Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ is in flower, the pretty little thing. Although the young leaves are a gorgeous purple, the color fades by midsummer in our heat.
On I-81, somewhere in Virginia (at least I think it is Virginia), there is a straight stretch of road between hillside cow pastures where they have planted forsythia in the median. One year, the forsythia flowered at the same time as redbuds bordering the forest above the pasture. The complementary colors were breathtaking.
Zephirine Drouhin is in full bloom. What an amazingly saturated color. And what a fragrance. I brought one into the house and it perfumes the whole living room.
So you might think spring has really sprung, but climate change bites again. We had an unadvertised frost last night and I lost half my pepper seedlings. Curses.
The daffodils are nice this year. I didn’t plan to pick them for the house, but they keep getting blown over by really strong winds. There’s no point in leaving them lying on the ground, so I have several vases full scattered about the house.
Rather to my surprise, since I hacked everything in the bog to the ground about ten days ago, this never-wet (Orontium aquaticum) has started blooming. The bog was designed as a homage to a ditch in Okefenokee, a reminder of possibly my favorite place on earth, and it is full of unglamorous natives. Never-wet is so-called because its leaves are very waxy and repel water more than most leaves.
Viburnum tinus is in full flower in the front hedge. This particular one is a very slow grower, only about 5 feet tall at 5 years from a cutting.
Lady Banks is in full flower on the pergola. So is Lonicera sempervirens, but I can’t get up high enough for a photo. I know Lady Banks blooms only once a year, but that’s NOT a problem since there are 7 or 8 other vines on the pergola that bloom at other times. And what’s not to love about a thornless rose that is such a glorious yellow.
Chionodoxa luciliae is just beginning to flower. There’s probably something I can do to the camera to produce a better blue than this washed-out affair, but I don’t know what. I should really take a course or get a better camera, or read the instruction book, or something.
After considerable debate about various species of jasmine, I am convinced that this is pink jasmine, Jasminum polyanthum. I moved it to the veg garden fence about 18 months ago and it is doing just as I hoped, working toward an imitation of a gorgeous fence I saw on a Charleston garden walk:
Here is the first daffodil of the year. I don’t know what happened to all my paperwhites. Maybe they got disappeared in all the garden remodeling.
In fact, I must say I am disappointed in the flower display from the hundreds of bulbs I planted 2 years ago and all the ‘Dutch Bulb Food’ they’ve received. All were carefully chosen for supposed ability to do well in Zone 9. Maybe they just need more time to become established. Ha!
Prunus mume ‘Pegggy Clarke’ is in full bloom in back and half in bloom in part shade in front of the house. I’ve always thought PG was a rather virulent purple. It looks purple when you drive past the one in Forsyth Park. But this doesn’t look so bad. Maybe it’s not really ‘Peggy Clarke.’ ‘Bonita’ is a softer pink, so maybe this is it. How confusing. Can’t remember where I bought this one. The ‘Bonita’ is Woodlanders, and I think they usually get their varieties right.
A few days ago, I noticed there was a cluster of blooms on the Lady Banks. This morning there is another. I suppose spasms of warm weather are the cause. Someone should tell her she’s a couple of months early. The swamp jessamine and honeysuckle aren’t even in flower yet.
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden says, “Prunus mume should be pruned after flowering; cut half of the long shoots back by one-half to two-thirds so that each year you will have both encouraged long shoots on which more flowers will be produced in the future and still saved enough flower buds for the coming winter. ” I realize I have probably just done it wrong on my tree in back by cutting back all the long, non-flowering shoots by half. We shall see.
I planted this Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum ‘Chinese Pizzazz’ in 2005 to hide a length of chain-link fence. It is just beginning to flower. The leaves will become more burgundy-colored as the season progresses.
The National Arboretum calls this the “neon lights of the witchhazel family.” I like the fact that it blooms for a long time, is a cheerful color, forms a dense hedge, and has small leaves, so that it is easily pruned by shearing.
What most people fail to realize is that loropetalum is fast-growing and gets VERY LARGE–meaning about 10 feet in all directions in only a few years. There are several places on our little island where it has been planted recently to landscape a parking lot and within a few years will completely block the entrance to a shop or sidewalk.
p.s. I planted the pimientos seeds on December 26 and they are doing fine. Heirloom seeds are a burden, but Beezoo said pepper seeds would germinate when two years old and it appears she is right.
Podranea ricosaliana still has a few flowers. This one is behind the shed, but there are some on the pergola as well. All my plants were cuttings from ones Jane had growing up telephone poles at her B&B in Homerville. I now know that growing them up telephone poles is not a good way to go, since they have no climbing mechanism, so would need to be tied in all the time. Also, they are much too aggressive for such a location.
Woodlanders (which is where I first discovered what this was) says “Plant in sunny site with well-drained soil and allow ample space to grow.” True, I’m sure, but this gives no idea of what a friendly vine this is. Yes, it gets big. But it is not invasive, in that it doesn’t spread underground. Now that it has reached the top of the pergola, it doesn’t need to be tied, but just sprawls over the pergola. I never water it, and the only maintenance is chopping off the branches that come drooping down between the rafters. And the flowers are very showy. All in all, an excellent vine for a big pergola. (Of course this may be famous last words and it will turn out to be a wisteria-mimic, eventually tearing the pergola down.
Killer afternoon making the patio more respectable. Don’t know that my tendonitis-ridden ankle will ever recover. The toughest bit was dividing the Phyllostachys nigra (black bamboo).
Here is one in a pot looking beautiful soon after the patio was built. But I drowned this one with irrigation when we were in California. Although they like plenty of water, they also need drainage! That left one pot. I was inclined to kill it off and put something really easy like skyrocket junipers in the pots. But when I hacked the survivor to the ground in November, it bravely put up lots of new growth, so I decided it deserved to live. They’re horribly expensive, so I had to divide it to fill the other pot. This took half an hour with the (blunt) axe.
I went to Ace this morning for paint for the blue bench in front, but got distracted by Hester & Zipperer. So instead of just weeding, hacking the vines, and getting leaves and crud off the patio, I also had annuals to plant.
Also a Daphne odora over which to dither. I think it needs dry, dense shade, and I can’t decide where to put it. The one out front is not a doer, perhaps because it gets too much sun. That’s the second one that’s let me down here, and I can’t think why. The one at Walthour Road was spectacular, stuck under a live oak and never watered.
Flats of violas and snapdragons, but I also wanted something that might survive on the patio. The beds near the house have got awfully dry and shady, what with all the vines, and the usual annuals don’t do well there. I’m trying Nemesia fruticans ‘Compact Innocence’ and Diaschia x ‘Flying Colors Orange.’ I was going to add some Lamium maculatum, which I keep meaning to try, but I think it likes loads of water, which it ain’t going to get in a flower bed, so I put that in a couple of planters over by the shed.
Prunus mume ‘Peggy Clarke’ is blooming in back. Or at least it has a few flowers fully open. I guess it gets more sun than the one in front. I find this a slightly vicious pink, so the two I bought from Woodlanders this year are ‘Bonita’ instead. My absolute favorite, I think is ‘Rosemary Clarke,’ which is nearly white, but I have managed to kill both of mine. I really can’t imagine why, since they are said to dislike wet feet, which nobody gets in my garden outside of the bog.
This Camellia sasanqua is going over now. It’s been blooming since September. Mine is 4 years old and about 8′ high. There is one down the road that is about 15′ high and has been pruned into a multi-trunk tree.
I don’t know the variety. I thought it was in my notebook, but I can’t find it. Might it be ‘Pink Snow’? Can anyone enlighten me?
The petals fall to the ground (beautifully mulched with pine straw) in a pale pink carpet that looks like snow.
I love it.
Here is the Lady Banks rose on the pergola one year after it was planted as a scraggly little plant that had never flowered. This has to be absolutely the best shade vine for this part of the world. What’s not to love? It is a thornless, evergreen rose with gorgeous flowers. Admittedly, it flowers only once a year and you have to prune occasionally to keep it from dripping and drooping all over the place. (The largest tree in the world is believed to be a Lady Banks in Arizona that covers about an acre of land.)
Culture is easy in this climate. She needs full sun (as I discovered with one partly under a live oak at Walthour Road which did not flower as well as its neighbor 6 feet closer to full sun). Not fussy about water or fertilizer. (Which means I have never watered or fertilized a Lady Banks more than 6 months old.)
The book says that outdoor ceilings should be higher than indoor ceilings not to feel claustrophobic and I believe it, so the pergola “roof” is almost 12 feet from the ground. This presents a problem when pruning and painting. The pruning problem I have solved with a truly excellent pruning shear-like gadget with a sliding trigger supplemented by a rope. It is powerful enough to prune the bougainvillea, so it makes light work of the Lady Banks.
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