This morning was gorgeous – sunny and already over 50 F by midmorning – and I took advantage of it by taking myself and a cup of coffee to the nursery. In addition to beefing up on their pansies/violas and African daisies/Cape marigolds (Dimorphotheca) they had added salpiglossis, California poppy, stock, nemesia, lobelia, snapdragon, felicia, bachelor’s button, gazania, larkspur, nierembergia, China pinks, dusty miller, love-in-a-mist, and probably a couple more. I love dianthus but the annual China pinks typically don’t smell because their parent annual doesn’t really have a scent, so I generally stick to the biennial Sweet William and the perennial dianthus (which are typically short-lived, sometimes to the point of being annuals, but in my rocky Mediterranean style front garden they do somewhat better). I love plants with fragrances, which is why I like stock so much, and why I tend to wait to buy them till they’re blooming, since the ones commonly available at American nuseries tend to vary tremendously in their scents and the scents’ strength.
I got three individual pots of stock today, though one of them had two colors in it, white and pale purple (both single flowers; stock comes in both single and double, and I already tended to prefer the wildflowery look of the singles and their general stronger scent, but have additionally found that the doubles have a tendency to topple over in the windy front garden). The other two are pale creamy-pink and a double lavender. I also got an African daisy whose blooms fade from a pale orange to a pale yellow-cream and remind me of summer sunsets, as well as felicia, nemesia, California poppy, larkspur, and salpiglossis. I’d not grown felicia, at least as far as I can ever recall, until last year, when I saw its succulent-resembling leaves and pretty sky blue flowers with bright yellow centers at the nursery and snatched it up, assuming it would do as well in the front garden as similar looking plants. Only after I planted it there did I read that it is supposed to do poorly in hot weather to the point where it often is killed by hot summers. It did look straggly at the height of summer and for a time, I thought that perhaps it was indeed going to die, but it recovered in late summer and began blooming even more furiously than before its near-death experience. I was pleased to discover while growing it that its daisylike flowers are as good at attracting small pollinators as I would have supposed if seeing it in someone else’s garden.
I’ve more to say, but no more energy. So I’ll post this and write more another time.
