Garden: Why no Photos?

I haven't been taking a lot of garden photos this year.  On one hand, I think I'm bored by the look of the garden and the photographic opportunities that it presents.  Last year, I probably photographed the same darn Pennisetum bloom and Sedum "Autumn Joy" bloom cluster about a thousand times.  No joke--the EXACT same Pennisetum bloom.  Because it was the most photogenic.  I kept waiting for someone to ask if there were any other plants in the garden besides the token Pennisetum and the Sedum--maybe just ONE Pennisetum bloom that I taped to a skewer and posed attractively in various positions around the garden.  No, I swear I did NOT do that!

This is The One.  Do you remember him?  I do.

And I know you've all seen the Digitalis parviflora in front of the Cimicifuga--apparently, I like to photograph that view as well.  

Cimicifuga and Digitalis this year...

...and last year...

But it's not simply that I am not sharing redundant photos--I'm not taking many photos at all.  

I'm a bit disappointed with the appearance of the garden because, in a fit of (and I've written of this before) "remodeling zeal", I tore out a big chunk from the middle of the garden and then a smaller chunk out of the left-hand side.  I know that the changes will be good for the overall garden design, but I wish I'd let myself have one year--ONE single year--of finished-and-grown-to-the-best-of-my-ability garden without chopping great swathes through the middle of it.  So.  It's a little bit disappointing to look at the garden in person (what with the gappy middle and side) and I find I'm not so thrilled about sharing pictures of it, either.

But, here are a couple of photos of things that look interesting, to me, right now.

Ammi and Allium.

Overall, this bit of planting isn't super successful.  The Ammi (Ammi visnaga "Green Mist")  proved to be too tall and leggy for this spot.  Normally, I think you wouldn't see its blooms in combination with the Allium "Summer Beauty".  However, this is the shortest of several Ammi plants and it seems to have been beaten down by the weather.  At the moment, I think the plants make a pretty pairing.  They are growing up through and adjacent to Sedum "Autumn Joy" and Amsonia "Blue Ice".  The Allium is a new addition to the garden this year and the "Green Mist" replaces the Ammi majus "Graceland" that I grew last year.  I prefer the greenish blooms and the ferny foliage of the "Green Mist" but "Graceland" was shorter and had smaller bloom clusters and, therefore, was probably more in scale with the rest of my garden.  Or maybe "Graceland" was just stunted by transplanting and inadequate care.  That is totally possible.  Maybe I'll plant "Graceland" again next year and it will tower, 5 feet high, at least, over all its neighbors.  That's gardening, right?

Here's another scrap of a view.  I thickened-up the end of the bed that's near the street by adding Phygelius and Rumex sanguineus.  There's an Allium "Summer Beauty" photobombing this picture, too.  Out of frame to the right are grasses (Hakonechloa and Chasmanthium latifolium) and Hydrangea "Bombshell".  I'd meant to plant Phygelius "Moonraker" which has pale yellow flowers--this plant, purchased in bud, seems to have been mislabeled.  I'm not sure what to expect from this variety, but I hope it grows as large as does "Moonraker" and proves to be as hardy.  I'm OK with the creamy, white blooms--they tie in nicely with the adjacent Hydrangea.  I think this combination will mature well together.

I'm not happy with any of the wider views of the garden, but here, for the purpose of benchmarking, are a couple of shots.  This is the "reverse view". It's about the only angle I can use which does not have a big, gappy, hole right in the middle of the planting.  Look!  There's the Cimicifuga and Digitalis again!  And the too-tall, leggy Ammi!  The overall look of the border would probably be improved if I went out and gave that Ammi the yank...right now...and trimmed off the spent lily stalk.  OK--I edited the lily stalk but left the Ammi, for now.

Here's the front view (below).  I tried to crop out the gap in the middle--it's there where the small Pennisetum "Hameln" and the small Penstemon "Dark Towers" are planted.  I like the dark seed heads contributed by the Penstemon.  When these plants bulk up, I hope they will fill the gap completely. 

So that's the state of things.  I did some editing during early summer/late spring that has kind of wrecked the look of the garden this year.  And I'm not enjoying looking at it OR photographing it.  But, there's still a lot of bloom and color coming in the next couple of months when the sedums, the grasses, and the Joe Pye begin to do their thing.  And there's always next year, right?  Will I remember not to wreck my summer garden with June-ish remodeling?

Garden: I Didn't Know What I Didn't know...

I've been doing a lot of good reading lately.  Currently, I'm working on Essay on Gardening by Henk Gerritsen and I'm really enjoying it.  Gerritsen, (1948-2008), was a planstman, garden designer, artist, and writer living and working in the Netherlands.  He is well known for his personal garden, Priona, which he developed with his partner Anton Schlepers.  The story of the development of this garden provides a framework for Gerritsen's musings on plants which comprise Essay on Gardening.  Gerritsen's plant knowledge and level of scholarship is deep--you'll need to keep Google handy to look up plant references--but his writing style is conversational and often amusing and the book is an easy read.  

Photo from Amazon

Gerritsen's horticultural focus was on close observation of plants in their native habitats and recreation of similar plant communities within the garden.  While he rued the loss of native habitats both in the Netherlands and abroad, he was not a "natives-only" type of guy--he felt that plants sourced from around the world simply contributed to a bigger palette of plants from which to choose the most suitable for any given habitat. Priona demonstrates the kind of garden Gerritsen favored--one in which self-sustaining communities of plants coexist and thrive in a natural way with little human intervention and without the use of fertilizers or pesticides.  

I'm a big believer of "right plant, right place" and I think that the plants in my garden should look as if they inhabit a similar environment--no mixing bananas and cannas and cactus and roses and whatnot--so Gerritsen's words found a receptive audience.   Before long (in fact, before I even finished reading Essay on Gardening) I was researching the native habitats of many of the plants in my garden.  Two plants specifically, Sedum telephium "Autumn Joy" and Pennisetum alopecuroides "Hameln", were left over from a previous iteration of the garden.  I became familiar with these plants through their frequent use in "xeric" gardens, hell strips, and commercial plantings all around the city.  Because of this, and because of plant tag wisdom such as "drought tolerant, requiring only minimal water once established, plant in full sun and dry, well-drained soil" I'd chosen both plants as part of a previous, dry-looking garden design.  I thought that they evoked "dry" but knew that they would survive our winter-wet climate.  Now that my garden features predominantly plants from moister environs, I'd begun to feel that these two plants no longer fit the scheme.  But where do these plants come from, originally?  I'd no idea.

Sedum "Autumn Joy"--picture taken about this time last year.

Imagine my surprise to learn that, according to Plants for a Future (pfaf), the Sedum is said to be native to stream sides, hedges, and the shady sides of damp woods. Perfect!  And "Hameln", according to Missouri Botanic Garden, enjoys moist to wet soil and can commonly be found along streams and around pond edges.   Doubly perfect!  No wonder both of these plants are  thriving in sun/part sun with average to moist soil.  So...I got lucky with these two plant choices and have plants that are better-suited to my growing conditions than I'd imagined.  

Reading Essay on Gardening has given me a lot to think about.  For one thing, I realized how limited my gardening knowledge is--and how hard it is to acquire good quality information.  Based on my own observations and on plant tag wisdom, I'd thought that both the Sedum and the Pennisetum were "xeric" type plants suitable for (or even favoring) arid conditions.  Diligent searching on the web turned up some new information but also many sources sharing the same (somewhat inaccurate) plant-tag facts.  I soon found myself wishing that there were a comprehensive data resource containing information such as who collected the plant and brought it to cultivation?  When?  In what geographic region and specific habitat was it found?  What is the plant's current range? The limited and often inaccurate information that is shared and shared again among growers and wholesalers is not adequate.

Of course, as soon as I finished writing this piece, I read a blog entry by Joseph Tychonievich of Greensparrow Gardens about Encyclopedia of Life.  He writes that it is his new favorite web site.  I hustled on over there to do a little research and, you know, I think it may be MY favorite new website as well.  Much of the plant information I sought so fruitlessly is readily available on this site.  I welcome this new gardening reference to my small arsenal of gardening resources.   

Garden: I Think I Found My Plant

So.  In the last post, I was wracking my brain to come up with a plant (or plants) with dark foliage to weave throughout the garden.

And then, yesterday, I made a quick stop at City People's Mercantile to round up some hose connectors and sundry parts to help get me and the garden through the recent bout of hot weather, and I think I found my plant--Trachelium caeruleum "Lake Michigan Wine Red".

Trachelium caeruleum, or Blue Throatwort--unknown cultivar.  Source:  Wikimedia Commons

For some, Trachelium caeruleum is a perennial (some sources list it as being hardy in zones 7-11) but I bought it as an annual--in fact, the grower's website says that it is hardy to only 40 degrees.  It is a common flower in the florist trade and is available in shades of blue, violet, white, and green.  I really like the look of the green-flowered one, but it seems to be not yet available to retail trade.  Trachelium caeruleum is said to grow in clumps to 3 feet tall and wide.  I doubt if it will do that here, in the course of a single growing season.  The growth habit I expect is a single longish stem or two of dark green foliage blushed with wine or purple and topped with a single loose umbel of dark wine-colored flowers.  I think the longish, darkish stems could be just the thing I am looking for to help better integrate the dense dark-foliaged plants with the rest of the garden.   I bought two small 4-packs of of this plant and dotted them around the garden.  I hope they do well!  If so, I will try (next year) to source the darkest and duskiest cultivar available.

Garden: Thoughts on (My) Garden Color

I recently read a web article entitled Color: dense vs diffuse, by Michael McCoy of The Gardenist.  In it, he explored the different effects achieved by using vibrant, solid blocks of dense, hurts-your-eyes color (like the solid, hot pink of a Karume Azalea in bloom) vs the same color sprinkled among greens (as, for example, Knautia blooms).  He explained how using diffuse color (like the Knautia) can make an effective transition to a more solid block of color that would otherwise stand alone in a landscape.  The Knautia example was mine--and I totally mashed-up the author's Azalea example--but he shared several fantastic visual examples of plant combinations featuring dense/diffuse plant pairings.  His article is well worth reading--it's just a page long--and can be found here.  I've always been a fan of gentle transitions in the garden, so the general concept of stepping-down from an intense block of color to a graduated or diffuse version was not new to me but this eloquent essay got inside my head and it has been rattling around in there ever since.  

While I don't consider my garden to be a colorist garden, it is too small to leave color unconsidered. When I remodeled the front beds last year, one of my goals was to create a somber or dusky color palette. In addition to plants with dark or dusky flowers, I incorporated plants with dark foliage.  But I have been unsatisfied with the result despite continued tweaking.  One source of dissatisfaction has been the way in which plants with dark foliage tend to stick out like blobs within the big picture.  Having read Michael McCoy's article, I suddenly realized that non-green foliage functions like dense floral color in the landscape:  It needs to be stepped-down with a more diluted version.  D'oh!  I am not sure why that was not immediately obvious to me.

So, while I am still looking for more dusky options to strengthen my color palette, I realize that I need to look for wispy plants or plants having dark stems instead of focusing on big, dense, dark foliage plants like Sambucus nigra "Black Lace" or Sedum "Black Jack".  I'm having a bit of difficulty building that list:  I think that Pennisetum setaceum rubrum accomplishes the task; and I thought about blood grass although it is (probably) too bright red; Clematis recta purpurea would be OK if it vined instead of clumping strongly; maybe there's a really vining dark leafed geranium?--I have "Samobor" but it does not read "dark" to me.  Hmmm...this is not easy...

Here, for the purpose of critiquing the color palette, are some pictures of my garden taken during the past couple of days.  

I call this view the "reverse view" because the photo is taken from my neighbor's property looking parallel to the street--the opposite view from the one you'd get if you were approaching the house on the entry path.  

Reverse view. Everybody asks about the tall, skinny trees--
they are "North Pole" columnar apples.

Plants in this grouping that contribute to the dusky color palette are the Cimicifuga and the Digitalis parviflora "Milk Chocolate".  I didn't plan it, but I like how the Heuchera blooms in the background echo the color and form the Digitalis spikes.  The Cimicifuga seems like a pretty good choice for dark foliage in that it's rather ferny and not too dense.

...And a closer look at the Digitalis and lily "Landini".  Last year when the Digitalis was blooming, I'd just planted the Geranium and I admired the color echo between the brownish Digitalis spikes and the browned-off stems of the Geranium. (Last year's post about Digitalis.)  Fortunately, I still like the combo even though the geraniums are not brown but blooming.

Lily "Landini", Digitalis parviflora "Milk Chocolate", Cimicifuga, Geranium "Jolly Bee"

Here's another picture of the same plants but the viewpoint is shifted around to the street.  This view features a lot of deep reds contributed by the chocolate cosmos and the Sanguisorba "Red Thunder".  There's a Pennisetum setaceum "Rubrum" tucked in behind the Sanguisorba.

Chasmanthium latifolium, Cimicifuga, Digitalis parviflora, Geranium "Jolly Bee", 
Sanguisorba "Red Thunder", chocolate cosmos, Adenophora Tashiroi

...And a little closer.  

I think I made something pretty, but I'm still chasing the moodiness that I'd hoped to create.  In fact, I made a couple of changes just after I took these pictures.  I dug out all three clumps of Adenophora Tashiroi and two big, established sedums.  I took the Adenophora out because they flopped and their clear, light violet color just wasn't adding to the moodiness.  I'm not sure how I will replace them, but I'm leaning towards annual  larkspur "Blue Spires".  I like the darker blue color of the larkspur and I think I will prefer their single stems.  I also planted two Penstemon "Dark Towers" which, with their darker (but not too dark) foliage, should add to the moodiness.  I hope they do not clump up too vigorously--a narrow clump will suit my needs much better.

I am definitely not satisfied (or finished) with this garden bed.  At least, though, I have come closer to the solution.  Now I just need to research, research, research to find the plants which will help my vision come to fruition.

Garden: GBBD--June 2014

Well, I waited all day hoping for the opportunity to get a better batch of photos for this Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, but evening caught up with me and I'm going to go to the publisher with what I've got.

First up, an overview featuring the Amsonia "Blue Ice"--it's getting a little faded after a month of bloom (and a good beat-down by the rain during the past couple of days) but the blooms still look nice.  I really appreciate this tidy, pretty plant.

Faded Amsonia "Blue Ice" with a background of Centranthus ruber alba, spires of violet Adenophora Tashiroi, and Geranium "Jolly Bee"

Digitalis parviflora "Milk Chocolate".  Parviflora means "small flowered" and this is what you get.  Luckily, this is also EXACTLY the effect I desired.  I also like the sturdy, ramrod straight stems of this variety.  I can't imagine that they EVER need staking and they continue to add architectural interest to the garden long after the flowers have faded.

Digitalis parviflora with Cimicifuga and Geranium "Jolly Bee"

Hardy geranium "Jolly Bee" with a baby digitalis spike.

Cosmos atrosanguineus "Chocamocha" with Jolly Bee. My camera sure has trouble with the blue of the geranium.

A poor little lily--a single bloom on a spindly plant--is the first of its kind to bloom.  But, I like the placement among violet Adenophora Tashiroi, a dark Pennisetum setaceum Rubrum, and Sanguisorba officinalis "Red Thunder".  Some of the blooms on the sanguisorba are full, but most are a week or two from actually blooming.

Astrantia with Jolly Bee in the background.  I'm not sure which Astrantia this is--I purchased both Abbey Road and Hadspen Blood--but this variety is markedly earlier and more vigorous than the other.

So, that's about it for the front garden.  Around back, I've got Rosa "Mutabilis", campanulas, Persicaria polymorpha, Sisyrinchium "Lucerne", Aruncus, and Gillenia trifoliate (Bowman's Root) currently blooming.

To take a peek at what is blooming today in gardens all around the world, head on over to visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.