The New York Times is 2 for 2 this week: Today they have an interview with Wendy Johnson, a Zen-inspired long-time gardener. Again, the online version includes a slideshow. I’ve already found a used copy of her new book, Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, and I’m thinking of quitting the gardening book I’m currently reading, An Ecology of Enchantment: A Year in a Country Garden by Des Kennedy, to start reading it instead. The latter is a book I recently bought thinking it sounded like the perfect sort of gardening essay book for me to read, but so far I’ve been underwhelmed by it (though in fairness, I’ve only read one section so far; it’s arranged by month, so I thought I would start with May, seeing as we’re in it right now). Even when I agree with the things he’s saying, I find myself feeling cranky about how he says them. For example, we both have a deep love of crabapples, most particularly when they’re blooming, but the way he talks about them annoys me. For another example, he seems to have absolutely zero concern for the possibility of plants escaping, which to be honest is something I would worry about even more in a country garden than I do here in my city one, since the damage can potentially be so much worse close to wild areas. Additionally, I find Des’ writing style to be overly flowery. So maybe Wendy Johnson’s Zen-inspired prose would be a breath of fresh air in comparison.
Speaking of crabapples, this is indeed the week they are blooming here, and they are as lovely as always. Here is one of the many shots I’ve taken of them in the area this week. This one was taken at the Charles River; you can see the river in the background, blurry.
…
This is one of my favorite weeks of the year here, when suddenly there seems to be an explosion of bloom: Crabapples and cherries and lilacs and azaleas and rhododendrons and sand cherries and the late magnolias (most of the magnolias now bloom before most of the forsythia here; many forsythia are still blooming now, all leafed out, looking drab – once upon a time they bloomed in late February or early March); tulips and late daffodils and grape hyacinths and columbines and perennial candytuft and vinca and euphorbia species and moss phlox and on and on and on. This week I saw the Catbirds for the first time this spring and today, a sure sign of summer soon to come, I heard twittering from overhead and looked up to see the Chimney Swifts swooping through the sky for the first time since early last autumn. It always feels here in this cold-winter region like spring starts out as this demure being celebrating subtlety and giving us small jewels as hints of her presence and that this is the week at which she lets down her hair and exclaims, “Let’s have a big party!”
…
Somehow I seem to have drawn Sundial Lupine, Lupinus perennis, to me by talking about it here recently. On Monday I stopped in at the nursery as I had to walk by it anyway, and was shocked to discover a sundial lupine for sale there (the first time I’ve ever seen one for sale in a nursery in person), and in one of the biggest pots I’ve ever seen a perennial in there. I asked the nursery manager if she thought they’d be getting more in, and she said she wouldn’t guarantee it, so I bought it and took it around with me for the day. I planted it yesterday (luckily as it was shortly before I was injured). Below are a couple pictures; note how its leaves are thinner and often longer than hybrid lupines, and how they tend to be more upturned, catching the rain more easily than hybrid lupine leaves.
The manager said a lupine this big should definitely bloom this year, but we’ll see. For more on this kind of lupine, check out this link and (for subspecies occidentalis) this link. Both also have photos.
Stock, blooming away merrily
At least five or six different colors came in just the three pots I got. It’s a great side effect, I think, of buying young plants before they’re blooming much or at all (though I know when one has a specific color scheme in mind, it’s less great). Stock smell so, so lovely, and being planted next to the honey scent of the white sweet alyssum in this year’s garden, it’s like an olfactory explosion in that area.
Plants waiting to be planted in the front garden
They’re all natives from Toadshade. There’s Nodding Onion, two Small’s Penstemons, American Alumroot, Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia humifusa, which is native to the Northeast, rather than the Prickly Pear Cacti in the Southwest), Bicknell’s Sedge, Rattlesnake Master (which the Native Americans in Missouri used to make sandals), Heath Aster, Hyssop-Leaved Boneset, Sundrops, Wild Smooth Petunia, and Wild Hairy Petunia.
I love sedges (Carex genus), which I feel are generally underrated plants, particularly the native varieties. Sedges are grasslike plants that often have ornamental seed heads and beautiful autumn coloration. Many of them prefer soil that has more moisture and/or more humus than even my fairly shady back garden has, but there is a native sedge for most situations, as evidenced by Bicknell’s sedge (Carex bicknellii) doing well in a dry and sunny location (or a shady, moist one; it’s one of the most adaptable sedges). Something else about sedges that I think is really cool, though others do not always share my enthusiasm, is that the way to tell them apart from true grasses is that sedges have triangular stems instead of circular ones. Who wouldn’t like at least one triangular stem in their garden? More generally I also feel like it’s important to provide some plants like these to give habitat for small critters in the garden. I’ve often found small spiders, for example, taking refuge in a sedge plant.
Here is a closer look at the American Alumroot (Heuchera americana) and the Prickly Pear Cactus:
It’s hard to tell in this shot, but the American Alumroot already has two buds, so far looking like tiny ripening raspberries. (Those are the Small’s Penstemons/Beardtongues [Penstemon smallii] on the left edge of the shot there.)
These purple and yellow violas are doing so well! The pansies are doing OK too, but not as well as the violas.
They are here shown with the foliage of dianthus plants and of Big Betony (Stachys macrantha syn. S. grandiflora syn. S. spicata), the latter being an underrated garden plant that was popular once upon a time. Though it looks closest to a salvia or upright veronica – with its glossy green scallop-edged leaves and, in late spring and/or early summer, spires of purple flowers – it is in actuality related to common garden Stachys plants such as Lamb’s Ears. I believe I got this last spring from Select Seeds. Like many perennials planted into the hot, dry, windy, poor-soil slope of a front garden, it spent its first year settling in, no flowers involved. It’s looking more robust this year and I’m hoping I’ll see buds soon. Here is someone else’s photo of a mature clump of Big Betony in flower; it looks like that picture is of ‘Superba’, the most common cultivar of Big Betony.
Speaking of Lamb’s Ears, here’s mine (Stachys byzantina ‘Silver Carpet’):
It was only after I planted this, unfortunately, that I read that this cultivar, ‘Silver Carpet’, is prone to mildew. I’m much more tolerant of messiness in the garden than many American gardeners – I don’t mind if a flowering plant gets some leaf damage, or there are aphids on the roses, or what else – but Lamb’s ears is primarily or totally (depending on the cultivar) a foliage plant, and it seems rather silly to plant a foliage plant that is prone to foliar disfiguration. Ah, well. Lamb’s ears is a nice plant to plant; I would recommend the plant, just not this cultivar.
After all the rain we’ve had (more last night/this morning), so many plants are blooming more. The orangey African daisy and the perennial candytuft and the nearby pansies are amongst them.
Something is still eating my pansy flowers and buds, most especially the pale yellow and pale blue ones in this clumping (I’ve only seen one bloom of that kind so far, and that one was eaten in a day!). I’ve never had so much damage to pansies and I cannot figure out what is going on.
Here is a close-up of the candytuft, the first decent one I’ve taken all spring!
That’s a felicia budded in the foreground. Several of the felicias have buds, but none have bloomed yet.
Globe thistle and anise hyssop (the species, Agastache foeniculum, not the hybrid ‘Blue Fortune’ that I’m also growing)
The anise hyssop (left) is yet another plant that I got cheaply last spring at the estate herb sale. That sale was quite wonderful for starting a new garden. As I’ve said before, anise hyssop is a wonderful bee plant, one of the best I’ve grown. To see some photos of and a little info on this North American native, follow this link. I got the globe thistle at the farmers’ market last year, but I planted it in summer and it reacted to the humid heat by dropping all its flowers/buds and expending all its energy on surviving, so I can no longer remember whether I got the species Echinops ritro or the equally common Echinops bannaticus ‘Blue Glow’.
In all the rain, a lot more seedlings have sprouted. Now the fava beans/broad beans and the sweet peas have joined the garden peas. Here are some of the seedlings:
The big-leaved seedlings on the right are the favas. The sweet peas are at the top of the picture and the garden peas are in the middle/front, in a row lengthwise with the favas. It took them so long to get going that I hope they will have time to produce/bloom before the hot weather kicks in and kills them, but, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. (That’s the borage in the upper right corner.)
Here is a close-up of some favas (with peas):
Loved the crabapple picture!