Archive | 2024

2024 : Summer Splendor

Recent scientific studies have found that increasing your sense of smell can sharpen your mind and improve your mental health. As one expert observed: “The olfactory system is the only sensory system that has a direct superhighway projection into the memory centers and the emotional centers of your brain.” A professor of olfactory sciences at the Dresden University of Technology suggested, “helping your brain may be as simple as taking time to smell the roses.”

Consider welcoming to your garden the fragrant beauty Proven Winners At Last Rose Z 5-9. The shrub has graced my zone 7a organic garden for four years. It is planted in a large container in a mix of organic potting soil and compost. The rose’s foliage is healthy and very disease-resistant. At Last blooms continually and abundantly from May to frost. The flowers are beautiful at all stages of growth and spill their divine fragrance on the air. Photos below.

This year I ordered, inter alia, a variety of shade-loving annual Begonias directly from Proven Winners. For awesome explosions of color, I planted an old, broken, red wheelbarrow with Rieger Solenia Yellow Begonia and Rieger Solenia Scarlet Begonia, and a front-step-rail container with the orange spiller, Santa Cruz Begonia boliviensis. Photos below.

I also added two new pollinator-magnet perennials to the garden this year, purchased from a local source, Talmage Farm Agway, in Riverhead New York:

Ajuga reptans ‘Burgundy Glow’ (Bugleweed) Z 3-8

For decades, I’ve enjoyed the purple Spring flowers of the common ground cover Ajuga reptans, but I’m not a fan of its blah-green foliage. Burgundy Glow’s variegated foliage adds panache to the garden for the entire growing season. Photo below.

Penstemon Dakota Burgundy (Beardtongue) Z 3-7

This Penstemon’s new foliage emerges dark purple and when grown in shade changes to a rich dark green. The showy June flowers are white splashed with purple with purple stems. When the flowers fade, the plant produces handsome seed heads. Photos below.

When I left Talmage Farm, a lovely bird followed me home. I named him Agway.

Talmage Farm Agway, 1122 Osborn Ave, Riverhead, New York, has a varied and interesting inventory of plants and garden art. For purchasing help and expert garden advice ask for Sherry. Tel: 631-727-3100; e-mail: agway@talmagefarm.com

April\May 2024: Spring Enchantment

May18

“These are long golden days…full of expectation…orchards are billowy with bloom, and unnumbered birds sing their thrilling songs….It is a time of flourishing well-being.” Louise Beebe Wilder.

Spring is a special time in my garden. Dazzling plants of enduring merit abound, like the snowy-white flowering cherry tree Prunus ‘Snow Fountain’ pictured above, and the deliciously fragrant, flowering hedge of Skimmia japonica pictured below. These plants, and others, have graced my Spring garden for many years.

In this post, I will talk about and recommend three outstanding Spring-flowering bulbs, new additions to the garden:

Tazetta Narcissi ‘Avalanche’ (Seventeen Sisters) Z6-9.

According to an ancient saying: “He that hath two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them and buy Narcissus, for bread is food for the body but Narcissus is food for the soul.” I’m wild about Avalanche, a fragrant, luminous, 1906 heirloom Narcissus. I wrote about these bulbs in a recent post when they started to push growth in December and I feared they would be zapped by frost. Yet, after I dumped unfinished compost on the unseasonable new growth, the robust bulbs bloomed profusely in April. Avalanche happily hangs out with He-Haw the donkey in the garden bed next to the front steps of the house. Perfect placement for constant viewing and admiration.

Giant Darwin Hybrid Tulip ‘Akebono’ Z 3-7

While it is still early days, I think Akebono is the biggest success of the season. I planted ten tulip bulbs — Big Mac for voles — and ten came up; 100 percent vole-repellent success! (See blog post “2022: Natural, Non-Toxic, Vole Repellent.”) Akebono has huge, fragrant, primrose-yellow flowers edged in red — with occasional red striations as in the photo above. Giant Darwin Hybrids are sometimes called perennial tulips because they are likely to return for multiple years. And Akebono releases its sweet fragrance on the air, perfuming the garden. A bulb I never want to be without.

Hyacinthoides hispanica ‘Excelsior’ Z 3-8

I was seduced by the astonishing beauty of this rodent-resistant, naturalizing, 1906 heirloom Spanish Bluebell bulb. I saw its picture in a 2023 Newsletter and ordered fifty bulbs. (See blog post “Summer 2023: Resplendent Plants”.) I planted the bulbs under oak trees in a wooded, shady area of the property. In May, every bulb flowered. A joy to behold! I visit with them every day.

My go-to source for mail order bulbs is John Scheepers in Connecticut; www.johnscheepers.com; Phone: 860-567-0838.

A Scylla/Charybdis Choice

I’m in the throes of a dilemma. My beloved thirty year old, handsome, evergreen shrub, Rhododendron bureavii, has grown four feet into our narrow driveway, an intrusion causing all sorts of havoc with vehicles and drivers. Photo below.

I’d like to move the shrub out of harm’s way but it is risky with such a huge, established plant. This is an uncommon, very special Rhododendron variety and I don’t want to lose it. R. bureavii’s new growth is covered in brown tormentum; the undersides of its leaves are covered in orange velvet indumentum; and it produces beautiful May flowers. Photos below.

The alternative to moving the shrub would be to prune the offending stems. But in this case it would be more like a mutilation.

A Rhododendron guru was consulted and asked whether it would be better to move the plant or prune the plant.

He responded: “Move the driveway!”

(As of the date of this post, no action taken.)

Finally, as we madly plunge into the 2024 gardening year, consider this wise counsel:

“Love your garden and work in it and let it give you what it surely will of sweetness, health, and content, and let no one feel that the benefit is all on the side of the garden, for truly you will receive more than you give, no matter how faithfully you work, and you will soon find yourself more dependent upon your garden than your garden upon you.” Louise Beebe Wilder, My Garden (Doubleday, Page & Company, 1916)

2024: Time-Tested Beauties 3

Mar13

“There can be no perfect flower without fragrance.” Stephane Mallarme

This post is all about fragrance. I am a card-carrying fragrant plant groupie and my garden is filled with time-tested, beautiful, sweetly-scented flowering plants. I’m rewarded daily with Aromatherapy in my own backyard!

I’ve chosen a shrub and a vine for your consideration:

Clerodendrum trichotomum (Harlequin Glory Bower Z 7-9) made the cut at the insistence of bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. I am thrilled at the sight of the pollinator trifecta taking turns flirting with this tall showy deciduous shrub.

In late Summer, Harlequin Glory Bower produces scores of white flowers that spill intense, seductive perfume on the air. When the flowers fade and drop, their calyxes turn rosy pink. In the Fall, the calyxes’ pink sepals open and reveal, nested within, small, greenish-hued pea-shaped fruit that turns an astonishing metallic-cerulean blue. Sometimes flowers, pink calyxes, and fruit appear at the same time. Photos below.

(Be aware: When Clerodendrum is established and happy, it may thank you for your kind care with a gift of pop-up volunteers by way of its underground roots.)

Provide rich organic, well-draining, moist, acidic soil.

Passiflora x ‘Incense’ (Passion Flower Z 7-10) is an award-winning, hardy, exotic flowering vine with intoxicating fragrance. For almost thirty years it has flourished — disease-free and pest-free — in my zone 7a organic garden. The plant dies back in winter and returns in late Spring the following year, unlike the countless other Passion Flowers I have tried that died at first frost and never came back. The vine flowers on new growth.

(Be aware: P. x ‘Incense,’ like Clerodendrum, is a runner: expect volunteers to pop up from the mother plant’s underground roots.)

P. x ‘Incense’ has an interesting back-story: The plant was the result of a USDA hybridizing program aimed at developing hardy tropical fruits. One of Incense’s parents was P. incarnata, the hardy North American native vine; the other parent was the tropical South American native, P. cincinnata, a vine that produces large, luscious fruit. While Incense inherited the hardiness gene, its fruit failed to impress. Yet, to my mind, the project was a huge success: P. x ‘Incense’ has showy, unique, fragrant flowers beloved by bees, butterflies, and this grateful gardener. Photos below.

Provide moist, well-drained soil, in sun or part shade.

Spring is just a shiver away!

2024: Time-Tested Beauties 2

Feb28

“Gardening is eleven months of hard work and one month of disappointment.” Elizabeth Lawrence.

While Lawrence spoke in jest, many of us have experienced real moments of despair when our dreams of garden magic turn into disappointing nightmares. All the more reason to fill our gardens with successful, time-tested, timeless plants, like the non-stop performer below:

Pieris japonica ‘Mountain Fire’ (Z 4-7) has graced my garden for more than thirty years and never disappoints: The tall, handsome, evergreen shrub bedazzles in Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. In late Summer, the Pieris produces an abundance of flower buds that turn a show-stopping pink in Winter; in early Spring they open to pendulous clusters of fragrant white flowers, providing nectar for the early Spring pollinator, the Mourning Cloak Butterfly. Photos below.

(Note: The Mourning Cloak is one of North America’s longest lived butterflies. Unlike others, it hibernates over Winter — hopefully in our gardens — and emerges in Spring to mate and deposit eggs, ensuring a new generation before it dies. Not surprising that in the Spring photo above, the butterfly looks a bit ragged. The beautiful lively youngsters are unwilling to stop and pose for me.)

But I digress. Back to P.j. ‘Mountain Fire’:

When the Pieris flowers fade in May, the shrub’s vibrant fire-engine-red new growth emerges and rightfully demands star-billing and attention. Photo below. The new red leaves will turn a deep bronze before they finally turn green.

P.j. ‘Mountain Fire’ is deer-resistant and disease-resistant. In my organic garden, for more than three decades it has been deer-proof and disease/pest-free. (My Pieris thrives in shade. Be aware, if grown in sun it may have a serious problem with lace bug.) Provide well-drained, organically rich, acid soil.

2024:Time-Tested Beauties

Feb10

“If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo.” C.S. Lewis.

If you are a new gardener, perhaps you shouldn’t start by lusting after rare, exotic, needy — often strange looking — plants that will faint onto the swooning couch if you look at them the wrong way. Rather, first build your confidence — and your garden — with easy-care, robust, resplendent plants that will work for you, not the other way around.

With the chaos and uncertainty of climate change, even seasoned gardeners have a new appreciation for plants you can safely count on. In the next few posts I will focus on a number of these special, time-tested beauties that have flourished for decades in my organic garden, starting with two of my favorite Elepidote Rhododendrons:

Rhododendron ‘Calsap’ (Z 4-7)

It isn’t easy to choose two favorite Rhododendrons — I have so many. Calsap was chosen because — apart from its unfortunate name — it has it all: winter hardiness, vigor, handsome stately form, healthy evergreen foliage, and masses of gorgeous flowers in May. Bees are also fans. Photos below.

Rhododendron makinoi (Z 5-7)

This garden jewel is all about foliage. R. makinoi has healthy, elegant, evergreen, long and narrow leaves, which circle the stems like ribs of an umbrella. And its new growth is covered with showy white tomentum — yes, you can have razzle-dazzle with hardy, easy-care plants. The shrub blooms in May and has an attractive, dense, mounded form. Photos below.

All you need to know about Rhododendron care is covered by the late Hank Schannen, accomplished Rhododendron breeder and founder of Rare Find Nursery, in his Criteria For Success With Rhododendrons:

January 2024: Looking Forward

Jan14

Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy, New Year!

Sadly, not so happy or healthy for my daffodils: Unseasonable warming and seesawing temperatures due to climate change caused the Spring-flowering bulbs to emerge in December 2023, and they will surely be zapped. Mother Nature has moved to Crazyville, a serious, ongoing environmental problem.

Here are a few other things to think about in 2024:

In a previous post I wrote about entomologists changing the common name of Lymantria dispar from gypsy moth to spongy moth because the word gypsy was an ethnic slur, offensive to the Romani people. The issue of name change is once again front and center. But now it’s all about biological name change, a different kettle of fish with a different set of rules.

Unlike common name change, biological name change has, as a rule, required evidence of a link to new scientific discovery. Scientists and others are now proposing that offensive biological names commemorating racists or other monstrous humans should be erased without requiring that link. They argue that taxonomy should be socially responsible and that homage should not be paid to tradition over ethics. Those in opposition assert, inter alia, that the change would undermine stability in scientific naming, resulting in widespread confusion.

A prime target of those proposing change is the Hitler beetle, Anophthalmus hitleri, a blind cave dweller predator that will eat anything smaller and weaker. Because of these features, it has been suggested that the name was meant to mock Hitler not to praise him, following the example set by Carl Linnaeus, an eighteenth century botanist.

Linnaeus created The Binomial System of Nomenclature, a singularly unique procedure of classification—the basis of our current system—which was and still is widely celebrated for “bringing order to nature’s blooming, buzzing confusion.” Linnaeus often used his position as namer-in-chief to belittle those he didn’t like, once “rewarding” a critic by naming a smelly weed after him.

Not the case with the Hitler bug: Hitler was very fond of beetles; the beetle was named by a Hitler fan who declared in writing, “Given to Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler as an expression of my admiration” and Adolf sent him a thank-you note. Photos below of Hitler and his namesake beetle.

I was surprised to discover that a modern-day fan of Adolf Hitler also has a namesake, a micromoth, Neopalpa donaldtrumpi. Photos of the two below.

The issue of biological name change has not been resolved.

Common name change continues: The American Ornithological Society recently announced that “in an effort to address past wrongs” it will change the English common names of birds named after people.

We can help birds—regardless of their names— by creating a welcoming habitat filled with plants that provide food and shelter. In my garden, birds love the luscious red berries produced by Viburnum plicatum tomentosum ‘Mariesii’ and by our native Winterberry Holly, Ilex verticillata. Photos below of Mariesii’s flowers and red berries and photos of the Winterberry Holly plant and berries.

Finally, I am thrilled to see my oak trees cloaked with lichen. Photo below.

Lichen takes its life-supporting nutrients from the air and will not grow in areas with polluted, poor air quality. I attribute our clean air to beautiful, hard-working trees that breathe in toxins and exude oxygen. Trees also provide food and shelter for wildlife, and they provide shade—especially important in light of global warming.

Embrace your trees and plant more!

floragloria

A Garden Blog by Lois Sheinfeld