Tulip ‘Brown Sugar’
It would push me over the edge to have to write catalogue descriptions for tulips.
A groundwork of deep apricot etched in grenadine feathering reaching just shy of the margins, emanating from a central upward brush stroke of cerise pink.
Try doing that eight hours a day.
Just another brassica, right?
Let’s read the label, shall we?
(Plant label: “Tree Collards. Evergreen. 8-10′ tall. Old American heirloom. Very nutritious, high in protein. Excellent steamed or boiled. Full-part sun, water regularly.”)
No, that was not a typo. That’s 8 to 10 feet, with anecdotal reports of 20-year-old plants reaching heights of 20 feet! (And I’ll take mine braised, thank you very much.)
Brassica oleracea var. acephala, the mighty Tree Collard, a perennial. I ask you, who knew?
I’m envisioning an edible cussonia, although the tree collard may possibly fall short of a cussonia’s good looks. And will need to be staked.
Image of Cussonia paniculata from Tower Hill Botanic Garden
And if you’re savvy enough to be asking yourself, “What’s the difference between Tree Collards and Walking Stick Kale?” Michael DiBenedetto elucidated this distinction in a 5/2/09 Gardenweb post. The whole thread can be found here.
When I got home last night, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element was streaming from Netflix. (Sidebar: TV is amazingly complicated these days.)
First thing this morning, I was of course snapping photos of the Agave ‘Cornelius.’
Or “Corneeleyoos,” as Mila Jovovich croons the name throughout the movie, swaddled in ribbons of cloth designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
I once got into a heated discussion with a video rental clerk (another blip in the continuum of extinct employment categories) over the merits of the movie, now a fond memory every time I read heated “discussions,” really one-off opinions, in the online Netflix movie reviews. The clerk thought it the best thing since Citizen Kane, and I thought it was gorgeous fun, and so we parted ways with our original opinions intact.
This agave is, no debate, flat-out gorgeous. And that’s despite its other moniker of the Quasimoto Agave. Reputed to be a cultivar of Agave americana, now in tissue propagation and more generally available. Mine was bought by a friend at a sale from the Ruth Bancroft Garden. There’s some slight damage from my garden snails to lower leaves, as can be seen lower right, but it’s pushing out pristine new leaves.
The little poppy, P. setigerum, has sown itself in the crevices around the porch, just showing buds, nestling up against the agave’s pot.
The back porch has been one of the sunniest spots all winter, and little Corneeleyoos has done wonderfully here.
This Salvia canariensis var. candissima from Annie’s Annuals is furrier than the species and has been incredibly difficult to photograph. Ever since I read a recent trashy news story on how beauties like Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe shaved their faces of any peach fuzz for the camera (Huffington Post here), that photographic challenge now has some context and makes a little more sense to me. The dusky pink blooms and bracts have a similar character to Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica. I moved it so many times last year that it never bloomed, so have dedicated quite a bit of sunny garden this year to this salvia, which will inevitably become ginormous.
I’ve found extremely fuzzy plants difficult to capture, for example, as opposed to succulents, which practically photograph themselves.
(Unnamed graptopetalum.)
Ligularia tussilagenea ‘Argentea.’ This ligularia/farfugium would seem to be pushing variegation to an unhealthy extreme, with some leaves in total photosynthetic denial, possessing no discernible pigment at all.
Brachysema praemorsum ‘Bronze Butterfly.’ Far Out Flora visited the Santa Cruz Arboretum’s Australian section and gives some background on this Australian shrub, which grows in my gravel garden among agaves, phormiums, grasses, and succulents. It’s past time for brachysema to be reintroduced to nurseries again. A tough, mid-sized shrub that never looks disheveled.
Melianthus major ‘Purple Haze,’ recently planted from a gallon.
I love the way this tetrapanax wants to join in the conversation, almost climbing into the chair to take a seat at the table.
Euphorbia characias ‘Silver Swan.’ There are so many variegated varieties of E. characias now, it’s hard to recapture the excitement when the ‘Tasmanian Tiger’ roared into nurseries then pitifully mewed and faded away in gardens. This ‘Silver Swan’ has been a very strong grower so far.
Pam at Digging hosts the Foliage Follow-Up on the 16th of each month. Branches and bark are welcome too.
What was I thinking, sleeping in on Bloom Day?
Getting straight to the point…
Grevillea ‘Superb’
Pelargonium echinatum
Abutilon
Anigozanthus
Salvia chiapensis
Ammi majus
Tulips
The first flower of Salvia iodantha wagneriana in honor of Bloom Day. Thanks, Carol!
Little plants like this erodium, that wouldn’t rate a second look in summer, for a brief time have the field to themselves in early spring.
So many modest spring bloomers like this erodium are described as “charming,” which sounds like a tepid compliment from the politely underwhelmed, but after a mostly flowerless winter perhaps it’s wise to be charmed by degrees, not flabbergasted all at once. Spring is when I’m more than willing to crawl up close to the little charmers, insect-like, to investigate details of bloom. By summer, I wouldn’t enter the gravel garden except on well-shod feet, possibly with machete in hand.
This erodium is generally described as a perennial for zones 7-9, but its character in the gravel garden is that of a spring annual, blooming and flourishing as long as the soil retains vestiges of moisture from the winter rains, then disappearing entirely in summer. If kept watered, it would bloom and be presentable much longer. Sheets of seedlings re-emerge with a vengeance with the next winter storm, and new plants bloom again in spring. A fierce reseeder, this Storksbill, Heron’s Bill, member of the geraniaceae. Nerines are thickening into clumps nearby for fall, so I’ve kept this erodium’s spread to a minimum this spring.
The palmate leaves are hirsute and sticky debris-catchers.
I wonder if I will ever outgrow the astonishment stage of gardening, perpetually astonished and glad for the bounty reseeding plants liberally fling about the garden, when they settle in and get happy, when the garden story writes itself and you play more the role of the attentive editor, a kind and patient Maxwell Perkins to the fecund chaos of Thomas Wolfe. (Look Homeward, Erodium!) Gardens with much more moisture might have something to fear, but a couple sweeps with the hoe after winter rains keeps this exuberant fellow in line, the fibrous roots pulling up easily out of the gravel before the larger tap root matures.
A view of the sepals as this little erodium fills in around the base of a large restio.
Would I bother to buy seeds and sow this erodium every year? Honestly, possibly not every year. Honestly, possibly not at all. There are so many good spring annuals to choose from, countless kinds I’ve tried and then forgotten because they don’t share this erodium’s generous nature. Good leaves, interesting flowers, clumps to about a foot in height, blooming in the earliest days of spring, and managing all this by itself, with minimal intervention from me, all these traits together make up this erodium’s charm. And it’s the perfect complement for wet winter/dry summer Mediterranean bulbs, more of which I’ll be adding to the gravel garden.
I wrote about this erodium last February, but besides the above reasons, another reason to take a second look at this erodium is because it seems to be generally mislabeled in seed catalogues. What I call E. pelargoniflorum may in fact be E. trifolium, which seems to quickly lose vigor and is not reliably perennial, all of which describes my erodium. I’m told Erodium trifolium does not have hairs in the foveole, and if I knew what a foveole was I’d explain further. The salient point I’m making doesn’t change, however, that whatever its identity, this erodium can be grown as an annual, with expectations for it to bloom well the first year after sowing. If anyone wants to try seeds of the erodium I’m growing, send me an email.
Bromeliads like this Vriesea gigantea are wintering outdoors in this frostless garden. Maybe this bizarro winter I should knock wood and say this historically frostless garden.
This fast-growing vriesea from southeastern Brazil is temporarily kept in a small pot to tuck into larger pots, but its future massive size will require other arrangements. Bromeliads are relatively new to me. Some are grown more for their fantastic plasticine foliage, others for an incredible inflorescence in shapes and colors that bring to mind the plumage of tropical birds. I currently have maybe five, chosen more for foliage, always trying to find them in small sizes since they fetch exorbitant prices when large. They are much more “other” to me than succulents, utterly strange and mysterious, but apart from requiring shade are just as easy on the maintenance schedule, and just as dangerously collectible.
Most bromeliads are epiphytic, and soil is really only necessary for stabilizing the plant. Soggy roots are to be avoided. The central cup of leaves is kept filled with fresh water. Incredibly easy glamour. The soft light of winter is rarely too harsh for these shade lovers, and I can play with them quite a bit, planting them in the ground among grasses, full sun/overcast skies, for several months, then repotting them again as spring nears. I carelessly left a neoregelia and aechmea in the ground during the rainy month of December, a cavalier attitude that could have had disastrous consequences, but they’re fine.
On a reasonably warm February day in the 70’s, setting this vriesea into the larger container with aeoniums and coprosma conjures an instant scene from summer. Those old cordyline leaves don’t look very summery, but the bromeliad does enjoy the increased humidity from the surrounding plants. One look at my hands would tell you how dry it’s been.
It takes a flower of infinite grace to withstand being turned into a potted ubiquity at every neighborhood nursery, grocery store, and florist shop, which is where I’m bumping into tulips this month. Growing them for myself is an intensely personal experience, one that exists outside the bounds of commerce. Nothing can cheapen it. And of all the plants that we bemoan have seen ruination from hybridizers (like the “falls” of irises that antithetically stand out straight from the bloom like propellors), the more outre tulips become, fringed and doubled, the more we covet them, such a long association have tulips and people had interfering in each others’ lives.
Last year it was a couple pots, this year five. Next year, double that.
Sometimes the house quietly slips into a “Grey Gardens” mode, such as when a vase full of eryngiums turn spidery and dessicated, and I still can’t bear to throw them away. These were bought at Christmas, when I splurged on cut flowers. Hard to imagine they were once shiny metallic and intensely blue.
This is one of those infuriating plants that rightfully should grow in my garden but so far has refused. Maybe Ms. Willmott never discreetly scattered seeds of the eryngo bearing her name on heavy clay like mine. (The story, possibly apocryphal, is Ms. Willmott flung this seed out of her pockets while you weren’t looking, because she felt this plant would improve anyone’s garden. The ghostly progeny appeared next spring, causing you much consternation as to how it came to be in your garden. What a prankster!) But this winter there’s strong basal growth on one eryngo out of three I planted in fall, just your garden-variety Eryngium giganteum/Miss Willmott’s Ghost, which is, take your pick, biennial or perennial, depending on who’s doing the talking. In any case, this could be the year eryngos take off. (How many times have I said that, I wonder.) I’m sure once a single eryngo shakes its copious seed into my soil, a couple seeds will find some spot to their liking. Just as the poppies prefer seeding into the pavement around the back porch, not in the garden. I’m flexible and have my priorities straight. Plants first. But it’s like pushing a boulder uphill to get a known prolific self-seeder to get comfy in the garden.
I hope I’m not becoming too tiresome about this hellebore…
I may have mentioned it four times in the past two months, but I just cannot say enough good things about Helleborus argutifolius, zoned 7-10.
Some resources zone it even to 6. From Corsica and Sardinia, so definitely of a maritime temperament.
In late fall it launches a campaign of chartreuse enchantment that lasts all winter long.
No flaming picotee edge or blooms stained the deepest, darkest red. But it does possess a wonderful counterpoint of leaf to flower, something that isn’t always true of hybrids that sacrifice this balance in pursuit of extravagantly colored but demurely nodding blooms that require one to bow down on cold knees to gain a glimpse of the drooping, flower-like sepals. There’s nothing demure about this outsized swashbuckler. And, yes, it’s certainly true that it will seed about, with ambitions to conquer your garden like that other famous Corsican.
Portrait by Jacques-Louis David
It wants no part of the show bench displaying the endless variety of the many exquisite interspecies hybrids, a competition which would be this rugged hellebore’s Waterloo. The rough-and-tumble winter garden is where it reigns, in part shade or more sun than you’d think wise for a hellebore, the perfect consort for phormiums, astelias, grasses, the bulbs of spring. Amazingly drought tolerant in summer. It lends a hydrangea-esque fullness to my winter garden, for which I am its devoted subject.
Landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power does list my humble Corsican hellebore as one of her favorite perennials in her book “Power of Gardens,” but I’m not sure it rates as high for her as strelitzia, the Bird of Paradise, or Agave attenuata, since I haven’t found any photos of this hellebore in her book so far. (You can browse through some of the book’s photos courtesy of Garden Design here.)
The stinking hellebore, H. foetidus, also doesn’t mind the mild zone 10 winter and is a lovely plant, though it doesn’t have the size and landscape impact of H. argutifolius. The H. argutifolius hybrid ‘Silver Lace’ has been a dumpy disappointment, no more than a foot high, flowers buried under its pale leaves. What is the point, I ask you, when the species can make muscular, evergreen mounds of serrated, tripartite leaves up to 4 feet high? Loyal to the Corsican, I’ve never been inclined to collect the myriad crosses, some including H. niger (nigercors), since I simply can’t imagine anything better than the species.
This simple, shrubby, robust Corsican has made a complete and utter conquest of my heart.
