in the garden: garden thugs

There are many common gardening mistakes that beginners make. Some are easily recovered from; some not so much. Bringing alstroemeria into the garden is a tough one to get over, because it is basically unkillable. Good thing it’s so pretty.

I got hold of this particular plant back when I worked at a greenhouse for a season. There was a compost pile out back of enormous proportions, where old and unwanted plants got dumped. The employees used to go root around back there and claim anything that looked salvageable, and one day someone had dumped a bunch of alstroemeria root balls. I brought a couple home, and liked them enough that I actually brought some along to this house when we moved. Oops.

We did manage to get the roots out of part of the front border, but anywhere we’ve let the weeding slide they’ve come back full force. So right now there’s a blazing patch of orange by the porch. I pull a lot to bring inside, they make great cut flowers - but then I need to make sure to pull all the remaining flowers up before they go to seed and make matters worse.

in the garden: astrantia

My first astrantia was one that I had coveted for a long time, a deep red variety called “Hadspen Blood.” It’s still in my garden, and I love it dearly. This white one, though, I picked up at a nursery as sort of an afterthought, and I have become very smitten by it. With its pale coloring, the texture and patterning really show up on the flower. The plant is somewhat buried under an exuberant hosta, but the flower stalks come up valiantly through everything else. It’s beautiful both as it’s just opening, and after it comes fully into bloom.

in the garden: Japanese snowbell

The Styrax japonicus is in bloom! I wait all year for this, and often I miss it because it falls during our usual rainy spell in the beginning of June. This year everything is late, we’re having a much-awaited spell of good weather, and for the last week the back yard has been heavy with the scent of honey as the styrax tree completely buries itself in little white bells. The bloom is so heavy that the tree limbs all bow downwards - it’s gorgeous.

Soon the ground will be carpeted with white petals, and the flowers will be replaced by cute little round seedpods, which are fun in their own way. How I love this tree.

in the garden: bowman’s root

A few years ago I stumbled across this plant at our local farmer’s market, and fell instantly in love. Its proper name is Gillenia trifoliata, also known as Bowman’s Root, and it has everything you could want in a plant except winter interest: cute flowers, pretty leaves, colored stems, and amazing autumn foliage. It just came into bloom this week, along with the stipa gigantea, and it makes me ridiculously happy.

in the garden: Junuary

This month has been so depressing here in the Northwest, people have started called it Junuary. The sun has appeared a few times, but it’s mostly been in the low 50s and raining. Ugh. The only way to know that it’s really June is that the foxgloves are blooming, in spite of it all.

in the garden: red flowers in the rain

A major drawback of this part of the world is that June is rainy. Every year. And everyone gets grumpy, because they made through the long gray winter and they’re READY FOR SUMMER! But despite the nice weather we have for parts of May, June is persistently cold and wet, and often stays that way until the fourth of July. It makes me grateful for brightly colored flowers in the garden, and the geums on the deck are particularly bright - the orange ones have been blooming for a couple of weeks, and the red ones have just opened: little scarlet blooms dance on long flexible stems, weaving through the foliage of other plants and seeding themselves into all the other pots.

Eventually it will get warmer and drier and the lilies will bloom. In the meantime, we have geums.

 

in the garden: purple

We’re finally heading into summer - the hardy geraniums are blooming! I tend to prefer the blue ones, but the purple-flowered varieties often seem much tougher. I got this “Kashmir Purple” geranium from Heronswood many, many years ago and it is tough as nails. The only problem with it is that is has one flash of bloom, then it’s just foliage for the rest of the season - but it’s pretty ferny foliage that forms a nice ground cover, so it’s fine with me.

in the garden: geums

I used to grow geums in the garden, but they have such delicate stems and foliage they kept getting massacred by the other plants. I finally moved them all up to the deck, where they glow like jewels against the gray wood, terracotta pots and the gray spring sky. This orange one just opened this week; the deep red ones are still budding.

in the garden: sunshine and wisteria

The sun has finally come out! It’s like “Enchanted April” - a month late. The wisteria is in bloom, the iris are all budding, the lilacs are (finally!) open, and the daphne smells so sweet it almost knocks us out every time we go up our front steps.

in the garden: pretty but no smell

For one brief growing season, I worked at a greenhouse. It didn’t pay a lot, and I tended to bring my paycheck home in the form of plants. When we moved I brought many of them with me, and several are still thriving in the garden here, including this pretty exochorda shrub. It’s kind of an awkward plant to grow, since it has a long gangly habit, and despite its resemblance to orange blossoms it has no smell whatsoever. But when it’s in bloom it’s ever so pretty, and the flowering branches can be entwined through other bushes, up walls or over furniture.