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.
Nan over at GGW has started a new design topic–sigh. Containers. Rather a sore point for me because I very much admire containers that are well done, but I don’t have the design savoir-faire to pull them off myself, except occasionally by accident. However, in looking through my photos, I see many examples of much better gardeners than I am who don’t pull them off very well either.
Here is a bit of a jumble of pots at the Nathaniel Russell House Museum in Charleston. Very pretty, no doubt, when full of flowers at the end of March as here, but hardly a triumph of design.
Here, on the other hand, is the window box on my garden shed about a week ago. Small violas, which don’t need nearly as much deadheading as big pansies, complementary colors, self-watering (from Gardeners Supply Company and, much to my surprise, the self-watering feature actually works). The perfect unpretentious window box? Well, no. If you look closely, you will see that I never cleaned off the black mold that covers the white box. And the lamium has rotting dead leaves that should be picked off every time I happen by there. Pretty uncouth, really.
Here’s a vista in a Savannah town garden that I feel has pros and cons. The pro is that a formal design is undoubtedly appropriate for a small walled garden. Also, that semi-circle of dwarf mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus) is low-maintenance and attractive year round.
On the other hand the boxwoods that outline the whole design are a real mistake. They’ll get much too big and will need to be pruned viciously approximately every 3 minutes to keep them in bounds. I really hate that pillar, apparently pilfered from an Italian villa. And that trellis is pretty pointless until some vine grows up it.
The containers are just plain dull. That heuchera is all very well now (early April), but it will turn to mush in the heat of summer after putting out some straggly, pathetic flowers.
To be continued….
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:
This is a rather fine flower from a camellia of which I am not fond. It looks better this year because I have disdubbed it every time I went near it. I don’t know the variety. Thom gave it to me years ago. It looked fine when it was in a grove of pines, but now that the pines are gone, it is the most prominent feature of the front garden, at least as viewed from the house. It is large, and red and green with no subtlety.
It is usually said that camellias like shade, but this one is now in full sun and seems to love it. Admittedly the red ones are said to tolerate sun better than paler ones. This one is growing rapidly and never gets mold or scale or any of the usual woes. Despite the fact that it displeases me visually, I can’t bring myself to cut it down because it is so healthy. The other shrubs and trees that have been rather randomly chosen to take over from the pines are still pretty small. Maybe the camellia will be less intrusive when they get bigger.
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!
We have had more than 3 inches of rain in the past week. And here is the new rain gauge to prove it. On a post in the veg garden.
I’ve planted several roses from the Antique Rose Emporium this month. Two ‘Zephirine Drouhin’: one to climb up the yaupon holly and onto the pergola, and I don’t now remember where the other one is! One ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ by the small live oak in front. It can grow up the tree as the tree grows. I know ARE doesn’t recommend letting either of these get as tall as they will have to in these locations, but I fell in love with John McEllen’s ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ at the Ships of the Sea Museum, which drips down from a fairly large tree. The other climber is Thom’s favorite Cherokee rose, which is at the base of the big pine in front and I hope will grow up it among the confederate jasmine. I shall have to keep an eye on this, because the confederate jasmine is well established and liable to smother a baby rose.
The smaller roses are ‘Blush Noisette,’ ‘Champney’s Pink Cluster,’ ‘Ducher,’ and ‘Mutabilis,’ which I’ve planted around the pond. I am not real fond of the color(s) of ‘Mutabilis,’ but it does have the great virtue of flowering over an amazingly long period in this part of the world.
I love this kalanchoe that Mary gave me. It’s been in this pot for 10 months. It gets absolutely no attention. (Well, I’ve pulled one weed.) And it is producing babies.
I’ve never known much about succulents, but I have to embark on a concerted search for them now because Lex and Beezoo gave me a “green wall” planter for Christmas, and I can’t imagine that anything will survive in it except small, drought-resistant plants. And they also need to be colorful. This kalanchoe is too big, I think, so I shall have to find small ones. Not that my wall is going to look anything like as good as Ed Snodgrass’s green roof but…..
I see that Saxon Holt has just finished a book on hardy succulents that I believe I shall have to purchase.
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.
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