Great Plants
So far, no summer for us in Maine – and not much in the Hudson Valley, either. But that won’t stop autumn from arriving in about 5 minutes. Time to get the fall bulb list together and I’m not just talking tulips (and daffodils, crocus, muscari, scilla …)
Not by a long shot. After all the spring beauties are done there’s a whole new round of effortless delight, thanks to the alliums. Ornamental types shine in June – especially in weather like this on account of they’re rainproof – and of course there’s garlic: scapes right now, mature bulbs in mid to late July.
Walking through the garden these last days I see I don’t have enough
Allium christophii
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Not much, unfortunately, when you have downpours like the ones that the Hudson Valley’s been having for the last two weeks. I don’t suppose it makes sense to call anything this soggy ” toast,” but our peonies are over for this year.
They did ok though the first couple of storms, so there were still plenty to pick when I got here from Maine
Cache-pots aren't just for pots. Use a glass or china liner in metal ones (to extend the vase life of the flowers).
At that point, the peony hedge looked like this
Not great, standupwise, but not bad - except for that white one at center right
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If you don’t count
old faithful Jens Munk,
blooming away at the edge of the woods, the first rose to show its face in the lower gardens was a white hybrid tea whose name I no longer remember. Not an especially pretty plant ( as usual with hybrid teas) but a very pretty rose.
Also a nicely fragrant one. Put your nose in the vicinity and be rewarded with a delightful lemony perfume.
“ Those people who are always on about scentless modern roses have gotten a bit carried away,” thought I , keeping the trophy close to my schnoz as I headed up to the house.
Passed the gone-to-wild-we-still-haven’t-upgraded-it side garden and there was a survivor, the antique gallica ‘Tuscany’, small, semi-double, deep, deep purplevelvet red.
Modern white, antique red
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Ok, let’s start by being honest. Lilac bouquets do not last, period. Or at least they don’t last like tulips, say, or peonies, or even roses. This is partly because lilacs wilt fast and partly because there’s no wiggle room: tulips and peonies and roses remain beguiling in decline; lilacs look awful as soon as they don’t look wonderful.
To keep them looking wonderful for as long as possible:
* Choose trusses that are about half open – if they’re mostly buds, they’ll just give up before going any farther and if every florette is blooming the end is already near.
* Cut them early in the morning before the bark heats up and put them up to their necks in the large bucket of tepid water you have right with you.
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and a couple – well ok, three – new clematis from Brushwood Nursery are this year’s proof that no matter how much I grouse about the proportion of antiques to rare plants at Trade Secrets, it’s still all too easy to find things you didn’t know you needed until you were standing there needing them.
Paeonia japonica ( which will hide the empty bleeding heart space, come midsummer.)
I blame it all on this woodland peony from Hillside Nursery. When I bought it four years ago it was nothing but a robust little popkin with about 3 leaves. Each spring it comes up larger and larger, more and more glorious, (in)conveniently blooming abundantly right before T.S., the only retail show Hillside attends.
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Distantly, is my advice – not very originally; just about every experienced gardener, professional and otherwise, is of the same opinion. Knowing doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t help much either, as I have just been reminded.
Twenty years ago, when falling in love with Bill meant moving 400 miles Southwest from my beloved Midcoast Maine to the then-unknown Hudson Valley, I had a standard grumble: “ Didn’t even get a climate zone out of it.”
They’re both 5b or maybe 6, depending on how you look at the up to date zone map, but here are the garden plants that were blooming in New York when I left for Maine on April 30th. :
Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) under the Magnolia x soulangiana already dropping its fat pink petals
Also, hellebores
Hyacinths
Narcissi
Tulips
Forsythia
Muscarii
Euphorbia
Forget-me-nots
Creeping phlox
Fragrant viburnums
Bleeding hearts
Spiraea
Apple
Plum
Fritillaria imperialis (barely)
And here’s what was blooming in Maine when I arrived:
Zilch.
Well not quite.
Hyacinth in the nepeta carpet
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Lilium 'Golden Splendor'
Because the garden is always a relief from the cares of this world.
Because you can’t beat trumpet lilies.
And because neither suspect pistachios nor plagiarized DNA is exactly a visual thrill (whoopie pies are probably a matter of opinion).
isn’t the one that’s most delicious or the one with the prettiest kernels. In fact it tastes terrible and you can’t see the kernels at all, because the corn I have in mind is Zea mays var. japonica, usually sold as Zea japonica or Japanese ornamental corn.
Zea mays var. japonica
Whatever you call it, it produces brilliantly striped green, white and pink foliage, starting quite early in the season. First growth is plain green, but as long as the leaves get plenty of sun, they start coloring up when the plants are about 3 feet tall.
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Old Faithful, the tropical passionflower (species unknown) that has been going from greenhouse to windowbox and back again for years has brought us a great deal of pleasure. The thing’s an unkillable blooming fool that makes about 14 feet of growth each summer.
it's all one vine, base at lower right
But it’s also brought us a great deal of aggravation. Moving large plants back and forth between the Maine coast and the Hudson Valley is not my favorite thing.
So wouldn’t it be great to have a passionflower that was willing to live outdoors? YES! Passionflowers are almost all denizens of zones 9 and south, but there is one, the native Passiflora incarnata, rated hardy to Zone 6 or 7 – and we are almost 6.
Passiflora incarnata, aka Maypop
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Our Hudson Valley house came with a lot of heirloom peonies buried in the weeds and shade, so many huge old root masses that after rescue and division we had enough to string them all along the front borders of the vegetable gardens: 100 running feet of peonies, divided in half by a grassy path roughly 6 feet wide.
I'm standing at the halfway point
It’s wonderful to be able to pick andpick without making a dent.
Vincent ignoring part of the morning harvest
But it’s slightly less wonderful to have the overflow using up a non-trivial chunk of the fenced space that should be devoted to food.
After all, one of the things that’s great about peonies is that deer really do seem to leave them alone. So this year, finally, we’re movin’ ‘em on out. And I’ve bought new different peonies to plant closer to the house. Read More…
