Tovara, rock cress, and more 11 May 2008

A few more pictures from earlier this week -

Pansies, violas, and sweet alyssum

The sweet alyssum has really been nicely filling in the spaces I left between the young plants.

Creeping snapdragons, budded

There is something (I’d guess a bird, but I don’t know for sure) that likes to clip off the buds of creeping snapdragons and leave them lying beside the plants (you can see one at the very front of the plants in this shot). The same thing happened last year. For some reason, whatever is doing it seems particularly prone to clipping off the flowers that are at the very front of the plants, lying on the wall. I don’t know why and I’ve yet to find a way to make it stop, so I just allow for that probability. The vibrant green leaves soften the wall anyway, even when some of the flowers are removed shortly before they can bloom.

Foliage of tovara ‘Painter’s Palette’ (bottom) and bearded irises (with pea seedlings visible at the very top in the background)

The two bearded irises pictured here have done the best of any I’ve planted in the front garden. They are planted towards the top of the slope, so fellow dry-site gardeners may want to take note. The tovara, ‘Painter’s Palette’, is  a cultivar that is found much more often than the species form of this native plant, Polygonum virginianum (syns. Tovara virginiana and Persicaria virginianum). It has the maroon chevron marking pictured here and leaves display varying degrees of marbling with cream and white and paler green (there is little to none seen on the leaves here, but older leaves tend to display more marbling than young ones). It is best known as a foliage plant for partial to full shade gardens, but it will grow decently in a fair amount of sun as well. When it is happy it will seed around with abandon, and the seeds come true to cultivar form.  It’s seeded a little but not much everywhere I’ve grown it.  Every time I start a new garden I’m given some young plants by a friend who always gets many seedlings of it in her own garden. I have two plants in the front garden, and given that I’m used to growing it in moist shade, I’ve been impressed with just how well it’s done here at the base of taller plants partway down the slope. It doesn’t attain the heights it does in shadier, cooler areas, but then, many a plant is shorter in front than it typically is. I think the strong winds alone tend to encourage many plants to sacrifice height for robustness.

California poppy foliage (center) with young salpiglossis plants (rich green at top), rock cress bloom waving in wind (left), and pansy blooms (bottom)

The rock cress (just planted this spring) has done so well it’s almost unbelievable to me. Not only have all its preexisting buds bloomed, but it’s put out not only new buds, but whole new flower stalks! It’s coped so much better with the initial shock of being planted into this inhospitable site than even most other xeriscaping plants.  As of this moment, I would highly recommend it to others in a similar situation - a dry, poor-soil, sunny, windy slope of a site. Hopefully it will continue to do as well as it’s done so far.  (There are at least a few different plants that have the common name rock cress. The one I’m referring to is in the genus Arabis. I would guess it’s a cultivar of Arabis blepharophylla but the nursery tag doesn’t specify.)