Longwood Gardens

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Denise

Longwood Gardens is vast, over 1,050 acres, and also very old.

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From Wikipedia: “What is now Longwood Gardens was originally purchased from William Penn in 1700 by a fellow Quaker named George Peirce (1646-1734). Although it started as a working farm, in 1798 twin brothers Joshua and Samuel Peirce planted the first specimens of an arboretum, originally named Peirce’s Park, and has been open to the public almost continuously since that time. By 1850 they had amassed one of the finest collections of trees in the nation. Industrialist Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954) purchased the property from the Peirce family in 1906 to save the arboretum from being sold for lumber. He made it his private estate, and from 1906 until the 1930s, du Pont added extensively to the property.”

We had a laughably inadequate five hours to explore Longwood. The meadow alone requires at least 30 minutes to walk its perimeter paths. At a brisk pace.

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The tulip poplars, oaks, and maples were taking on brilliant fall color, but as everyone we met assured us, it was a relatively anemic performance compared to years past.

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The day began at 6:00 a.m., when we left relatives in Chicopee, Massachusetts, swung by New York to pick up a friend at the subway stop near The Cloisters, from there got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and arrived at Longwood around noon. We stayed until closing, 5:00 p.m., drove to Philadelphia’s Chinatown to meet friends for Burmese noodles at Rangoon, then returned to New York by 10:30 p.m. to check in at our hostel in Chelsea. Covering such distances is not out of the ordinary, coming as we do from Southern California, but locals thought our itinerary was absolutely mad. The distances were not the problem but, rather, the number of gardens we thought it possible to see in one day. In this we were seriously deluded, since we’d actually thought it possible to include Chanticleer on the same afternoon as Longwood! So close, but both so vast, with too much of interest to join in a single afternoon.

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I’ll have some of my own photos to post of Longwood later in the week.

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Dutch Wave Breaks Over New Amsterdam

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Denise

At the Battery, Piet Oudolf has written another glorious fall chapter to the story of the renaissance of urban gardens in New York City.
Here at the Battery Bosque, the emphatic sweep of plants is at times even more dramatic than the High Line, in deeper soil with broader planting beds.
With just these two gardens and now the new Goldman Sachs headquarters, the Dutch Wave gains force and continues to break over New Amsterdam.

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I had seen the prototype of the Statue of Liberty in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris years ago, but this was my first glimpse of this wonderful gift from France on her island home.

These World War II memorial pylons, rising out of a mist of Anemone japonica and grasses, align on an axis that leads the eye to Liberty Island.

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Surrounded by grasses bending and tossing in the winds blowing off the Hudson as it meets New York Harbor, the Battery is a splendid backdrop for ferry gazing.

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You will not find municipal plantings of the dwarf chrysanthemums seen elsewhere throughout the city in fall, but plants of great line, body, and character sheltered under plane trees.

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Weedy, Weedier, Weediest Mullein

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Denise

A white seedling of Verbascum phoeniceum is enthusiastically blooming away after the October surprise of early rains.

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It held on to its basal leaves in the sere gravel garden all summer in hope of some form of irrigation. Tough little mullein.
I’m never very excited to find self-sown seedlings of this particular verbascum of the dark green, nothing-special leaf.
But seeing it bloom now in late October makes me very glad to have left it in place. Tough, pretty little mullein.

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More Echeverias

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Denise

This mossed basket of various succulents failed to really gel over summer, no doubt from a bad habit of sticking in a hodge-podge of succulents that break off from plants in the garden and need a home to root in. So when I spotted these echeverias at a nursery last week, I reworked the basket to showcase these stunners.

Echeveria elegans giving off suitable chrysanthemum vibes for fall (without the dumpiness of show-bench mums, I might add). I should have been more careful in handling this one judging by the blemishing to the powdery veneer of its leaves.

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Echeveria pulidonis

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It was also the first time I’ve seen Senecio anteuphorbium for sale locally, which Dustin Gimbel identified when I blogged about this senecio’s inclusion in a local living fence. It reminds me of a spineless ocotillo.

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The High Line in Autumn

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Denise

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Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus

I first became intrigued by the High Line when it was in its derelict state. I’d read a New York Times piece about an abandoned elevated railway in Manhattan, its purpose as a rail line to the meatpacking warehouses long forgotten by the citizens who walked oblivious beneath its struts and girders. That the trestled railway had been designed to run directly into the maws of cavernous warehouses, relieving the city streets of the congestion and danger of rail traffic, only added to its allure. Of course, one of America’s greatest cities would invent such an elegant solution! Closed down since 1980 as highway trucking replaced rail, accessible now only to the birds and the wind, soil and grit sifted down amongst the tracks to support an improbable habitat for native plants and nesting grounds for agile urban creatures of all legs except the two-legged. When my oldest son first visited New York, I encouraged him to trespass, hop fences, whatever it took to visit the abandoned railway and bring back photos, which no doubt makes me a very bad mother blessed with a very good (and agile) son, because he complied.

I kept up with news that the railway was being considered for preservation and that a park was contemplated but lost track of the story. And then sometime last year I was presented with the challenge of absorbing the astonishing fact that not only was the High Line saved, but the park was being planted by Piet Oudolf. In recent memory, when has something as thrillingly, ecstatically wonderful happened in furtherance of the creation of a public space?

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Continue reading →

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While You Were Away

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Denise

I swing between elation and despondency upon returning from an absence to be confronted by a garden that obviously carried on beautifully while I was away.

Bravo, everyone is alive and thriving vs. sniffle, I am clearly superfluous.

As usual, I overstate the case just a bit. I was away for only a week, and rain arrived while I was gone. Never a threat of frost. A garden that couldn’t survive for a week in such cushy conditions is less a garden and more an intensive care unit for plants.

But still, it is surprising how quickly my tenuous ownership of the garden cedes to other creatures, like this guy cheekily casting his web now in high-traffic areas.

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And what on earth was making those strange snuffling sounds in the creeping fig-covered wall?
No doubt animals who had taken up residence in my absence and were now beating a hasty retreat upon my return. Yes, that must be what it is.
A red-tailed hawk landed in one of the garden’s trees this morning. Never has this happened before. Evie the white cat must have been under raptor surveillance while I was away.

Unseen tempests caused cannas to crash and Solanum pyracantha and golden tansy to cling to each other for support.

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Echium gentianoides ‘Tajinaste’ opened its first flowers with no one to pay the slightest attention to this momentous event.

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(If a flower blooms in a garden, and no one is around to see it, is it still a garden? Hmmm…)

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The “end of times” rain we had, as the son who remained behind for classes described it, scrubbed the agaves clean of the accumulated grit of summer.
Velvety Agave attenuata ‘Kara’s Stripes’ (who I’ve mistakenly referred to on the blog as’ Kara’s Choice.’)

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The medio-picta agave was due for some rainy spa treatment after a recent pruning for work on the house.

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‘Yellow Gem’ anigozanthos hoisted five flower scapes.

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Which prompted me to appreciate the inadvertently brilliant choice of planting the orangey-gold Libertia peregrinans at the kangaroo paws’ base.
(Which prompted me to race to the nursery and buy another pot of libertia to emphasize this newly intentional pairing.)

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The oddity from the pea family, Amicia zygomeris, planted a couple weeks ago, put on lots of fresh growth.

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The ‘Campfire’ crassula burst into bloom, but what happened to the smoldering leaves?

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The trailing crassula, C. sarmentosa, suspended from a height of 4 feet, is nearly touching the ground.

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So nice of you all to carry on without me. (But how dare you!)

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, creatures, Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Sky’s The Limit

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Denise

It was recently calculated (but not by me) that my little back garden is all of 882 square feet.
After 20 years of gardening here, methodically covering every inch of that 882 square feet, with moisture and light now robbed by mature trees and shrubs, this past year I became intensely interested in vines. It is a gardening cliche, but where square footage imposes horizontal limits, think vertical.

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In addition to the above Dicentra scandens for shade, smaller passifloras are being trialed for sun, like this P. sanguinolenta.

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Another group of vines catching my attention are the asarinas, in white, purple, pink.

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Cobaea scandens, a shameless tart for the camera, like the asarina is theoretically perennial in my zone 10, and I just noted fresh buds forming in the wake of a recent downpour while I was away for a week in NYC. I really hate missing a good downpour. The bicoastal tradeoff was, while it poured at home in Southern California, NYC stayed dry and comfortable, perfect walking weather.

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Thunbergias are also snagging my ever wandering attention. I have no photos of the one bloom of a new peachy Thunbergia alata I planted this summer, but I mention them here as an example of a plant that I must have somehow suppressed inquiry into way back, at a time when I was imprudently skipping over anything blooming in orangey/golden yellow. The longer I garden, the more I value the flexibility to recognize the worth of the plants that want to grow where I live, whatever their color. Thunbergia is just such a vine, so I’m planning to include lots more. (For those with an aversion to strident yellows and oranges, your time has come, with new colors appearing every year in peachier tones.) Ducking in for a haircut just before leaving town, I noted the salon’s thunbergia vines in large concrete planters were still blooming lustily, a nonstop, year-round performance of egg yolk-yellow flowers, with only haphazard care from one of the stylists. With color prejudices cast aside, thunbergia offers up some thrilling vines, including the tropical T. mysorensis.

Along with cobaea, thunbergia, and asarina are other valuable vines, annual in zones colder than mine, like Mina lobata and Dolichos lablab of the amazing purple pods and equally amazing name, like a character out of Doctor Dolittle, right alongside Gub-Gub, Dab-Dab, Chee-Chee, and Too-Too (pig, duck, monkey, owl, respectively).

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No luck at all the past couple summers with Eccremocarpus scaber, which flourishes in Northern California, as does Rhodochiton atrosanguineum, which drapes and arranges its blossoms of purple parasols in the most enchanting configurations. Manettia cordifolia arrived in the fall order (from Plant Delights), along with a golden jasmine. Next summer, for pole beans, it will be ‘Trionfo Violetto.’ I may even bring back another Antigonon leptosus, the coral vine I grew years ago. No more sappy dreams of clematis though. Yes, they can be grown in zone 10, but not by me, except for my little winter-flowering C. cirrhosa. And vines don’t necessarily have to climb. They are just as happy meandering along the ground, infiltrating horizontally, or spilling out of pots, where the little firecracker vine, manettia, was planted a few weeks ago.

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Lastly, the timeless grape, Vitis vinifera ‘Purpurea’ has been with me a long time, its curtains a brilliant backdrop for other vines and pots of summer tropicals.

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Nerine sarniensis

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Denise

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(Followup to Nerinomania.)

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Salvia ‘Limelight’

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Denise

I certainly don’t have a garden large enough to include a 6×6 fall-bloomer like Salvia mexicana ‘Limelight.’

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And I don’t think there’s an affordable pot in existence roomy enough for a mature plant, except maybe the humble trash can. (On my budget anyway.)

The salvia flowers well in morning sun, filtered sun the rest of the day. During winter, full sun is tolerated, which this salvia receives positioned under a deciduous cotinus. As the seasonal light changes, it’s a simple matter of grabbing a handle and shoving it around to find the best light. Pruning it back hard in spring is also a good time for root pruning, basically running a knife a couple inches from the outer edge of the root ball, in situ in the trash can, removing the old roots, and adding fresh potting soil or even pure compost. This salvia loves rich soil. Eventually, it will be best to take cuttings and start the whole process over, since these big salvias get excessively woody with age.

I admit to feeling occasionally silly employing such goofy tricks, especially during spring when there’s this big, hulking trash can full of a dormant plant to maneuver around. That feeling of foolishness evaporates as soon as this salvia finally hits its stride, when everything else is winding down. The leaves are nothing special, but they are a rich green and not bothered or chewed on by any pests, so it does contribute a luxuriant leafiness even when not in bloom. Once in full bloom, you can’t stand in admiration of this salvia for longer than a minute before a hummingbird darts in, causing the branches to bob and sway by its diminutive turbulence.

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Other salvias reputed to be good fall/winter bloomers for Southern California include Salvia iodantha, wagneriana, madrensis, macrophylla, karwinskii, all which make very large plants. Obviously prime candidates for trash can culture.

If trash can chic is not to your taste, careful placement of summer pots offers possibilities for concealment. I’m thinking my brugmansia’s next home may be in the trash.

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Nerinomania

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Denise

I went on a treasure hunt for a half-forgotten bulb in the front gravel garden in early fall, Crinum ‘Sangria.’ I was certain it was in there somewhere.

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That’s when I noticed the new green tips of the nerines piercing through a sea of gravel. Spring is full of such miracles. When they happen in fall, it makes one gasp out loud.

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Yet the crinum remained elusive. Brushing lyme grass out of the way, sure enough, the crinum was buried under Pelargonium sideroides and withering away from lack of light.
(If I could remember where I subsequetly planted the crinum bulb, I’d have a photo of that instead of the pelargonium.)

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Which has always been the problem for me with the “other bulbs,” these late summer-blooming bulbs of the amaryllidaceae family: Remembering where I’ve planted them. These bulbs, including crosses like amerines and amarcrinums, were born to thrive in my zone 10, winter wet/summer dry gravel garden, but I’ve been too slow or stubborn, or both, to catch on. For starters, any plant that hates to be disturbed is going to have a difficult time with the incessant renovations taking place in my garden. Pot culture is required by gardeners in zones too cold to grow these bulb outdoors, and that method may provide a solution for me as well, as counter-intuitive as it may seem. (Plus I hate having to mess with lots of little pots.) In my defense, I have never seen these bulbs grown locally, or even offered by local nurseries for sale.

To finish the poor crinum saga, I pulled it out roughly by its pseudostem. With this kind of treatment for a bulb famous for resenting disturbance, I can kiss off seeing a flower from that bulb for, oh, five years. Maybe forever. Sigh. I didn’t really expect it to flower anyway. I’m a firm believer that if you don’t commit, really commit body and soul to a plant, it just will not grow for you. And making a commitment to properly site these summer-blooming members of the amaryllidaceae family where they won’t be swamped by other plants has always been my weakness.

I’m fairly sure I moved the crinum somewhere in the vicinity of the nerines that Matt Mattus of Growing With Plants mailed to me last year in a remarkable gesture of horticultural generosity, in a sunny spot as close to no-disturbance as I can muster. I’m wildly excited about the prospect of seeing Matt’s nerines bloom. The wonders he produces in a Massachusetts greenhouse put me to shame here in mild zone 10.

Upon discovering them in growth in late August, I had carefully marked the site of the dozen or so Nerine sarniensis with blue glass so I didn’t inadvertently stomp on them and began to water them.
(Providing a dry spot for such bulbs has never been an issue. This area was dead dry.)

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On September 27, the flower bud forms, backlit by blazing morning sun, another day over 100 degrees.

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And today, the flower bud just about to open:

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And wouldn’t you know, I’m leaving town for a week on Wednesday. Hurry up, nerine!

In the meantime, here’s a 2006 post by Matt on his nerines, as well as a recent post on nerines from The Exotic Garden Blog.

Warm thanks again to Matt for the gift of nerines. I definitely won’t forget them.

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