back then.

You’ll have to search harder than I did to find much mention of them in eastern gardens during the next half century. Literate gardeners no doubt knew about them because these plants have long figured prominently in the British horticultural press. Mrs. Wilder celebrated them. But the gardening public seems to have been clueless.

How can that be? How can the plant which is now widely appreciated as the best late winter flowering perennial in our gardens have been all but totally overlooked? How can it be that we had this plant in our gardens a century ago and then, then what? Did we lose them? Did they not prove amenable to conditions a century ago? Was the prevailing taste in garden plants at such an appallingly low level to allow this plant to sink into obscurity?

Or was it simply a case of get-rich-quick America not being ready to embrace a plant which grows slowly, provides opportunity for only infrequent division, and takes as long to bloom from seed as a trillium or peony?

A generation ago, hardly anyone grew them. Today there is a dizzying array of garden forms available - readily available, if for a price.

The genus name is hel-LE-bo-rus. Those who pronounce the name Hell ‘il BORE us may know something I don’t – but I don’t want to visit that place to find out for myself.

And on this first day of Lent I have to ask: does anyone else still call them Lenten Roses?

The hellebore season is just getting started here: the one in the image above is one which always has bloomed well before the other garden hellebores growing here. Please don't leave a comment here on the order of "Jim, I sell hellebores I raise from seed, and I throw away the ones that look like that".

I'm happy to record that hellebores have been blooming in this garden for about forty years. For more views of hellebores here, see:

http://www.jimmckenney.com/helleborus_pages.htm

Shrove Tuesday

We had the traditional pancake dinner tonight. Whenever I make pancakes, the ones to be consumed immediately are made in the usual four to five inch diameter. When I've made enough for the meal at hand, there is usually batter left over. Because this batter does not store well (even in the refrigerator it quickly molds), I pour all of it into the pan and make one gigantic pancake to use up the batter. The bottom of the ladle is used to spread the batter as thinly as possible. The result is what you see in the image above. This big pancake then reappears at lunch the next day, typically as a wrap. The filling might range from savory to sweet, depending on what's at hand or left over from other meals. If there is some leftover chicken, I'll make a quick white sauce for a savory course. If there is fresh fruit, I'll whip up some cream for sweet filling.

Since tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, tradition will frown on the whipped cream.

Early crocuses

Several years ago I discovered what a pleasure even the commonest crocuses can be when grown in the protected cold frame. There isn’t room in the protected cold frame for all of the crocuses I grow, so this year I planted many of the crocuses in an unprotected cold frame. The main difference is that in the unprotected cold frame they do not bloom as early. But they do bloom ahead of crocuses planted in the open garden. And the protection provided by the frame makes all the difference in the world. Now I can ignore the sparrows which in most years treat the flowering of the crocuses as the beginning of the salad season. And I can ignore the bunnies I saw hopping merrily around the other day – and I can ignore the deer, too. Hail, sleet, ice – forget them, the cold frame protects the crocuses from all bad weather.
Is it my imagination or do the flowers actually last longer in good condition in the cold frames? I think they do.
The crocuses with interesting markings on the outside of the outer tepals are more easily observed in the cold frame. In fact, when these plants are grown in the open garden they collapse into two main varieties on sunny days: the white ones and the yellow-orange ones. That’s because the beautiful markings are on the outside of the flowers; when the flowers open widely, they all look like white or orange-yellow crocuses.
Those with tender and exquisite colors such as ‘Weldenii Fairy’ and ‘Blue Pearl’ are more readily appreciated in the cold frames. Both of these are blooming today, and until today I never realized how beautiful they really are. They are simply too good for the open garden.
Here’s the list of familiar crocuses blooming in the cold frames today: ‘Gipsy Girl’, ‘Goldilocks’, ‘Advance’, ‘Snow Bunting’, ‘Lady Killer’, ‘Blue Pearl’, ‘Weldenii Fairy’ ‘Firefly’, ‘Uschak Orange’, ‘Blue Bird’ and ‘Whitewell Purple’. You can see some of them in the images above. From top to bottom:'Gipsy Girl', 'Weldenii Fairy', 'Lady Killer', 'Herald', 'Goldilocks', 'Blue Pearl', 'Blue Bird' and 'Advance'.

The days before spring

The first big burst of bloom has yet to occur in the garden this year: I’m still waiting. There have been many plants in bloom since the turn of the year, but they have occurred only sporadically. January and February have both been cold, windy months. My eyes are aching for a big burst of floral color.

The early snowdrops are at their peak now and have been for about a week. But try enjoying snowdrops in thirty-mile-per-hour wind gusts and a temperature in the low 40s F. When things moderate a bit I’ll put together a little bouquet of snowdrops and other early bloomers.

Crocuses are blooming in the frames - but do they count?

Last Friday Wayne and I drove down to visit his mom in western Virginia. Along the way we passed brilliant, green fields of what I assume is winter rye. It’s a real treat to see such an intense green spread out over acre after acre. The greens of summer never seem so bright, so intense and so pure.

Back in the home garden the prevailing colors are dingy browns and grays. But little Ranunculus ficaria is rapidly leafing out, and soon there will be plenty of green in the garden. And at that point I’ll be trying to figure out how to get rid of it.

Scallions, green onions, spring onions, Welsh onions, shallots

I’ve noticed that the grocery stores where I shop no longer sell something called scallions. What they sell now are called green onions. If you know your onions, you know that green onions and scallions are not necessarily the same thing.

Green onions and spring onions should be immature Allium cepa (this is the botanical name for culinary onions).

Scallions, on the other hand, are either those certain forms of Allium cepa which do not bulb or (and this is where it gets confusing) forms of a related species Allium fistulosum, the so-called (i.e. misnamed) Welsh onion. This “Welsh onion” is actually native to Siberia.

Where do shallots fit into this picture? Many texts currently attribute shallots to Allium cepa as a “Group” called Aggregatum. A Group in this sense - notice the capital G - is an assemblage of forms which might or might not share the same origin but which share so many similarities that for practical purposes they are treated as essentially the same thing until someone parses their ancestry and interrelationships. This usage of Group is not taxonomic: these Groups do not fall into the traditional taxonomic hierarchy.

The old name for shallots was Allium ascalonicum. Ascalon was an ancient Mediterranean port city in what is now modern Israel. Notice the similarity between the words scallion and ascalonicum: it’s no accident. Scallion is ultimately derived from the old name ascalonicum. In English, it’s not a direct borrowing: the word had to travel through several languages before it made its way into English. You would therefore think that shallots are the rightful claimants to the name scallion, but I can’t recall any recent American text which calls shallots scallions.

After writing the above, I Googled shallot and read the wikipedia account. The writer of that account assigns the French gray shallot to Allium oschaninii and the other shallots to Allium cepa.

The plot thickens…

Takoma Park Garden Club Daffodil Show

“…the Garden Club of Takoma Park, outside of Washington, which has for nine years past had its annual Daffodil Show…”

Those were the words which quickly brought me out of my bedtime reverie last night, as I lay in bed reading Mrs. Francis King’s 1925 Chronicles of the Garden. I grew up a stone’s throw from Takoma Park; some of my grammar schoolmates probably lived there. Even now, over eighty years after Chronicles was written, Takoma Park has retained both a very distinct identity and a vigorous enthusiasm for gardening.

It was Mr. Benjamin Y. Morrison, again quoting from Mrs. King “one of our finest amateurs and an authority in horticulture”, who wrote those words. There was something comical about her description of Morrison as an amateur: he went on to become one of the leading lights in twentieth century horticulture during a career which culminated in his becoming the first director of the U.S. National Arboretum - not bad for an amateur.

Does Takoma Park still have daffodil shows? If they do, I don’t know about it. The greater Washington, D.C. area does have a big, active daffodil society, The Washington Daffodil Society. The WDS was organized in 1950 – “ it grew out of the first daffodil show in the Washington area, sponsored by three local garden clubs” reads the account on the WDS website. This was twenty-five years after the events described by Morrison, and it thus seems unlikely that the show sponsored by three local garden clubs could have been the ones in which Morrison participated. Here’s a link to a page giving the early history of the WDS:

http://washingtondaffodilsociety.org/

and then click on About Us.

Don’t miss the photo of the founders: the clothing reminds me so much of family photos we have from those days.

It’s hard to believe that the Takoma show would have been anything like the shows of the WDS: for decades these shows have exhibited hundreds of cultivars yearly. This should surprise no one: not only is the daffodil charming, it generally makes itself very much at home in local gardens.

All of this talk about daffodils: there are no daffodils blooming in the garden right now, but two forms of Narcissus cantabricus are blooming today in the protected cold frame.

Am I cheating if I announce the beginning of daffodil season 2009 in my garden based on these somewhat coddled darlings?

3° F

We’ve just come through a cold spell which the local weather people are claiming was the coldest in many years. Luckily it was brief and was not accompanied by destructive wind. The low temperature in the immediate area was said to have been 3° F Saturday morning. The temperature remained below freezing for a three day period. On one day the daytime high was in the low twenties F.

Before the arrival of the coldest weather I closed the protected cold frame and covered it with a double ply tarp. It remained closed and covered until this afternoon. There was definitely a sense of trepidation when I opened it today. This is only the third winter for the protected cold frame, and those first two winters were not much of a test. This cold spell provided a good test.

And what did I find when I opened the cold frame? Other than some minor foliage damage to some leaves touching the glass, there is no bad news. I’m a happy gardener today.

While walking Biscuit in the extreme cold of Saturday morning I heard a chickadee calling: the first bird call of the year for me. There was a nuthatch about, too, giving its nasal buzz sound.

While typing this entry I heard another bird calling. I didn't recognize it, but there is a resident mockingbird. I jumped up, got my coat, and was about to head out to see what it could be. As I passed through the living room on my way to the door, I asked mom if she had heard the bird. She grinned and said "You mean this one?" and at that she squeezed the stuffed toy cardinal she was holding. The living room filled with the song of this other "bird" as we both had a good laugh.

January optimism

Although we humans have invented plenty of diversions to get us through that most depressing month of the year December, mother nature provides the only one I need during January: already I sense that the days are getting longer. It's early winter, bitter cold is predicted, the garden is frozen, and yet this for me is probably the most creative time of the year. I revel in the buoyant sense of optimism the gradually lengthening days bring: I'm looking forward now, looking forward with enthusiasm.

It's also the time of year when I pull out all the old catalogs and books to read about annuals. And not just any annuals. I can't explain why, but every year at this time I experience a surge in interest in poppies, morning glories and nasturtiums. Night after night I fall asleep thinking about ways to use them in the garden, in particular in the garden of my dreams where space is unlimited and frost is unknown. All of this is just a memory, if that, when the actual time for planting these in the garden comes. And there is no real loss in that because there is hardly a place for even a few annuals in the garden now - it's that packed.

And how is the creativity expressing itself? This is the time of year when plans for major garden changes hatch and are brooded into feasibility. This time I think I've finally hit on a plan which will turn the site of the never-fully realized sunk garden into something a lot more satisfying. The site poses a major challenge: the main axis of the garden points right at a gap between two trees - good so far - and the gap allows a nice view out into the surrounding woodland. That sounds nice at first, but that open view has prevented any sense of enclosure in that space. In fact, it makes the space feel like a passageway.

And what's the solution? Right now in my mind's eye I see a curved path extending from the area of the border on the north side of the garden and extending to the back part of the south side of the garden. This border will delineate a border facing south - and facing the main sitting area planned for this site. This curved border will not only provide the much needed sense of enclosure but will also allow the plants to be staged more effectively (since most plants face the south).

This is a major change for the garden. It will take at least two years to accomplish this change because it will involve moving tree peonies, and they cannot be moved until fall 2009. To be effective, it will also involve some grading: back, do you hear that? I was out in the garden with the tape measure yesterday - things are off to a good start.

New French doors into the garden

Lows here in Montgomery County, Maryland, are predicted to be around 10° above zero F both tomorrow morning and Saturday morning. Several of my gardening friends have commented on this, as if it were something unusual. But that temperature is right on the line between USDA zones 7 and 8. Has everyone here forgotten those scary winter episodes when the wind howls, the trees snap, the house creaks and the temperature drops to zero F or even a bit below? When a weather front like that comes through at night, I don't sleep.

The protected cold frame was covered with a double ply tarp the day before yesterday, and the tarp won't be removed until Sunday at earliest. The overnight lows are only a part of the picture. This week the day time temperature is not expected to rise above the freezing point all day today and tomorrow.

New doors, French doors, were installed in the fireplace room the day before yesterday - just in time for this very cold weather. These French doors replace old, single-pane sliding doors which, over the years, had become warped, difficult if not impossible to close with a tight seal. And then a tiny hole in the glass (probably from a stray bullet or BB - several neighborhood boys had and used BB guns back in those days) began to expand into a major crack in the glass of one of the two doors. Soon a big piece of glass nearly two square feet in area was just barely hanging on.

Negotiations for these new doors began back in October; I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to endure the winter with the cracked glass pane. The old door with the cracked pane will go to the dump. The other door already has a job assigned to it: it's about to begin a new life as a cold frame light.

Now that the new doors are in place, the fireplace room is once again an agreeable part of the house's living space. Even at night it's comfortable down there: it's a great place for reading. And best of all, these new doors give a fetching view of the garden.

Camellia japonica "red survivor"

The red camellia shown above has been in this garden for a long time – long as in decades. Early in its stay here it was killed down to the ground during a particularly severe winter. It eventually re-sprouted from the roots; but for a long time, decades again, it made very meager growth. During the last three years it’s been doing much better, and it is now in the five to six foot range and blooming yearly.
When I was in high school I was taken to see the garden of one of the teachers at our school. The only plant I remember from that visit was a camellia, a very big camellia. I remember us standing beside it and looking up into it at the huge red flowers. Local gardens back then probably boasted many such plants, but some very severe winters in the 1970s brought an end to those glory days: most big Camellia japonica in the greater Washington, D.C. area went down during those winters– most never to reappear.
The comparatively mild winters we’re experiencing now have been good for camellias. Once again there are big camellias in local gardens. And if this continues, it won’t be many more years before I’ll be looking up into a big red camellia in my own garden.
Few things in the garden are more beautiful than red camellias in the snow.

What a difference a day makes!

Today I re-composed the material shown in yesterday's post and photographed it in natural light. What a difference a day makes!

First week of January 2009

The garden has been good to me this first week of January 2009. Although it took some searching, there have been some things in bloom this week. And there are many things in “advanced bud”, so next week should be even better if the weather cooperates.
In the image above you can see some of the things now in bloom: Galanthus elwesii, Jasminum nudiflorum, Chimonanthus praecox ‘Luteus’, Hamamelis ‘Jelena’, H. ‘Feuerzauber’, Helleborus foetidus (with an unopened bud of one of the garden hellebores) and perhaps most surprising of all, Iris unguicularis: not bad for the first week of the year! There is also foliage of Arum italicum, Danaë racemosa, Hedera helix and Sarcococca humilis.
Crocus ochroleucus is blooming in one of the cold frames, and in the protected frame some of the white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are about to bloom, too. Out in the garden, Sarcococca humilis is heavily budded and the first Camellia japonica of the year are opening.

The image above was done indoors early in the evening: we've had no sun for days now. It was cropped and rotated and as a result the image quality has suffered. This softening of line and lack of crisp detail, which some might see as defects, nevertheless give the image the quality seen in early twentieth century color images. Think Gartenschönheit in the early twenties. I guess I've just snubbed my nose at nearly a century of technological advancement in photography.

Early January 2009

So, what does the garden have to offer this first week of January?

Nighttime temperatures have been regularly dropping into the low 20s F lately, so I had no hopes for a long list. And the short list is indeed short, but it includes some flowers which make a trip out into the otherwise quiet garden well worthwhile. Here it is: Jasminum nudiflorum, Galanthus elwesii, Chimonanthus praecox, Helleborus foetidus and Iris unguicularis. In one of the unprotected cold frames Crocus ochroleucus is blooming.

In the protected cold frame, some of the little white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are about to bloom, as are Narcissus tazetta ‘Ziva’ and N. pachybolbus. This last is a white-flowered daffodil of the tazetta group, smaller in all parts except its bulb than ‘Ziva’.

The handsomest of all of these, and – given the weather - the most unseemly, is Iris unguicularis, the Algerian iris. This grows in the open air planted right against a wall of the house. It gets covered nightly. Last year I discovered that it will reward this slight bother with intermittent bloom from November until April. At this time of year it's a real treat to linger over this plant and soak up the gorgeous color.

While walking Biscuit the other day I noticed that the buds of Acer rubrum seemed to be swollen a bit: it’s ready to go, too.

The Last Day of the Year

As the weather allows, I’m still working out in the garden. Temperatures today reached the mid-forties and it was sunny. Ordinarily that would be good weather for garden work, but today the wind was terrific and relentless. I spent about two hours in the early afternoon working with the plants in the protected cold frame. It was good to see that many of the Narcissus of the cantabricus-romieuxii sorts are budded and should be in bloom soon. Two of the tazettas, 'Ziva' and Narcissus pachybolbus, have scapes up, too.

There are fresh flowers of Crocus ochroleucus in one of the unprotected frames, and some Crocus longiflorus on their last leg are still colorful. All of the fall-blooming crocuses were plated very late this year, and so in effect I lost this year of bloom (although some are still trying).

Tomorrow I’ll do the official New Year’s Day count. I’m not expecting much: the temperature is expected to drop into the low 20s F by morning.

Lycoris aurea of commerce has produced a thick clump of foliage this year, and that’s raising hopes that it might bloom next fall. This grows in the protected frame: the foliage will typically not survive our winters in the open ground. Several of these have been acquired from various sources during the last two years; they all agree in having yellow-green foliage. The plants grown in the past had much darker foliage. All of this adds to the anticipation of the first flowers.

Season's Greetings Everyone!

A forty-foot pergola divides the garden into two unequal parts. The near side of the pergola forms the wall of the pool garden. In the center of this side of the pergola is an oculus, an eye-shaped opening which allows a view along the garden's main long axis. Here you see the oculus in its holiday season dress.

Welwitschia mirabilis

The Welwitschia gave me a scare about two weeks ago. It went from a healthy green to a pale, dull green with much too much yellow. It was still green, but it reminded me of pea soup.

I've had this plant for eleven years now; I acquired it as a one-year old seedling in 1997. It was raised from Silverhill seed by a member of our local rock garden group. Earlier this year I acquired more fresh seed from Silverhill, but I have not attempted to germinate it yet. I sent Rachel Saunders a photo of my eleven-year-old plant. When I did this, a little voice warned me that some envious demon lurking in the background might interpret this as the sort of boasting which merited a bit of taking down. So when my plant began to lose color, I momentarily wondered if I was getting what I asked for.

My first impression was that I might have over-watered the plant. I carefully tipped the pot sideways to see if any water would drain out. But there was no sign of water. Then I tried to remember the last time I had watered the plant. Hmmm......maybe it just needs a drink. So I watered it. Within a few days the good, healthy color began to return and I breathed a major sigh of relief. I'm very attached to this plant. I expect it to be the Gila monster of my adult life (when I was a kid I had a Gila monster which lived for a bit over twenty-five years).

Several years ago the Welwitschia put on another, more dramatic scare. Again, it was shortly after I brought it in for the winter. For several days it sat in my bedroom far from any window and without any supplementary light. And then it happened: its usual healthy green color began to change. The color became streaked with mustard yellow and rusty red. At one point most of the surface of the leaves was brilliant iridescent blue such as is seen in Selaginella uncinata. It was a bizarre sight, and I was panic stricken. But after a few days under fluorescent lights the odd colors began to fade, and eventually it was back to normal.

When I'm a very old man I might will this one to some public collection; but for now it's staying put.

November, the busiest month of this gardener's year

If you go back and look at the postings from 2007, you'll notice that there were no postings in November. Today's post might very well be the only one for November of this year. Here's why: November is the busiest month of the gardening year for me. On top of that, it's also a hard month to get good value for your time: not only are the days getting shorter, but the sun is low in the sky and frankly very annoying. Luckily, the sunshine is abundant, and it usually takes the edge off the bite in the wind. We'll soon be reaching the point where the sun will rise hours before the ground defrosts enough to work - if it defrosts at all.

This is the time of year I rework the garden; it's the time of year when the plans for next year are put in place. It's prime transplanting time for most herbaceous and woody plants. And this year, more than anything else, it's bulb planting time.

Beginning in late May, I dug as much of the bulb collection as I could. Little by little I've been replanting it during the last few weeks. There is a lot of documentation involved, and that really slows things down. New beds have been prepared.

In addition to that, I binged on tulips again this year. The last time was about five years ago. What do I mean by binging on tulips? I bought one each of every tulip on offer in local garden centers and ordered others from mail order suppliers. I do this every so often just to see what these tulips look like in real life.

In the past I let these tulips on their own after blooming, and as a result most did not survive for long. Then, years ago, I noticed a place in the garden where the tulips persisted indefinitely and bloomed yearly. The plants got smaller, and the clumps got thicker, but they were still there and evidently thriving. This was happening at the edge of a dry-walled raised bed: the drainage there must have been excellent. I tried another group of tulips in a different raised bed and five years later they are still blooming freely each year.

The simple truth about tulips, a truth about which almost every tulip grower in this area is in deep denial, is that under typical garden conditions tulips must be dug for the summer.

Raised beds provide one alternative to digging.

Once you realize that yes, you can grow tulips in this area and have them year after year, it's hard to resist the urge to collect them in all their wondrous variety. In a small garden such as this one, there is hardly room for one of each of everything available - and that's with close spacing. For years I tried growing them in the ground with labels buried with the clumps, but that system was not really satisfactory. For one thing, once the plants had died down, it was difficult to locate the clumps - and to be sure where one clump ended and the next began. At digging time there were always mix-ups - with the result that the stocks became mixed. And often bulbs were missed altogether.

Last year I tried planting bulbs in plastic berry baskets. I've been very pleased at what a difference this makes: now I can grow hundreds of varieties closely spaced without any serious concerns about mixing bulbs. The digging goes quickly, too.

In the image above you see the back edge of the raised north border where the main concentration of the "one-of-each" tulip collection is growing this year (the site rotates from year to year). There are over two hundred different cultivars planted here.

Clerodendron trichotomum

Wayne and I visited our friends Hilda and Charlie last week, and Hilda sent me home with a handful of seeds of Clerodendron trichotomum. This is one of those plants which is not as common in gardens as its several merits might suggest it would be. In our climate it's a low shrub. The white flowers are deliciously fragrant and are followed by bright blue fruits backed by the red calyx: as a result, it has a long season of interest. The foliage has the usual disagreeable scent of the family, but that scent is not noticeable until the foliage is rubbed or crushed.
Look carefully and you can make out a bit of the red of the now dried calyces and maybe even a bit of the now dark blue of the fruit.

Almond crown

The good baking weather continues, and this week there was this almond crown to enjoy. The filling was based on ground cardamon, almonds and orange zest - a nice, old-fashioned suite of flavors. This one disappeared very quickly!

Crocus kotschyanus with acuminate tepals

The crocus in the image above is Crocus kotschyanus, the crocus known to generations of gardeners as Crocus zonatus. I spotted this years ago in the lawn of a neighbor of a friend. I could see from a distance that it was Crocus kotschyanus, but I could also see that it was different from the usual forms I grow. When I got up close I noticed that the petals were pointed - acuminate in botanical terminology. This is not typical for this species, although it is for Crocus vallicola, a species in which the points are much drawn out. Crocus kotschyanus and Crocus vallicola share several characteristics, and their ranges overlap: is my plant from a hybrid population?

It was several years more before I was able to dig some corms for the garden, but it is now growing here well.

Woolly bear

What does the woolly bear say? I don’t know, but here is its picture and maybe you can figure it out for yourself. I found this one the other day while walking Biscuit. Now that it has had its picture taken, I’ll release it in the garden.

Crocus oreocreticus

This crocus was received in the summer of 2005 but is blooming for the first time this year. The members of the saffron group of crocuses appeal to me greatly. Crocus oreocreticus has a fragrance which suggests the typical saffron crocus fragrance with a strong overlying note of hyacinth. This and another member of the saffron group, Crocus thomasii, are worth growing for their fragrance.
One of the reasons this plant took so long to bloom might be that it grows in a pot in the cold frame. I grow the plants in the frame in a very lean medium and do not water them much. As a result, many of them give little increase and simply maintain themselves from year to year. I’m still learning how to manage these plants: this year Crocus oreocreticus will probably be planted out into a bed in the open.

Tricyrtis macrantha

The genus Tricyrtis provides a number of interesting late summer-, early fall-blooming herbaceous perennials with, as a rule, upward-facing, star-shaped spotted flowers. As with so many plants touted for shade tolerance, they actually do even better with plenty of sun. As a group they are called toad lilies. The one shown here, Tricyrtis macrantha, is so different from the others that you might not realize what it is the first time you see it. The flowers remind me of those of some fritillaries or of those of Kirengeshoma palmata. If you tilt them up a bit, you will be able to see the profuse red spots on the inside - again, much in the style of some fritillaries. Not only is it beautiful and unusual, it is also easily grown.

I had hoped that this would bloom with some of the autumnal gentians, but this year at least it finished before the gentians started.

Cuphea 'Fireworks'

I've purchased what appears to be this same plant under several names over the years; the name I'm using here is the name which came with the most recent acquisition. This plant is sometimes called bat flower because the two large petals suggest the ears of some bats. Cuphea belongs to the Lythraceae and is thus related to crepe myrtle and Lythrum. There is a local native species, too; it's not of much decorative value.

This year 'Fireworks' gave better results than any other sorts tried in the past. It grows in a tall, narrow terra cotta pot on the front steps; it gets plenty of sun there. It thrives in heat and humidity. It's particularly beautiful in the late afternoon sun - that's when these images were taken.

Cyclamen persicum

Hybridists have sent the wild Cyclamen persicum on a wild ride over the centuries. The wild plant, the largest of the wild cyclamens, has been bred to be even larger, and in the process the fragrance of the wild ancestor has been largely lost. The result is the so-called florist's cyclamen, a staple of the winter window-sill garden. These big plants are good for providing lots of color for months; but the typical American home is too warm for them, and thus that potential is rarely reached. And although the wild forms grow in areas which experience freezing weather, these big plants are not for the open garden in this area.

There are also dwarf forms of the florist's cyclamen, and these often have good fragrance. That same day I purchased the plant of azalea 'Autumn Belle' I spotted a tray of florist's cyclamens. I was initially drawn by the color, but as I got over the plants a very pleasant fragrance became apparent. I picked up a red-flowered plant, gave it a sniff, and quickly put it down - nothing nice there! A pink-flowered plant gave the same result. And then I tried a white-flowered plant: that's where the great fragrance was coming from. This one came home with me: that's it in the image above.

It's in the cold frame now: its chances are better there than inside the house. Will it survive the winter in the cold frame? We'll see. I hope it does because it's loaded with flower buds, enough for it to carry on for weeks and weeks it would seem. And there is a particular pleasure to be had in opening the cold frame and getting a rush of sweet fragrance.

Encore azalea 'Autumn Belle'

A trip to one of the local big box stores recently resulted in two impulse purchases which promise to make the next few weeks even more enjoyable. Here's the first of them, one of the new and much advertised Encore azaleas. These are azaleas bred to bloom off and on throughout the season. Their blooming schedule is probably like that of the old Hybrid Perpetual roses: a big splash in the spring, bloom off and on throughout the summer, then another splash in the autumn. Or is it? Time will tell.

These Encore azaleas are available in a narrow range of colors in the magenta-blue red range; there are also white-flowered sorts. Are any of them fragrant? Fragrance is not mentioned in the advertising.

The one I bought is 'Autumn Belle', a sort of warm salmon pink with red-pink spots. At the edges of the petals are white areas, which look as if they had been splashed and streaked on. The resulting pattern is striking and reminds me of the patterns caused by color breaking virus in some plants, and it also reminds me of the color patterns seen in some of the azaleas grown for winter bloom indoors as houseplants.

One use for this handsome plant immediately comes to mind: pair it with the autumn blooming camellias. Camellias and azaleas in the garden during October and November: that's going out in style!

Smilax laurifolia

Some of the plants I'm most proud of are apt to engender perplexity in some garden visitors. The several members of the genus Smilax which grow here are good examples. These are tough plants, not easily removed when they get in the way of horticultural or agricultural activity. Some are herbaceous, but most are thorny, more or less evergreen vining plants. Even in those forms in which the foliage does not survive the winter, the stems remain green and conspicuous.

Several of them form nearly impenetrable thickets, and several are prodigious vines. Another of these robustly vining sorts, Smilax smallii, was discussed in an earlier entry: http://mcwort.blogspot.com/2008/02/smilax-smallii.html

The subject of this entry is the biggest of the North American species, Smilax laurifolia. It goes right to the tops of trees and forms thick, trunk-like stems, bare of foliage sometimes for the first thirty or so feet. It's a stunning plant, nothing like anything else in our native flora. Surely there must be at least one Victorian writer who deemed it antediluvian. To me it looks like something from a tropical rain forest.

Back in the early '90s Wayne and I were birding in far southern eastern Virginia shortly after a big storm had gone through the area. That storm was my friend: I had been trying to collect seed of this species for years, but the seed was always forty feet up in the trees. That day I was in luck: we found a big tree which had come down in the storm, and the tree was wreathed in Smilax laurifolia. And the Smilax was full of ripe fruit.

All the Smilax I've grown from seed have been very slow, and this species is no exception. Years after the seed was sown all I had to show for my efforts were tiny plants to be measured in inches. But they got better yearly, and three years ago they finally began to put on size. Now they put on about four feet yearly. The largest is being trained into position with the idea of letting it cover part of the deck railing.

This largest plant provided a surprise this year: it bloomed for the first time. It has yet to experience a really biting winter here. But in nature it ranges at least as far north as coastal New Jersey, so I'm expecting to do well in the long run.

Iris foetidissima 'Citrina' in fruit

You wouldn't know it from the picture, but this is the form of Iris foetidissima with pale yellow flowers. The seed pods are beginning to open now, and for many gardeners the brightly colored seeds are the only reason to grow this plant. These remain interesting and colorful for months, well into the winter.

Bessera elegans

What a charmer this one is! And it's easily grown. Give it what in the old days we called "gladiolus culture" : i.e. plant the corms out in a sunny spot after the danger of severe freezes is over, and in the autumn dig the corms and after they are dry pop them into a zip-lock bag and store them inside for the winter. I started with three corms last year; they did not bloom or increase. But this year they are blooming. It's being treated as a pot plant for now: however you grow it, keep in mind that you will want to get close to it to examine it well. The foliage is nothing more than three or four rush-like leaves about eighteen inches long.

I think I first had this about forty years ago from Zephyr Gardens in San Antonio: back then, I thought of it as one of those many Mexican bulbs which at the time seemed so elusive. It's now grown as a field crop in Holland for both the cut-flower and bulb trades.

Puff pastry

Several days of cool, dry weather got me into the baking mood. Cool, dry weather is ideal for making puff pastry, and I didn’t let this spell go to waste. Here’s one of the results: a puff pastry log with walnut-raisin filling. Yummy!

Habenaria radiata

The winsome little bloom shown above is the Egret Flower, a tiny Japanese and Korean bog orchid named Habenaria radiata or Pecteilis radiata. It's very easily grown: the one shown grows in a pot of sandy peat kept moist in full sun. The plant grows from a corm about the size of a sweet pea seed. This plant is winter hardy here and can be grown in bog gardens, but it is so tiny that it is apt to be overwhelmed by neighboring plants.

Among gardeners it is widely known as Pecteilis radiata. This name Pecteilis was coined by one of the really colorful characters in the history of early nineteenth century taxomomy, Constantin Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz. He was born into an Italian family near Istanbul in 1783 and died an American citizen in 1840 in Philadelphia. He spent years in Kentucky. Rafinesque evidently didn't hesitate to name anything which came his way: those were the days when taxonomists shot from the hip, and Rafinesque shot plants, animals, whatever fell into his hands.

Achimenes 'Cattleya'

Achimenes 'Cattleya' 

On first consideration I shouldn’t like achimenes: the ones I grow are not fragrant, they are not frost hardy, they duplicate colors and growth habits seen in garden impatiens and petunias, and they are slow to come into bloom. Yet there is something about these plants which is very appealing: is it their poise? They present themselves very pertly. Allowing for a couple of quirks, I find them easy to grow.
The one shown here is Achimenes 'Cattleya' (when this post was originally made, I called it Achimines mexicana).
 Achimenes had their glory days in the mid to late nineteenth century: hybrids proliferated then, including several which are still grown today. Present-day enthusiasts live in the shadow of those days: although the color range is wider today, the number of cultivars available is much reduced.

More Moire (or is it moiré?)

Wayne wrote to me asking if the colors in the images of the hybrid Japanese morning glories were accurate. I assured him that they were, and then went on to describe the watered-silk pattern of merging and blending colors seen in some of these amazing blossoms. As I was talking, I was about to use the word moiré, but realized that I wasn’t sure how to pronounce it. This is the word which precisely describes the watered-silk pattern.

As it turns out, the word is pronounced as both a single syllable word and a two syllable word. Evidently there is no generally recognized difference in meaning, although according to the wikipedia entry on this word the single syllable form is prevalent among those discussing fabrics, and the two syllable form (at least two syllables as pronounced in English) is prevalent in other contexts (such as this one, where I’m discussing color pattern).

Although the word came into English from French, evidently it is not a French word but rather Arabic (and some say ultimately from the Latin marmoreus, marble-like). And just as interesting, the word mohair apparently shares the same origin.

Believe it or not, the two images shown above are of the same blossom. The upper one was taken early in the morning, the lower one late in the afternoon on a rainy day. Evidently the blue pigments are not as stable as the red ones. The image of the blossom in its purple/blue phase was taken in natural light, the red phase was photographed under incandescent light with the camera light meter adjusted for that.

When the first flowers from this lot of seed began to bloom, I wasn't sure I liked them. But they have grown on me, and I can see them becoming favorites.