Winter Containers

Obviously a major part of what I do at work is containers, both at the big house and in the penthouse garden. Since the penthouse is such a harsh environment to grow almost anything, the containers change very little during the winter. There are some tiny containers that come and go seasonally, but for the most part, the plantings up there are permanent.

In the garden at the big house, we just finished putting together the winter containers (there are 58 of them). Here are some photos, though most of the arrangements haven't "flushed out" yet. I'll post more photos in a few weeks, once they're looking a little more full.

The top container is part of a grouping of three. For the winter, the largest pot is anchored with a cryptomeria "Sekkan sugi", the middle one is a variegated acuba, and the smallest of the three is this arborvitae called "Whipcord." It's a favorite container conifer of mine, great for shade in the summer, but can take full sun in the winter.

The second photo is "Black Dragon" cryptomera, variegated boxwood, flowering kale, two different types of dusty miller, "Miracle" heuchera, and dianthus. The Black Dragon, heuchera, and dianthus will all go out into the landscape in the spring.

The bottom container is pretty simple this year; just the variegated boxwood with pansies (Delta "Apple Cider Mix"). These containers are right next to beds filled with more of the same pansies, so we try to pull that same color into the other container for continuity.

What is up with the Weather???

Today started very cold, but by midafternoon was in the high 60's and absolutely glorious! I'm finally convinced that spring is here to stay, after the brief snow showers yesterday afternoon.
Truly, if someone had been out of town for the past two days, they would never have believed that it was that cold.

Fortunately it didn't get "crazy cold" until around 5 AM where I live and work, so we were spared a lot of freeze damage. We were also lucky to have very high winds for the past couple of days, which doesn't allow the frost to settle. I was really afraid for the budded peonies and hydrangeas, but all looked really good this morning.

At the Big House garden, we were able to shut the heat off in the greenhouse and actually leave the door slightly ajar. Some of the most tender things like coleus, tomatoes, and the like are still tucked into the warmest corners, but it's time for some of the sturdier plants to start getting used to being outdoors. In the middle of the afternoon, the exhaust fans came on, indicating it was hitting 90 degrees in the greenhouse for the first time in months!

I was concerned about some of the new roses that got planted last week, but my "rose lady" thought they would be just fine, and she was right on the mark! The Abraham Darby's that went in last week (they had been in heated greenhouses at the grower until that point) are just covered with huge super fragrant blossoms. It's been such an interesting year with weather, I'm still amazed at the combination of late daffodils, late camellias and early roses all blooming at the same time. The combination of fragrances is really overwhelming, with the HEAVY fragrance of the hollies mixed with the roses. Add in the sight of Eastern Bluebird, Goldfinches and Cardinals all at the same cluster of feeders, and it's the icing on the cake!

Lastly, since I know you're all dying to know, Favorite Tree (doublefile viburnum) came through the freeze without a blemish....you can all relax and get on with your day!

The Big Chill

This morning brought that inevitable April blast of cold air that happens every year; like always, it's just a 36-hour thing, but enough to disrupt all of the best laid plans!

The greenhouse has quickly become the storage unit, jammed with as many plants as I could get inside, most notably the two "Lion's Head" Japanese Maples that will adorn the front porch at the Big House next week. I decided yesterday it was a time for "better safe than sorry," so anything that was still in a pot is either in the greenhouse or the garage. The garden is dotted with lots of plants wearing their little "frost hats"----everybody's praying to the Hydrangea goddess that it's not as bad as 2007, when we had virtually no blooms on the macrophyllas because of just this kind of a late freeze. The "Saratoga" gingko (which cost about the same as my car payment for a 5 gallon pot) is also hiding out in the garage.

It's hard to believe that it's 34 degrees at this moment in the Atlanta 'burbs, is going to freeze overnight tonight, but will be safely back in the 60's by tomorrow afternoon. Only 8 more days until tax day! I have no interest in giving the IRS anything, but it's always a good day since it's the historic time to plant in this part of the world.

I think I'm going to put on my parka and go hug the Gingko!

Love in the Glasshouse!

How appropriate that on Valentine's Day weekend, there were all sorts of signs of horticultural "activity" in the greenhouse!

First, the Mission Olive trees are blooming, which is really cool. Since I was raised in New England, olive trees aren't something I'm used to seeing in bloom (or seeing at all, for that matter). We got them last year to anchor two planted islands in the vegetable garden, and I dragged them inside for the winter. I've been told they'll be fine as long as the temps stay above 20 degrees, but these are one of those special plants that gets babied. The color of the tiny blooms is unbelievably intense, particularly against the olive green of the leaves. To give an idea of the bloom size, the leaves on these trees are only about 1-1/2 inches long. (The bottom picture, above)

The other plants that seem to have gone hormonally crazy are the Villages Lemon Trees.....check out the number of blossoms on that baby! (The top photo)

These two plants, the begonias that are shooting up new stems of blooms every day, the remedial amaryllis, and the walking irises are turning the greenhouse into a virtual floral festival! Eat your heart out, Atlanta Botanical Garden!

The Ladies in Waiting

This photo was taken in the greenhouse Saturday morning, while it was still in the 20's outside. These guys are all just patiently waiting for good weather so they can go back outside. Some, like the Tibuchina Grandiflora, are looking a little sad in the winter, but others, like the Cup and Saucer vine (Cobaea scandens) on the far right, don't care that it's winter, and are climbing up and across the ceiling!

Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia)

Siderkat from Horticulture Magazine had a question about Datura, which is generally called "Devil's Trumpet" in Atlanta. This is Brugmansia, which is known as "Angel's Trumpet," and is very easy to grow. It's an awesome container plant, though it needs water daily in a container. More details about cultivation to follow.

Some "Must Have Plants" for 2009

Just finished perusing the new catalog for Select Seeds (have I mentioned before that they are an AWESOME company to buy from?) A few things that I think I definitely need to find homes for this season:

Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia) "Betty Marshall"....pure white with pale yellow-green ribs in the flowers...I still love the old-fashioned apricot color, but this one is really amazing looking! It's such a great containter plant, especially if started early indoors.

All of these different nicotianas (Patti and I can never agree on the pronunciation.....), especially the cultivars called "Jasmine" and "Woodland"

Amaranth! The Love-Lies-Bleeding that I planted last year promises to continue bleeding all over the place for the rest of my life, but in the dead of winter I tend to forget how quickly they spread here in Atlanta.....I'm thinking I need to have "viridis" to mix in with the ones I'll inevitably have from last year's LLB seeds.... (Photo above)

Texas Sage "Brenthurst"....The catalog says it's "RARE," which means I really need to have at least one of those plants! Plus, "Mrs." is going to love the color!

"Benary's Giant Lime" Zinnia.....how cool is this going to look popping up in the midst of the perennial borders?

Black Eyed Susan Vine "Alba".....this definitely looks like the start of a great container arrangement, climbing up a beautiful black tuteur

Clematis "Chinese Lanterns" along with Clematis "Roguchi".....I can just picture how beautiful that will be climbing up through the tea olive hedge (That's "Roguchi" above)

Apple Blossom Rosebud Geranium.....got this one last year (three of them), and they are still going strong in the greenhouse! This is a really special plant!

A Day in the Glass House

Today was the perfect day to catch up on some things in the greenhouse which have gone by the wayside during the busy holidays. My garden cohort is busy lounging in the Florida Keys, so I had the day to myself and the plants in the greenhouse. Since it was in the mid-60's, I could easily have spent the day deadheading pansies, but that can be Patti's project when she comes back from Florida with a tan!

The lemon trees that spent the summer outside now have huge juicy fruits on them; as much as I would like to take credit for doing something brilliant with them, the fruits just seem to have happened on their own. It's sort of cool, since one tree has three fat lemons on it, and the other is starting to get buds, which promise those amazingly fragrant blooms in a couple of months!

It was mostly a day of "puttering," trimming, fertilizing, etc., which brings me to a couple of points that we're sometimes asked.

With reference to overwintering annuals, the short answer is that it isn't always cost effective, so there are many plants I overwinter, and many others that I don't. For those that do get to come inside, we generally keep just one or two "Mother Plants" of each cultivar. Later in the winter (late January or early February), we'll take cuttings from those plants for next summer's containers. Very often the "mother plants" of coleus, plectranthus, etc., are simply too woody to keep over for a second season, so it's their respective offspring that get to be next summer's star performers!

With some of the coleus cultivars, we only managed to get one good mother plant at the end of summer, so I did a couple of cuttings today of some of the favorites.

In the greenhouse, as in the rest of my garden, I do everything I can to keep with organics....it's really not a powerful politic statement, but I feel better knowing I'm not dumping tons of chemicals in the water supply for those downstream or future generations. I figure that if we each do a little, it adds up to being a major change.

For the inevitable mealy bugs that one finds in a greenhouse, I have had great luck with a product called "Pyola," that I get from Gardens Alive. (A great mail order company....I'll talk about their tomato food later). So far it's proven very successful, and we've kept the insect issue to a minimum.

Since I was the only one in the greenhouse today, I could also use my favorite fertilizer, called "Neptune's Harvest," which comes from a company of the same name. Since it's basically fish by-products, it has a little smell when it first gets added, but works really well, and the odor dissipates quickly. The huge advantage of organics is that they tend to work when nature tells them to work with light, temperature, etc., so there's less requirement to maintain strict calendars, etc.

More about the greenhouse later, but for now, it's time to water the plants!