A Couple of Cool Tropicals

I spent most of Saturday cruising around to some of the local garden centers and nurseries, and found a few very cool things. I picked up the "Twilight Prairie Blues" baptisia to round out the collection I've got going of different cultivars, a few new irises for the perennial bed, and a couple of other things.

While I was at Scottsdale Farm, I picked up a couple of cool tropicals. I'm going to keep them in the greenhouse at the Big House for the winter, then put them out into the shade next summer. The variegated tapioca (Manihot) is one I've looked for over the past couple of years, and have never been able to find any larger than a tiny four-inch pot. This was in a 3 gallon, and IN CLEARANCE, to boot!

The other cool tropical is Alocasia "Stingray," which has a very interesting leaf shape. According to the grower's website, it is believed to have been some sort of mutation on another plant, but stays true through multiple generations of propogation! Whether a mutant or not, I'm thinking it's going to be pretty awesome in the shade bed next year!

The Final Version of the Select Seeds Order

Okay, so I finally sat down and actually ordered the things I "need" from Select Seeds. Go figure, the list is a little longer than originally planned. (Just a note that there is a 5% discount on orders placed by February 28).

I ordered all the things in my last entry about Select Seeds, but here's what I added: "Ballerina Yellow" Datura, to go under the "Betty Marshall" Brugmansia.....I think it's very cool to do the combination of Angel's Trumpet above Devil's Trumpet in one container!

Senecio (Mexican Flame Vine, shown above), which will climb a little iron tuteur in a container

Heliotrope "Frangrant Delight"....pain-in-the-butt plant, but the vanilla fragrance is awesome!

Night Blooming Jasmine.....a magnet for mealy bugs, but a night time fragrance that will knock you over! ( I will be cursing this plant by July, if history is any indicator.....)

Plus some seeds for a really simple new cutting garden we're doing by the house: Cosmas "Rose Bonbon," Zinnia "Benary's Giant Salmon Rose," Zinnia "Oklahoma Mix," and Zinnia "Peppermint Stick.

Lastly, another antique geranium called "Mr. Wren," with has single scarlet flowers edged in white. That's going in a container with a purple trailing geranium I already have called "Taj Mahal".....photos coming in summer!

Now it's off to the Brent & Becky's Catalog, right after I make the credit card payment!

A Gardenia, Two Lorapetalums, A Hydrangea, and a Rose

I had the chance to run in to the Southeastern Nursery Show late Friday afternoon as things were wrapping up, but was glad that I did! Probably as a result of the economy and the ongoing drought, the show was definitely smaller than in previous years, but there were some special plants to be found in many of the displays. I got to spend some time chatting with Mike Sikes from McCorkle Nurseries, and really fell in love with some of their new introductions.

The Heaven Scent Gardenia is new for this year, and is pretty fabulous! Reblooming, covered with blooms (that were forced for the show), nice fragrance, and a great form. The interesting twist to this little gardenia (matures at 3 to 4 feet) are the great seed pods that turn from yellow to orange to red through the winter, when most gardenias aren't at their most attractive.

Carolina Moonlight Lorapetalum is on my "gotta have it" list for this year. White blooms rather than the usual pink-red, with an olive green leaf. I'm never 100% convinced when I'm told what the mature size will be on a lorapetalum, but this one is supposed to max out at 7 to 8 feet. I have the perfect place to put an informal hedge of five plants!

The "Little Rose Dawn" Lorapetalum isn't new for 2009, but still relatively new on the market (I actually won mine as a doorprize at the GMGA Conference in Athens in January 0f 2008). It has done beautifully at my house, even with this roller coaster weather of the past year, and is starting to show the unusual branching pattern that this cultivar is noted for. One of my favorite plants is the Doublefile Viburnum because of its beautiful "layered branching," and this particular lorapetalum seems to be doing the same thing. It grows wide rather than tall (it's supposed to become pretty massive at 7 feet tall and 15 feet wide)...sort of loose and fluffy looking like a Van Houteii Spirea....picture above.

There is a new hydrangea that will most definitely make it into my garden this season. "Twist-n-Shout" is the newest in the Endless Summer series. My plant snob side always pooh-poohs things like Endless Summer, but this is a pretty awesome plant, and it's a reblooming lace cap....will let you know in August if I'm still so smitten with it!

Lastly, the "Amber" Flower Carpet Rose is just beautiful! Can't wait to use it in hanging baskets off the side of the bridge that goes over the creek! Blooms late spring through late fall, and I'm going to mix it in those baskets with Diamond Frost Euphorbia and Marguerite Sweet Potato Vine....it's going to be like a perpetual bouquet of roses, I hope! (Check out the photo above)

McCorkle doesn't sell retail, but I know Buck Jones carries most of their lines, and I'm sure many retailers will have them this season. It's the rose in the pink pot and the hydrangea in the blue one.

Support Your Local Garden Center!

Many of you know that I maintain the plants at a penthouse residence in B'head, which is, in and of itself, a pretty awesome gardening experience. Do you have any idea what it's like to maintain an Italian cypress in the sun and wind of the 42nd floor? Needless to say, lots of stuff froze solid during last week's cold snap, so I'm hoping things will revive a little bit with this week's thaw.

I was driving around that area today on a quest for one perfect large rosemary plant, and ended up in several different nurseries that I haven't visited in a little while. Between the combination of last week's weather, the season, the drought and the economy, the visits were depressing on one hand, inspirational on the other.

The big orange box store had virtually nothing in stock, short of some shell-shocked pansies and the promise of lots of deliveries coming in daily.

Hastings' in Brookhaven was a little better, but virtually everything there was an indoor plant. Since I readily kill orchids (not on purpose), I didn't spend a dime. It was a good visit, though, since the sun was shining, it was in the mid 60's and there were tons of worker bees running around getting ready for spring shipments. They did have some cool "pot feet" for only $3 each....those of you who shop at Hastings know that $3 usually buys a bottle of water there!...though their plants are pretty fabulous usually.

Over at Ashe-Simpson Garden Center, it was pretty depressing from the street with the plastic shrouding the plant area, but inside was as cool as ever. The ladies had moved all of the camellias, daphnes, etc., into the cold greenhouse, so it was just bursting with color and fragrance! If you aren't familiar with Ashe-Simpson, you need to go there. Carole, Rosemary and crew are extremely knowledgeable, and just plain "good people."

So my point, four paragraphs later, is SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GARDEN CENTER! There were lots of comments at last week's flower show that things were smaller this year. The truth is that some of the boutique companies are having a hard time making ends meet, much less spending thousands on these shows.

In times like these, with weather like we've had the past couple of years, many of these smaller companies are having a tough time holding on; others, like Perennial Grace, just couldn't keep going for another season, and will be sadly missed in Atlanta. We count on them to introduce new cultivars, give us endless amounts of free advice, listen to our whining, and save the best plants for us personally, so we need to spend some money with them! Consider it your local version of the economic recovery plan! Who couldn't use just one more (fill in the blank) in the garden this year?

Any Big Plans for 2009?

One of the bloggers that I follow has a list of winter projects that she reviews in the winter. Since she's in the great frozen north, that winter is much longer than ours (thank goodness!). The premise is the same, however, and one I thought was worth pursuing more.

Do you have any major plan for your garden this season? Anything you've identified as "missing" in your garden world?

Mine is STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE!!!!

As much as I would like to be organized in my plant purchases, I am inevitably drawn to those "I really need one of those" purchases, that manage to stay in pots behind the house for weeks or months until I discover the PERFECT spot for them. Mike Francis (the Japanese maple guru) accused me (unfairly, of course) at this year's Southeastern Flower Show of redefining "competitive gardening" with my purchase of the Aurea pine, and my delight when he ran out of them shortly after my purchase!

In any case, over the past few years, the perennial bed has gone from a specific color driven design to a "mixed border," to a somewhat hodgepodge collection of things that all happen to like sun. A few "must have" hellebores, a daphne odora and some sweet woodruff plants have found their ways into the "only ferns" bed by the front door. The Japanese maple island seems to have discovered a couple of exotic hydrangeas and a dogwood or two......you get the picture.

All that said, my commitment this year is to add some STRUCTURE to my garden, which is affectionately called the step child. I'm sure by September it will look like Versailles......maybe with a couple of quirks.......(Check out the photo of a "redneck Stonehenge".....that's my fantasy!)

So what are your major plans this year?

A "Sense of Place" in Gardening

I'm finally able to wrap up some things from the Southeastern Flower Show, though my garage still contains a giant tub of plants sitting in moist soil that came out of a number of different containers; one of tomorrow's projects is repotting those things to utilize them in some cool summer display.

I spent much more time at the show this year than I typically do, which gave me the opportunity to really look at some of the awesome exhibits in great detail. The show was smaller this year, but I felt it was much more appealing in lots of ways, as well.

On one of my many forays into the bookseller's booth, I picked up a book called "Great Gardens Great Designers," which starts out talking about how people changed their style of gardening in England at the turn of the last century; specifically they were responding to the Victorian collecting of exotics, and moving in a direction that was geared more to native plants, hardy plants, etc., that were more typical of England. The lightbulb went off for me that this is the same pattern we're seeing now, and it's why there was a certain comfort in this year's display gardens at the SEFS.

It was a treat to see so many gardens that were realistic for Atlanta, and weren't a collection of exotics that need to be disassembled in September to be crammed into the greenhouse for the winter. It seemed that many of the designers featured more of the things that do really well here -- lorapetalum in a million forms, lots of conifers that have proven their value here, azaleas, rhododendrons, gardenias, and such. It was also great to see very little turf being used in the display gardens....let's face it, there is nothing easy about growing a great lawn in Atlanta! What a radical idea to promote plants that actually do well here! Why not have a garden that identifies itself as an Atlanta style, rather than tropical, Mediterranean, or desert?

I was very proud to have only purchased two new plants for my garden at this year's show. First I got an amazing pine (Pinus densiflora "Aurea") with chartreuse needles that is going to be amazing against a backdrop of magnolias and hollies in my garden; second, I got several "Bramble Ferns," which are native. Anyone who know me is clear that I'm not one of the native plant geeks, but this fern is just beautiful, growing about 3 feet tall in and around camellias, pines, azaleas, etc. It's my new filler plant, to bring some sense of order to my wooded area......as if that's possible.....

The Duchess of Windsor & Buck Jones, Part Deux

So the infamous window box for the Southeastern Flower Show got installed today, at last! It's the first time I've done anything like this, so it was a very cool experience. I had no idea how persnickety some of these plant people can be. I must admit that I still don't understand what makes a hosta leaf win a blue ribbon while another wins a red, but that's another story.

The photo doesn't give great clarity with color, since the wall behind the box is really a taupe color, I believe to give the illusion of stucco.

I also didn't think I'd be able to fit that many plants into one 5 foot basket, but it took the full lot of them, plus about a dozen pansies, to boot!

Before you say, "It's very dark," remember that this box is themed around departed lovers, in this case the Duke of Windsor. The mood of the whole thing was "Winter seems much colder now that he's gone."

Patti's critical eye (and knife-wielding skills) were a huge asset, as was the always-theatrical Laurie from Buck Jones, who felt the bare climbing hydrangea looked "appropriately dead." The dragonfly lantern that Chris powered with a motorcycle battery buried in the soil hopefully pushed this over the top. Anyone from metro-Atlanta should remember that there is no better lighting company than his.

Will let you know if I placed at all in this competition once I know something. For now, goodnight! PS. I didn't realize until just now that if you click on the photo, it is visible in a much larger format! At least it will show some detail!

Buck Jones and The Duchess of Windsor

At this moment it is 26 degrees in suburban Atlanta, which is a ridiculous concept! Just needed to get that out of my system....

This was one of those days that reconfirmed why I like to garden, and spend most of my life surrounded by gardeners. I went to Kelli Green Nursery very early for pinestraw, where Kenny was completely bundled up in all of these layers, simultaneously talking about how frigid it was this morning and also enjoying the novelty of it all. In true gardener fashion, he was off to test the extra heaters that would be needed to keep the plants going through this cold snap. The others who work there were all inside, since "they don't know how to dress for this weather." I'm not sure why Kenny and I both felt there was something to be proud of in our actions....after all, the others were inside enjoying morning coffee.

I spent most of the day doing what could be done in the garden, spreading pinestraw, making sure the precious koi were doing ok in this arctic weather, tending some things in the glass house. As much as I enjoy being a martyr, it was an easy choice when Jean said, "What about Mexican for lunch?"

Later in the afternoon, I visited Buck Jones Nursery (another favorite spot!), on the never-ending hunt for the PERFECT plants for the Duchess of Windsor-themed display I'm doing for the Southeastern Flower Show in a couple of weeks. Some of you already know that the direction of said display has changed thirty or forty times, and I'm now buried under a number of different (expensive) plants, each representing a different season of the year (that is now not being considered). This latest incarnation is going to be representative of the winter season, after the Duke had died. (The overall theme of the SEFS garden design division is "Lover, Come Back")

In my usual way I pulled Laurie away from what she was doing to help me find the PERFECT plants, meaning something the world has never seen before, something that will make me look brilliant, and something that isn't expensive......oh, and they have to represent my statement that "winter seems colder now that David is gone."

We probably looked a little ridiculous to a bystander, each in our "this is really silly looking but is keeping me warm" outfit, but we did find a few great candidates. You'll be relieved to know that as of this moment, the climbing hydrangea (just starting to bud) will figure prominently in the display......or end up with the others, unused, in my garden later this year.

PS That's not Buck Jones in the photo with the Duchess of W

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

This morning was one of those on which I'm thrilled to be in the south, and no longer in New England! As much as we're dreading the "Arctic Front" coming our way, imagine having that weather from November until April!

Walking across the lawn, the sun was delightful, and it's as though the pansies knew they had to soak up the rays and store some warmth for the temperatures in the teens that are being forecasted for later this week.

These are the days when I become very protective of the bulbs that have started to emerge, and get nervous each spring that we'll have no flowers. Somehow, fortunately, I'm always proven wrong.

In the large south border, there are already lots of the miniature daffodils starting to sprout that have naturalized there over the past several years. It's grown into one of those displays that we can't readily imitate on our own, with leaves popping up in the crevice between a couple of boulders, in the midst of a ground cover, etc. It's really a show stopping display when all of the daffodils come into bloom, and across the lawn the color is repeated in the huge forsythia bank.

This year we've added in Narcissus "Petrel," which is supposed to do well all the way down to zone 9 (the top photo).

On the creek bank, the Stars of Bethlehem have started popping up, along with the leaf rosettes from the hyacinths. They are both favorites, and we added 200 more hyacinths this year, all in shades of pale yellows and white.

Leucojum (Summer Snowflake) is also showing signs of coming up, which excites me at the idea of seeing their beautiful white bell flowers again. They look very exotic, and I'm surprise more people don't use them, since they're pretty much foolproof. (The second photo down) They are in a bed with Guinea Hen Frittilaria (the bottom photo), which is another show stopper, but has a fairly short bloom season.

Fortunately the orange Crown Imperial hasn't broken through the ground yet, since I'm sure that will be this year's plant for me to be neurotic about......quick, get more pinestraw, blankets, perhaps a little heat lamp! Or perhaps my compulsion will show with the White Foxtial Lilies that we added to the pastel border. ....do you see a pattern here?

There are also 500 tulips that were planted in November, coming up as a border to the Antique Shades pansies that are in the beds around the house. We mixed three varieties, hoping to get a great blend along with the pansies.

It's only a matter of a couple of weeks ,I would guess, when we get the show along what we call the "Camellia Walk." It's a brick path that is almost completely enclosed with tall red camellias (Henry Kramer, I think). At their base we'll have a mass of white daffodils and deep blue muscari. Hopefully I'll get a better picture this year!

I promised the UPS lady that I would get a photo for her when the allium collection comes into bloom this spring. That was in response to her question, "What did you buy? A million onions? My truck stinks!" She wasn't really amused when I told her the garlic shipment was coming soon....

I guess I'm okay with a cold snap this week, knowing we'll have such an incredible show from the bulbs in six weeks or so!

The Source for Awesome Plants

I think I mentioned it before, but I get virtually all of my annual flowers (summer and winter) from Kelli Green Nurseries in East Cobb. Elaine and crew are just amazing to deal with, and their products have never disappointed me.

I feel strongly about supporting independent local businesses, and Elaine has been involved at Kelli Green for many years; I'm not completely opposed to buying from some of the "big box" stores, but how often is someone from one of those stores going to grow your plant from seeds in her own home garden just to test it out?

The new introduction called "Joey" is something that Elaine recommended, that has been getting great reviews. Hopefully it's going to make an awesome "statement" surrounding a large birdbath at the top of a flight of stone steps.