Sunday, April 30, 2006
Fritillaria involucrata
Fritillaria involucrata is native to southern France, but does nicely here on a slightly dry slope, with its cool, lime green flowers, spotted with chocolate. 
Easy Stars Of The Garden
Many of the shooting stars are alpines, and most are not fond of our hot summers here. Three easy ones, though are Dodecatheon meadia, our native prairie shooting star, which blooms a little later, and the two currently blooming that are pictured here. Above is Dodecatheon pulchellum, the dark throated shooting star, found mainly in the western U.S. (so, often called western shooting star), but it is found in scattered fashion to the eastern U.S. 
Dodecatheon jeffreyi, endemic to high meadows of the northwest U.S., is also called Jeffrey's shooting star, high mountain shooting star, and Sierra shooting star. Trillium Fever
What could be better on a rainy day, than poking around the garden looking at trilliums? This is Trillium vaseyi, the sweet wakerobin, with recurved, maroon red petals. 
Trillium simile is very striking, with sharply cut white flowers with a black center. It is scented, and often called the sweet white wakerobin, or jewelled wakerobin; it's one of my favorites. 
Trillium sulcatum can have flowers ranging from maroon to yellow, to white. 
This is Trillium recurvatum, our beloved prairie trillium, with deep red flowers and spotted leaves. These are scattered through our woods, and the steepest ravine has a good colony of these near a small stream trickling down the bottom, growing with bluebells, jack in the pulpits, and Trillium grandiflorum. 
A seedling Trillium luteum, popping up next to a shooting star. The yellow trillium gets quite large, and is fragrant, with nicely spotted leaves. Saturday, April 29, 2006
Foliage Trio
Fall may be the big season for foliage color, but sunny spring days can be nice, too... this is Heuchera Peach Flambe. 
Friday, April 28, 2006
Fritillaria acmopetala
Fritillaria acmopetala might be the overall most satisfactory fritillary; it is tall, elegant, with waxy, exotic flowers that are long-lasting, and every bulb is surrounded by babies. If you like fritillaries (and who doesn't) this bulb is for you. 
Lepidote Rhododendrons: Blue And Otherwise.
Rhein's Luna, pictured above is a new addition to the garden this spring. It is lavender blue, but my camera seems to like the color blue and has made it look more blue than it really is. It's still beautiful, and I have some hope for its long-term survival, but I don't get too attached to blue rhododendrons until they've at least seen their first Iowa summer and winter. Blue lepidotes apparently mainly get their color from the Rhododendron Subsection lapponica, a group of sub-alpine and sub-arctic small shrubs, that may tolerate winter (or may not, if no snow cover, which is often the case here), and dislike or hate hot weather. R. augustinii gives the best blue, but it turns up its toes here in the midwest, as do most of its direct progeny. Another lapponica, R. russatum, imparts a more purple blue, but is a little hardier parent, and russatum crossed with augustinii (thus russautinii) is half-way in between in both color and hardiness. If russautinii is crossed with a very hardy parent, it has some chance of survival here, and may give lavender blue flowers. Rhein's luna is russautinii X minus Carolinianum, so I have hopes. Bluenose, which I'll show later, when it blooms, is quite hardy here (russautinii X dauricum) but is prone to bark split on the trunk if winter sun hits it. It is a real beauty, a lighter lavender blue, and I love it dearly, and always ooh and ah every spring when it blooms next to a baby pink rhody. 
I recently showed a single truss of Rhododendron Hindsight; this just shows the plant better. It's a lepidote that almost looks like an elepidote, with its larger leaves, that it gets from its minus Carolinianum parent, and larger flower trusses than most lepidotes. The flowers are a nice, light baby pink. 
Rhododendron Shorty has a nice, bright pink color, with subtly deeper colored spots in its throat, and nice trusses for a lepidote. Thursday, April 27, 2006
Primula sieboldii
Primula sieboldii certainly has a lot of pluses for a gardener in the land of corn... not the least of which is its hardiness; by dint of having its foliage die back in the late, hot summer, it tolerates drought and heat better than its alpine brethren, and its foliage remains underground until moderately late in the spring, thus also avoiding winter, and then severe early spring freezes. Sieboldii's foliage therefore always looks very crisp and lettucy, offsetting its delicate flowers nicely. It's never quite been a WOW type of primrose for me, though: it doesn't form tight clumps, preferring to meander about loosely, and its pale pink-lavender flowers are sort of delicate and scattered. I may be changing my mind though; a couple of years ago I picked up a purple form of sieboldii... 
Monday, April 24, 2006
You Can't Have Too Many Daffodils...
You can't have too many daffodils... or can you? I suppose there are ten thousand daffodils in our garden. Now mind you, I didn't set out to have that many, but daffodils are the rabbits of the bulb world; after a few years, you've got them coming out of your ears. That in itself isn't a problem... I never met a daffodil I didn't like. The problem is that I've been living on borrowed time with my daffodils; you plant one bulb, and soon you've got nice clumps everywhere, with flowers uphill and down, their bright little faces shining in the spring sunshine. Eventually though, those clumps become crowded masses of bulbs, and the blooming rapidly goes downhill. I've done some minor redigging the last few years, but other important jobs, like keeping an eye on the local birdlife, and zipping out on the lake in our boat, always seem to come along just when I should be digging daffodil bulbs. This year, though, I've got to bite the bullet, and probably dig up, and split up perhaps two or three thousand bulbs. This is the dirty side of gardening that they never tell you about. 
Saturday, April 22, 2006
It's a beautiful, clear spring day... the garden is bursting with flowers and bright early spring foliage, so it's a good day for a garden walk. 
P.J. the cat will be accompanying us (when she's not trying to jump a bumble bee). 
Podophyllum Pleianthum; an Asian mayapple with shiny bright apple green foliage. 
Hosta Remember Me is quite beautiful... but some critter seems to have taken a liking to it. 
Hosta Fire Island is a looker when it first emerges... next year I want to have bright blue grape hyacinths around it, just for overkill. 
Lots of different species of Asian Arisaemas (jack in the pulpits) are coming up, rapidly thrusting their snake-like sheaths upwards. 
P.J. does slow down our garden walk, since she has to climb a few trees. 
Lepidote Rhododendron Hindsight is unusual in that the foliage is almost as large as an elepidote. 
This is lepidote Rhododendron Lavender Ice; I swear I didn't enhance the color... it's really this shade of blue. 
This is the summer snowflake: I can never decide whether they are worth having in the garden... the flowers themselves are pretty enough, with delicate green tips on the petals, but the foliage is massive for the flower size, and it persists forever, much longer than, say daffodils, then flops all over and smothers anything small planted next to them... I keep threatening to banish them to the deeper woods. 
The other trouble with snowflakes is that you never have just one; they multiply like rabbits. 
Tricyrtis Eco Gold Spangles is just coming up; it's one of those plants that don't need flowers. 
Anemone nemerosa Royal Blue contrasts with hot pink Primula kisoana. 
Fritillaria pallidiflora is tall and husky, with bluish-gray foliage contrasting with its pale lemon flowers... it's pretty foolproof in a sunny, well-drained spot. 
In a recent post, I showed Rhododendron Lavender Frost when it first opened; as it stays open longer, it gets more lavender coloration. 
Kind of a typical flower bed; if we take the path on the right up the hill, we'll see Uboughtwhat at the top. 
This is our resident, seven foot tall gargoyle; called "Uboughtwhat", because that's what my wife said when she found out what I bought (good thing I didn't get the eight foot Zeus statue that I was also looking at).
Well, we've been uphill and down; P.J. is ready for a snooze, so time to head home. Thursday, April 20, 2006
The Hole Story
My bulb is gone, and what's this hole?
I think it was dug by Mr. Mole.
But I think the tenant is now a vole.
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Then there's the sad story about Podophyllum veitchii... a most beautiful Asian mayapple, it didn't appear and didn't appear this spring, so today I gently dug down into the soil with a plastic spoon to check it out. Suddenly the soil gave away, dropping into a large burrow going straight down into the earth, and no Podophyllum was to be seen... it's obviously a mole burrow, which came right up under my expensive mayapple, and it provided a sort of vole cafeteria line. Sometimes gardening is indeed like dumping your money in a hole!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
A Walk In The Garden Today
Well, the trilliums are trilling, the primroses are prime, and lots of other things are worth a look with the camera today. 
I have both our native Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf), and the pictured Asian counterpart, Jeffersonia dubia growing in the garden. Apparently one should not grow them close together, as they will hybridize. Jeffersonia is a relative of Epimedium. I've had twinleaf for a long time, and admire it greatly, only adding dubia a couple of years ago. Dubia has the cachet of being one of the plants that elevate the meanest of gardens to lofty status, and it's said to be far superior to our native version. The first year, I wasn't so sure about its superiority (I really like twinleaf), but this spring I'm sold; it was covered with bright lavender flowers, and the foliage is a wowser. Plus, its foliage persists, rather than going dormant like twinleaf. The flowers of dubia also last longer, but not ages longer. 
Bluebells are beautiful in the spring, they are nostalgic; they also will eat your flower beds if you're not ruthless, and try to take over your garden pathways. 
Primula kisoana gets my vote as the single toughest primrose... the plants at the bottom are growing out in the bark chip pathway, which is underlain with weed barrier fabric. I just pull them out and replant them wherever I want. 
Dicentra Gold Heart, with gold green foliage and bright pink flowers is not the most subtle of plants; this picture looks like I altered the colors or sharpness, but I didn't... it may be the only plant that the big nursery catalogues don't have to goose to make its picture stand out. Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Daffodils
If you were idling about the internet, waiting for somebody to post pictures of the daffodils blooming in their garden today, you're in luck... if you were looking for pictures of Britney's new baby, sorry!