Great Plants
I heard a new term the other day: songworm, the tune you can’t get out of your head. Happened just in time; ever since Valentines Day I’ve been hearing Frank Sinatra singing I Bought You Violets For Your Furs.
A classic bouquet of violets, tightly bound stems, galax leaf frame (no doily, however)
If that sounds more than a little old fashioned, that’s because it is. The song is only in my head because my father used to croon it to my mother and whether he ever bought her any I do not know. They did court in New York City in the late ‘30s, when nosegays of fragrant violets were still a staple of winter romance. But by the time I grew up the whole tradition – along with the violets – was long gone.
Or make that almost gone.
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This started out to be about blue, and how plants that are far apart in most ways may be mighty similar in the color department.
That’s a sweet pea (legume family) on the left and a larkspur (buttercup family) on the right. The seeds are coriander and will be a new crop of cilantro by fall.
But then the larkspurs took over, because – at least in the north – they’re a real low fuss delight (unlike some flowers we could name). Larkspurs are so closely related to delphiniums they used to be in the same species, but this airy member of the family almost never needs staking.* Also unlike delphiniums, larkspurs are seldom bothered by slugs and snails. Plus they don’t dwindle and die out on you after a couple of years. Plant just once and have them forever.
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It’s that time of year again: every morning I look at the mirror, sternly, and say “ Leslie, you cannot grow everything.” Everything meaning vegetables and annual flowers. Even I know I can’t do much about my fantasies in the tree and shrub department.
Sitting cuddled up with a big pile of catalogs and a ballpoint (felt tips bleed through) is one of the best cheap thrills going, and buying way too many seeds isn’t all that much more expensive, at least compared to the trouble you can get into at an outfit like forestfarm. But this is not about that, it’s about remembering to leave room for the seeds that plant themselves.
Although all colors of alyssum self-sow, white is not only the most prolific but also the most fragrant. The poppies are not fragrant, just about their only flaw.
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Resolved (year after year, but this year I’m really going to do it): make the garden smarter – not necessarily smaller, but easier to care for – and more stylishly built around shrubs and grasses instead of herbaceous perennials.
For starters, I’m cutting way back on the bearded iris. Not ripping it out root and branch
The fragrant, impervious-to-snails-so-their-leaves-look-lovely-all-summer blue ones in the blue border are staying, but
the not-fragrant purple ones, whose moment of glory is even briefer than that of the hesperis in the background, after which their snail ravaged leaves look worse and worse until put out of their misery, are destined for removal.
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As usual, it’s on the bush beside the barn, a bush that was here (and already venerable) when we arrived 20 years ago.
Mr. Lincoln, I presume?
I think it may be Mr. Lincoln, but then again not being a rose person I tend to think all fragrant deep red/black long stemmed hybrid teas are Mr. Lincoln, aka Mister Lincoln, which again not being a rose person I usually call Abraham Lincoln, even though – thank you Rogers Roses – there is no rose by that name.
Whatever it is, I offer it as evidence that plants can sometimes thrive where they have no business living at all, something to keep in mind when attending end-of-year plant sales.
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Yesterday afternoon’s garden work was all in tight focus: harvesting the endless beans, sorting as I went; thinning and transplanting young beets and greens; deadheading hardy annuals. Yet hour after hour scarcely looking up, I could still hear the size of the garden, soft buzzing nearby, bright chirping around the feeder, territorial shouts all over – hummingbirds have really big lungs.
I could smell it, too. No matter where I was, no matter what was under my nose, there was the perfume of late summer’s fragrance factory, Cimicifuga racemosa (or Actaea racemosa, if you want to be au courant), aka black snakeroot, bugbane, black cohosh and fairy candles.
The clump of black snakeroot is down beyond the lower garden, nestled against the apple tree hedge/edge, but the fragrance is so intense it floats a very long way.
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Sweet Marjorie, an impulse justified
The thermometer hit 100 (not a misprint, one hundred) degrees on the porch yesterday. The peonies are in overdrive and ‘Sweet Marjorie’ is already fading, just days after the first bud opened. But while she lasted she was lovely – proof that irrational impulses can sometimes be worth following.
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For those of us with willpower deficiencies, a car with a large cargo area is a dangerous thing. There’s always room for another plant or six, especially if you get to the annual Trade Secrets plant sale too late to find any interesting dwarf evergreens.
I did of course buy a few other little things, and then as usual a few more, at my annual TS day next stop, Greystone Greenhouses, on rt. 343 right outside of Sharon CT and no I can’t put in a link because they have no website. What they have – in addition to all sorts of gorgeous tropicals you didn’t know you needed but gee the prices are so reasonable – is the tree peony of the century, in bloom early this year just like everything else.
depending on the weather, you probably have two or three more days to see this on the way in to buy your never-saw-a-pink-one before Clerodendrum thompsonii and other necessities.
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Ezra Pound, my latest adventure in tree peonies. There are purple flares inside but it rained hard the day Ezra opened and that was the end of that.
I have to say I’ve never had good luck with tree peonies, but that may not mean much; in 40 years of gardening I’ve only had three of them.
The first, an unnamed white, did beautifully for about a decade, growing ever larger and ever more floriferous – until it went into a rapid decline for reason or reasons unknown.
The white tree peony in the Maine white garden, at about 5 years old
Next came a weed-buried mystery, discovered after we moved into the Hudson Valley house.
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This year’s official* growing season started a full month earlier than usual in our part of the Hudson Valley. Although last week was spangled with frost, spring is already more or less over. Even late-flowering bulbs are toast. The lilacs are in full bloom.
Not wishing to miss the bandwagon, I’ll go ahead and be early too. It’s time to order bulbs for fall planting: pretties for the borders, shallots for the plate.
clockwise from left: chionodoxa, muscari, puschkinia, muscari, chionodoxa, scilla, puschkinia, chionodoxa, scilla
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