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.

Sort of. Old fashioned larkspurs (Consolida ambigua, aka C. ajacis) are forever because they’re reliable self-seeders. But they do cross with wild abandon, so we never know exactly what color they’ll be when they start blooming – all over the NY vegetable garden -  in early spring.

Usually, they’re blue

A plain deep navy is the dominant blue, but by no means the only one

They can also be pink

Oddly, the plain pink ones are always on the pale side. I only get the deep color with the tie dyed look

And while variegated effects are not common, they aren’t particularly rare.

I'm somewhat less keen on the blotchy ones, but they do have a certain panache

The New York team peters out about when the tomatoes start sizing up. In Maine, they’re around for most of the summer. I’m just now yanking up spent plants, waving them around like foxgloves to spread the seed.

With larkspurs, the fresher the seed, the greater the success, and in all but the very coldest climates they do fine when planted in the fall. (Bargain seed packs purchased at the end of the growing season should be planted before the ground freezes.)

Full sun and well drained soil that’s fertile but not too rich are about the only requirements, if you don’t count sowing them where they can find open ground. Larkspurs are weak competitors.

As for the “larkspur” part – also knight’s spur, lark’s claw, lark’s toe and lark’s heel (do we see a pattern here?) – it’s true.

Larks have a long hind claw, which is indeed called to mind by the pointed upper sepal of the flower. Bees with long tongues do most of the pollinating.

The true petals are smaller and inside

*The tall double larkspurs sold for cutting, the ones almost as tightly bunched as delphiniums, DO need staking.

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.

The alyssum is a never fail; vast numbers of the tiny seedlings always manage to survive no matter how often you disturb the soil to plant something larger and flashier.

The poppies have been addressed here before, in Shirley Poppies, One of Our Better Weeds, but it never hurts to praise the niftiest thing about them: they’re noteworthily promiscuous, cross breeding over and over so each is different from the rest. Every spring morning brings beautiful surprises.

Including many variations that are not Shirley poppies, according to Reverend William Wilks, who gets to be definite about it because he’s the one who developed and named them, back in the 1880′s. By the Reverend’s definition: Shirley Poppies

(1) are single,

not like this one

(2) always have a white base

not like this one

with (3) yellow or white stamens, anthers and pollen,

definitely not like this one

and

(4) never have the smallest particle of black.

on account of black takes us back toward the original, the poppy that grew in Flanders fields when all those graves disturbed the soil and liberated the seeds.

The original species, Papaver rhoeas, is bright red, with that big black blotch. Reverend Wilks started out with one that had a fine white piccottee edge

kind of like this, but with the blotch

and that’s why all the lovely variations that would give the Reverend fits should never be called Shirley poppies, although they are more or less all the time, including ( as you may have noticed) by me.

The ancestor of my weeds was a packet of Angels Choir, bought from Thompson and Morgan about 25 years ago, before everybody and their brother was carrying the seeds.

Everybody and their brother still doesn’t offer the wide range of old fashioned annuals found at Select Seeds, however, so if you don’t have a poppy growing friend to provide you with the necessary…

(Rhoeas is pronounced row-ays, should you for some reason want to be botanical about it. Otherwise, corn poppy and field poppy are equally acceptable.)

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.

I have never purchased a bearded iris. The blue and the purple were, like the yellow and paler blue ones I don’t happen to have photos of, gifts from other gardeners with rhizomes to spare. Thus the paradox of bearded iris: they’re finicky – insistent on proper placement, acid soil and good drainage, frequently beset by borers – and yet they multiply almost as aggressively as cannas and dahlias.

If you have any success at all, you find yourself having to divide them what seems like every other minute. Once every three years is the standard advice, although I confess once every four has been closer to my reality.

But once every four still leaves us with only two of full gratification; the flower show is less spectacular the first spring after division and by the fourth it’s starting to fall off. Even when the show is great, it doesn’t go on for long. And if I remember to change the water and keep it out of the sun, a well-budded stem lives as long in the vase as it does on the plant, looking all the more beautiful for being viewed close up.

So what with this and what with that, I’m thinking bearded iris belong in the cutting garden, not the perennial border (a useful thought, now that perennial borders are on their way out of our garden design).

Or maybe where these plants mostly belong is in fantasyland, along with China roses, fabulously expensive rare narcissi and a conservatory full of lemon trees. I’ve whiled away many happy hours browsing in Iris catalogs , knowing there are thousands of flowers I have yet to see. (The American Iris society conducts a yearly poll of members’ favorite tall bearded iris and still can’t get it down farther than the top 100.) I want them all while wanting no more…

At least no more tall bearded ones. The Japanese (ensata) types have me firmly in their grasp and only the fact that we have no place damp enough to grow them well keeps me from going on an acquisitional bender, even though their bloom season is almost obscenely short and they are, like tree peonies, flowers of about an hour in hot weather or heavy rain.

I don’t have photos of my one clump and I can’t find any in Flicker’s vast holdings that really convey their charm – the wide flat flowers on tall narrow plants defy the camera. Fortunately, art comes to the rescue, in this case via the Floral Calendar of Japan, by Shodo Kawarazaki (1889-1973), courtesy Dr. Ross Walker’s extensive (and wonderful!) Ohmi Gallery.

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.

Ok. “Thrive” is an exaggeration. The bush isn’t exactly bushy and until I do something about the boxwood that’s muscling it aside, it never will be.

Nevertheless. It blooms (albeit sparsely) nonstop from late May to November. The flowers last a long time, on the bush or in the vase. It does not get black spot or mildew. I’m not going to say Japanese beetles don’t eat it because if I do they’ll hear me and come running.

All this even though:

* it’s on the west side of the barn, 15 feet across the drive from a large shed and an enormous spruce tree, with the house blotting all light from the south/southwest. In other words, it gets about two hours of sun, right at the hottest part of the day. (Roses need at least 6 hours, preferably in the cool of the morning if that’s all they’re going to get.)

* The soil is poor in organic matter, full of ancient coal clinkers, largely colonized by the roots of the boxwood and the legacy pachysandra I keep planning to remove but don’t.

* Eves of the barn deny rain. We don’t water or fertilize. To say pruning is minimal is to put it kindly. Each spring the thing looks two thirds dead.

Each spring I cut off the dead parts. Then it starts greening up and leafing out and the next thing you know, roses.

Mitigating factors:

* The white walls of barn and shed do reflect a lot of light.

* A large cedar and the boxwood protect it on the north side.

* Pachysandra is a pretty good mulch if the mulched plant has deep enough roots.

* And that’s the side where the snow gets piled when we shovel the driveway, so at least in snowy years it’s getting an ideal heap of winter insulation.

ID note: Mr. Lincoln came out in 1965 and was an All-America Rose Selection. It has been popular and widely planted pretty much ever since, so I’m not necessarily nuts to see it everywhere.  In official descriptions, Mr. Lincoln has 35 petals. Our rose  usually has 25 to 30, but the more petals a flower should have, the more likely it is that not all blooms will measure up.

The full picture. That sapling to the right is a new lilac, on the theory it's always possible lightening will strike twice. (The drainpipes go into an underground cistern; no roof water for these guys.)

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.

When I planted it, years ago, it was Cimicifuga racemosa ‘Atropurpurea.’ Now, without my having to do anything, it’s Actaea racemosa (or possibly A. simplex) var. atropurpurea. Or maybe not. The nomenclatural tangle growing around these plants defies all but a botanist’s understanding and I’m not sure about them, either.

What matters from the gardener’s point of view is that they’re gorgeous, almost trouble free, and as I seem to have mentioned before, fantastically fragrant.

The buds are showy and the flowers open slowly, so you get a long season of bloom

Some authorities describe A. racemosa, a native of moist North American woodlands, as the species that smells disagreeable. If so, that would be a big help; telling one common Actaea from another is – let’s just say challenging.

Unfortunately, many other authorities say racemosa is, like other species, delightfully fragrant.* It’s probably one of those deals where beauty is in the nose of the smeller, but everyone agrees on the visual value: snakeroot is a must for any gardener who has the space and place. (They’re big, and they do need partial shade.)

In addition to the fragrance, snakeroots offer a kind of architectural twofer: first a bush, then a fountain. From spring to midsummer the plants are reasonably compact, with many stems of large compound leaves that are lovely enough in themselves to warrant a place in the garden.

Typical snakeroot leaf, this one less purple than it would be if the plant got more light and more moisture.

Snakeroot is slow to get going, but it grows from spreading rhizomes and once it takes hold a healthy plant can easily be a squarish mound 4 or 5 feet in diameter. Then in midsummer, transformation! Suddenly there are flowering stems that pull the height up to 6 or 8 feet, and they’re as close as don’t matter to naked from the point of emergence to the big plumes of bottlebrush flowers. A dark backgound shows them off best, but even with light behind them they seem to float unmoored, far above the foliage.

Did I mention they’re fragrant?

Growing Snakeroot

1) The ideal spot is fertile, moist, well drained and in partial shade, but the spiffy black leaved cultivars like ‘Hillside Black Beauty’ and ‘Chocoholic’ need a fair amount of bright light  – think full northeast exposure – to keep their intense color.

2) In my experience, these plants are tough. Even though they’re moisture loving, they can survive considerable drought – looking awful, admittedly – and come back strong as ever when conditions improve. But not until they’re established. For the first year or two, it’s essential to provide water if nature does not.

3) Bugs don’t like bugbane and it seldom gets diseased. Rust is the most common problem and can be severe if the plant is already stressed by drought. It would be convenient if Actaeas did well in wetlands, but standing moisture leads to root rot.

4) In undisturbed open woodland, snakeroot self-sows and can form large colonies. YAY!

…or sort of yay; you do have to be patient. Seeds need a warm/cold/warm cycle to sprout and seldom germinate until the second spring after falling. New plants are tiny and can remain nearly invisible for a couple of years, which is why the undisturbed part is important. After the plants are visible, expect to wait another couple of years before they start blooming.

5.) Transplanting small plants is easy, dividing big ones is not; violent root disturbance tends to set them back. Fortunately, they seldom need dividing. Like peonies they can stay in place for a couple of decades without developing dead centers.

* Powerful perfume is a two edged sword; snakeroot is a plein air plant. Bring it in as a bouquet and the smell is indeed strong enough to act as bug repellant.

Medical Note: If you try googling, it doesn’t take long to be deep in the weeds of herbal menopause symptom relievers. Most advocates call the plant black cohosh, perhaps because bugbane and fairy candles present obvious problems and snakeroot is just one small step away from snake oil. The few double blind studies I saw cited in my very brief tour of the terrain found it generally harmless but not notably efficacious. (The possible liver damage problem may or may not be a result of adulterated products.)

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.

After all, it’s basically stupid to get seduced by the name of a flower. Makes no more sense than buying wine because you like the label. But Marjorie was my sweet mother’s name. I bought one, even though I didn’t find the photo particularly exciting and it seemed unlikely there would be much in the way of fragrance.

That was 2 years ago, in the great Let’s Have More Peonies spree, and not surprisingly there were no flowers in 2009. It takes a while for peonies to get established. I wouldn’t have been upset if there weren’t any this year, either. But in fact there were  seven blossoms, each quite different from the other. Every one beautiful.

I got her from Klehm, the nursery where she was bred, and although I didn’t find her in this year’s online catalog, a quick check on the phone confirmed there are indeed plants for sale.

In this case a happy ending, along with a good reminder to ask for what you want before assuming it can’t be had. But it doesn’t always turn out that way. There are thousands of named cultivars, so there are always thousands “not currently available.”

And of course a lot of what is available is only available in limited quantities, so it’s best to shop early. Peonies don’t ship until fall, but nurseries reserve their stock on a first come first served basis, and  if you wait until closer to planting time you may be too late.

Peonies and I… well, let’s just say other peony posts include: shopping tips; my love affair with the beautiful, shade lovers found among species peonies; full directions for peony planting (along with quite a bit about the heirloom cultivars that came with the Hudson Valley house) and of course the truth about ants and peonies.

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.

Base of thumb to middle finger tip = 6.25 inches

The flowers aren’t especially large, as tree peonies go, but they have unusual substance and are actually a rich lavender (my camera has pink/blue issues).

So of course I asked what it was, only to learn it has no name. Ed Powers, who owns and runs the place with his plant-powerhouse wife, Laurel, told me it was grown from a seed.

The nursery sold it to them at a bargain price, he said, with no guarantees. But he thinks the fact that it IS a seedling, rather than a clone or graft, may account for its unusual vigor.

The Powerses planted it in 1992, and it has already been this size twice ( it took a great deal of damage in an ice storm, a few years back).

But I digress –  the thing is indeed worth a detour but Greystone is not about peonies…or conventional bedding plants, although they do sell things like marigolds and coleus.

The thing that’s great at Greystone is Laurel’s eye for the unusual: terrific fuchsias and begonias, papyrus galore, variegated brugmansias, all for prices so low they put the box stores to shame.

left: Clerodendrum thompsonii, right: clematis alpina

This is a picture of why I should have an MG or something. The clerodendrum is tropical; over a single summer in Maine it will become huge and gorgeous and then at least in theory I will either give it away or let it die. The sweet this-time-it-IS-pink species clematis, bought at Trade Secrets from Loomis Creek Gardens is hardy, and will grow larger and lovelier each year ( in the Hudson Valley) with minimal attention from me.

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.

Paltry and flowerless when we found it, under Bill’s tender care it grew – slowly, in the manner of tree peonies – into a huge bush, covered each spring with silk tissue flowers 6 to 8 inches wide. Magenta, unfortunately, but you can’t have everything.

You also can’t have the tree peony, if you have to dig it up and move it in the middle of the summer so you can get at the well pipe it was planted next to.

It hung on in the new spot for a few years but never really recovered, and when we moved it again it croaked.

Insert a gap of many years, during which I got more and more interested in species peonies. But then I was ordering a bunch of new garden peonies and what the heck, here comes Ezra.

So far, same old same old. His first summer was last year – cold, dark and miserable. The plant, small to begin with, barely hung on. No new wood added. This spring, all woody stems except one five-incher were dead. Grumble.

But then, lots of healthy new growth from the roots! A good sized extension of the woody stem, with a big fat bud attached! Another bud, much lower on the stalk! And then the propane-delivery guy whacked off the extension by dragging the heavy hose over it. He saw the teepee of protective stakes and tried to avoid the plant, but somehow my cranky tree peony gods guided his subsequent movements.

Hope springs eternal however; the rest of the new growth is still in fine shape. And this weekend is super garden show Trade Secrets, in Sharon CT., a reliable source of rare peonies – if you get there early.

Garden Tour Alert: Ezra Pound was hybridized by William Gratwick lll, a major luminary of tree peony breeding. The fabulous collection he built lives on at his estate, still in family hands. The gardens are open just a few days a year, starting this very weekend: the 2010 season begins with a preview on May 15.  If you are anywhere near Rochester, New York,  it’s worth a special journey. Garden and tour information is here.

Nomenclature disclaimer: No, I have no idea why Mr. Gratwick decided to name this beautiful plant after the brilliant poet/notorious fascist sympathizer, nor have I been able to learn the answer by googling. Please write and tell us if you know.

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

On the Ornamental Front – Singing the Blues

I don’t think I’ve ever met a “minor,” aka small, bulb I didn’t like, but this year my mind is on the little blues: scilla and chionodoxa, muscari and puschkinia.

In addition to being blue, already a major plus, these old favorites are terrific bargains – inexpensive to buy, easy to plant (see below), and, bless ‘em, reliably prolific.

Once you get them going they not only persist forever, they also multiply and move around. Clumps expand into little puddles. Adventurous volunteers pop up far from the original plantings, wildflowers once more.

PLANTING TIPS

Placement: These are early bloomers, but not that early, so it’s unwise to plant them where they’ll get mowed before the leaves have fed the bulbs and the flowers have set seed. I’ve put most of ours at the edges of beds and in the skirts of the trellis of Dutchman’s Pipe that borders the crocus lawn. Annie next door has a wavy blue sea below the trees at the edge of her drive, and she just lets the grass there get shaggy until it’s safe to mow.

Deep blue scilla is dominant in this stretch at Annie's, but there are also plenty of chionodoxa and grape hyacinth, once you start looking.

Planting:

In grassy areas:  For each clump of 10 to 20 bulbs (depending on size of bulb, not size of budget), envision a rough circle about 10 inches in diameter. Cut all the way around it with a shovel, then cut underneath 2 to 3 inches, so you have a disk of sod. Remove it, loosen the dirt underneath, then position the bulbs on it, pointing up, about 2 bulb-widths apart. (Do not add fertilizer) Replace the disk and press down firmly with a foot.

Elsewhere: In thickly planted beds, you can just use a trowel to lever a wedge-shaped opening and put a few bulbs in it. If the soil is soft after a rain you can sometimes simply push them firmly into spaces between perennials.

Putting some in the cutting garden is usually unnecessary, but if you were planning the sort of wedding that gets planned many months in advance you might want to plant a patch to be harvested for nosegays - Muscari armeniacum have a lovely, not-too-sweet fragrance –  and table decorations.

Shallot planting info coming shortly. Meanwhile, get those orders in;  less-common varieties, including French gray “true” shallots ( Allium oschanini) sell out fast.

I get my little blues from Brent and Becky and from Van Engelen. Shallots come from my personal friends at Johnny’s Selected Seeds,  from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and from Kitchen Garden Seeds (the food branch of Van Engelen).

* The National Weather Service declares the growing season’s start each year,  based on a number of mostly  pretty obvious factors. Once an area is officially in its growing season, frost and freeze warnings are issued whenever warranted until the season is declared officially over.

Iochroma cyanea by Bobbi Angell

The artist, Bobbi Angell, is my former partner-in-column at the New York Times, and after many many trips to exotic places, drawing plants for the New York Botanical Garden (among others),  she has no doubt forgotten more about tropical plants than I will ever learn.

“I tried overwintering one in the cellar ,” she wrote, “and had just brought it up two days ago so don’t know yet it if survived but I sure hope so… here is an etching  from a wild plant in Ecuador that I saw last year. I love the plant! ”

In her next e-mail, she wrote “Now tell me to quit poking at my dormant plant checking for signs of life lest I kill it off in anticipation. There is green under the bark but won’t be for long if I scrape any more off with my fingernails.”

What she doesn’t know is that I should do that telling while looking in the mirror. I was just down in the basement scratching – vainly; I’m going to need a pruner – at the lemon verbena, and at the biggest brugmansia, which I have a feeling is going to emerge somewhat less big.

No worries about the smaller brugmansia or the giant herd of figs (well, 5 seems like a herd); they all have pale green new growth and must be moved back into the light asap.

That’ll be as soon as we get back… I’m playing semi hooky to go hunting for black morels, always the first of the season.