Archive | Gardening RSS feed for this section

Succulents: Aeonium

7 Jan

One nice thing about traveling is that it allows you to taste food you might not normally have at home. But traveling also exposes you to unfamiliar flora. And having put my own East Coast garden to bed for winter, I was delighted to make the acquaintance of some gorgeous succulents in Southern California during the holidays.  Succulents — which include aloe and agave, and even the euphorbia I grow in my own garden — have thick, fleshy stems and leaves and retain water even under the most trying conditions. They are ideal desert plants — and coastal plants, too, since they tolerate relatively high levels of salt and minerals.

I was not familiar with aeoniums, but their beauty made me stop in my tracks as we wandered through Old Town, San Diego.  The photographs below were taken just after a rainfall and they show yet another characteristic of many succulents: waterproof leaves.

  

Tags: , , , , , ,

Last Few Spots of Color

1 Dec

The garden is looking quite sad now, after a few frosts. What remains is for the most part bare, brown, drooped,  or shriveled–all of which would be quite depressing if not for the fact that after every autumn/winter comes the spring. For gardens, at least, the current state of affairs is not permanent.

But amid the early December bleakness, a few spots of color remain–a small selection of plants that are not quite ready to call it quits (plus one bud that looked particularly nice this morning–the last bit of interest on an otherwise denuded plant).

In order of appearance (from left to right, top to bottom) : Gaillardia (Fanfare),   Montauk Daisy, Variegated Sage (Tricolor) , Euphorbia (Ascot Rainbow), and a bud from a tree Azalea (Gibraltar).

  

   

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Fall Foliage

10 Nov

Flowers are fantastic, but foliage can add interest to any garden long after the flowers are gone. Admittedly, my gardening philosophy is very, very basic (roughly on par with my gardening skills), but one element of that philosophy is that every garden needs a diverse range of foliage: different colors, patterns, shapes, and textures. And if you can find a perennial with foliage that changes color in the autumn (or presents you with some other dramatic display, such as plumes), that’s an added bonus.

Here are two plants that have been putting on a show in recent weeks:  Porcupine Grass, with plumes shooting at least 8 feet in the sky  (plus close-up of the plumes) — and Crape Myrtle (Siren Red), whose foliage appears to change color depending on the time of day:

  

  

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Happy Halloween

31 Oct

Happy Halloween! In honor of the day, I am sharing a tinted photo of the extremely tall tulip poplar tree that I see out of my window when writing blog posts. The tree very fortunately survived Hurricane Sandy and did not wobble in the direction of our house. As a token of my gratitude (and after realizing that the photo looked quite eerie), I decided the tree deserved a spot in the Halloween line up.

Later this evening–a perfect Halloween recipe: Pumpkin Brownies. Stay tuned.

Tags: , ,

Birth of a Montauk Daisy

26 Sep

Montauk Daisies are cheery flowers to behold, even they are sure signs the season is nearing an end.  Cheery they may be, but shy and reserved they are not. When I first planted my two Montauk daisies, they were small little things, but they soon expanded exponentially, smothering a few other flowers in the process. The relatively fragile lilies in their path were no match for the bush-like Montauks. The ease with which the daisies established their dominance reminded me yet again of the importance of checking a plant’s spread. I kept looking at them as they grew, and grew, and grew, asking myself how this came to pass, since they were so little when I first planted them. In this respect, they remind me of my children.

For the past month, I have been waiting very patiently for them to bloom (the daisies, that is). They take their time; the first buds appeared in the center of the lovely dark-green foliage on September 1, but the first flower did not bloom until today. However, it was worth the wait. Here is the birth of a Montauk Daisy:

 

Tags: , , , ,

A Forgotten Flower

15 Sep

Some flowers have appeared in my garden unbeknownst to me. But there are other flowers that I did plant, and then forgot about. These have usually been late-season additions to the garden–discounted specimens that caught my eye when I was at the nursery in the autumn looking for mulch, for example, or a spade, but not flowers. I would tuck these spur-of-the moment purchases somewhere in the garden, with a vow to keep track of  them more properly later. Inevitably,  I forgot even to note their names.

There is currently a plant in bloom in the garden that I have absolutely no record of, though I vaguely remember sticking it in its current, horrible spot by the hammock–an afterthought really, since I thought I would find a better place for it this year. Which I would have done had I developed a plan for it, which I didn’t since I forgot I had even planted it.

It is an aster. Well, technically it isn’t. If you thought DNA testing was only for crime scenes, think again. It also helps with the (re)classification of plants. Genetic testing of asters in the 1990s revealed that all asters are not, in fact, asters. All the North American varieties were reclassified as Symphyotrichum. Not surprisingly, everyone still calls them asters. To further confuse matters, asters are also known as Michaelmas Daisies. Michaelmas is the celebration of the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, which is on September 29. Michaelmas was also traditionally the end of the harvest season in the Northern Hemisphere, a time when asters are in bloom. Hence, the nickname.

The forgotten aster (sorry, symphyotrichum) in my garden is a Winston Churchill. It is a novi-belgii– a New York Aster. Not knowing the history behind the naming of this flower, it is nonetheless fascinating to speculate about the possibilities. Winston’s mother, Jennie, was from New York.  So, a nice tribute to his mother. But then, the verbal sparring between Winston Churchill and Lady Nancy Astor, an American-born member of Parliament, was legendary– so perhaps the person who originally named this cultivar had a sense of humor…. Either way, it is a flower that deserves to be unforgettable.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

High Five

3 Sep

While the asters usher in autumn, I thought I’d take a moment to give a shout out to a few plants that have kept going, and going, and going–and are still going; the ones that have added color to my garden for three or more months. It was tough, but I chose the following five to honor this time around:

1. Euphorbia (Ascot Rainbow)–with its gorgeous foliage and bubble-like flowers, it has been putting on a show since late March. This photo looks straight down into the middle of the plant.

2. Hybrid Tea Rose (Double Delight) — it has been a delight since the end of April, with  fragrant flowers and lovely new foliage

 

3. Gaillardia (Fanfare-left, Oranges & Lemons, right) — it has been a bee magnet since the beginning of May

 

4. Verbena Bonariensis (Brazilian Verbena)–a tall, gently swaying plant; also in bloom since early May

5. Gaura (Passionate Rainbow) — though it did not bloom at all this year (its first in the garden), it has been flashing its foliage since May

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Going Out in Style

31 Aug

Today, temperatures in my neck of the woods hit 90+ degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn’t feel like autumn just yet. It simply feels hot.

However, autumn is in the air, according to my garden. Even though many plants are still chugging along quite happily, the New England Asters (Purple Dome) are now in full bloom. When they make an appearance, I know the garden is embarking upon its last hurrah for the season.

Asters may signal a winding-down of sorts, but they are hardly a retiring type of flower. They are bold, bright, and alluring; butterflies and bees simply cannot resist them (see Cabbage White Butterfly below).  So if a garden is entering the autumn of its life, there is no better plant to usher it out in style than an aster.

  

Tags: , , ,

A Matter of Perspective

25 Aug

This morning, I came across a small, deep-blue flower in the garden. It is an Asiatic Dayflower. It blooms early in the morning, but the flowers shrivel up within a few hours; you have to catch them while you can:

  

Like the Black Oil Sunflower, the Asiatic Dayflower is a plant I did not introduce into my garden. Both plants produce gorgeous flowers. But I approached them differently. After one look at the Sunflower, I labeled it a “flower”–a plant worth keeping. With the Dayflower, I asked myself: Is it a flower or a weed?  I looked it up and found that by most measures, it is considered to be a weed. It spreads easily, can grow under almost any conditions except in the middle of water, and seems to be immune to most herbicides.

So now, an ethical dilemma: Will I be influenced by the fact that most people view the Dayflower as a weed, and yank it out? Would I even be contemplating this if I had discovered it was a rare flower admired and coveted by all and sundry?

This leads to a philosophical question: What is a weed? The common view, originally espoused by E. J. Salisbury, is that a weed is matter out of place; it is a plant growing where we do not want it to grow.  Ergo, it must come out. But Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

In some cases, those virtues are very hard to find. But in the case of the Asiatic Dayflower, one of its virtues is obvious: its delicate beauty. And in some parts of the world, it is used as a medicinal herb and as a source of blue dye.

So its virtues have been discovered; it’s just a matter of perspective. And my perspective  is that the Dayflower is a flower that is welcome to stay in the garden… for now.

 

Tags: , ,

A New Mystery

17 Aug

In the case of the missing Monarch caterpillars, I admit I may have unfairly pinned the blame on the White-Breasted Nuthatch, which is probably far more interested in small insects on trees rather than large caterpillars on flowering plants.

It is time to accept that the caterpillar caper may never be solved. But when it comes to gardens and all the life therein, there are numerous other mysteries requiring the use of little grey cells.

Two days ago, I saw that a single yellow flower had bloomed right in front of our wrought-iron fence. It looked like a small sunflower with a speckled center.

I did not plant it and it was not there last year.  None of our neighbors have flowers that look anything like it. So, how did it end up in the garden?

And then it hit me: this flower came from the bird feeder. It was a sunflower after all–the product of a black oil sunflower seed, dispersed by bird, chipmunk, or wind from the area by the bird feeder to a new home in the garden.

Unfortunately, it may not be a permanent home, since all signs point to this being an annual sunflower, not a perennial one. Perennial sunflowers don’t bloom from seed the first year, and they appear in clumps rather than single stems. But this guest is welcome for as long as it is able to stay, a small spot of sunshine in a garden gearing up for autumn. And maybe next year, I will disperse some seeds myself.

Tags: , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →