Each Little World

'Splendide' indeed

I am growing seven different Thalictrums. They range in size from Thalictrum kiusianum aka Kyushu meadow rue which is about 4" tall. This spreads slowly, can take some sun and nothing seems to bother it. 

Thalictrum rochebrunianum 'Lavender Mist' usually tops out around 6'. The stems are sturdy and stay vertical unless they get hit with a severe wind storm. This has always been the drama queen of my meadow rues — until now. 

I bought Thalictrum 'Splendide' from Digging Dog Nursery in 2016 and this summer it has done its third year leap if you know that gardening mantra. This plant was discovered as a seedling between T. elegans and T. delavayi by famed French Heuchera breeder, Thierry Delabroye, according to Digging Dog. You can see its foliage behind me in the image below. 

This plant is listed as getting about 2' wide which is the width of mine and 5-9' tall. The tape measure I'm holding below marks the top of the flower stalks at 10.5' tall! Except for a few stems which have bent downward, most of the flowers are lost in the tree's leaves. The tree is helping to stabilize this tall plant so I shouldn't complain that it's hiding the flowers. 

At this height there really isn't another location in the garden where the same thing won't  happen. Despite buying 'Splendid' because I loved the idea of a really tall Thalictrum, I never believed it would reach the sky. 

Summer pots

The deck is currently home to a plethora of potted plants; all waiting for me to have enough energy to dig holes and get them planted. Most of them are shrubs and trees like the two below. These two are spending their second summer in pots. Eventually they'll get planted in the ground, but I'm enjoying being able to see them up close for the foreseeable future. This is Ginkgo biloba 'Sky Tower' which will be about 20' tall and 6' wide at maturity. 

Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Thowell' is a dwarf Hinoki cypress with a naturally narrow undulating form, according to Avant Gardens where I purchased it online. The brick was a gift because it almost spells my last name. 

My pair of Hostas on the deck look about the same as they do every year. But they are the limit to my flowering plants in containers.

Flower Factory Foray

Is there any treat more delightful than a gift certificate to your favorite local nursery? Not to my way of thinking. I went out to spend my Flower Factory gift on a cool and cloudy Sunday afternoon. I was very good and only bought two plants not on my list. I stayed so focused that, as usual, I forgot to take pictures of their beautiful displays of potted plants ready to take home. I snapped these few images on the way from where I parked my car over to where I picked up one of their red wagons to use while I shopped. Loved these brilliant poppies surrounded by what I believe is Dianthus carthusianorum.

A coral tinted Peony sparkling from the early morning rain. 

The Peonies were in front of one of my favorite garden sheds, complete with a green roof.

I was mesmerized by this huge swath of Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla mollis). 

I've always grown a few in my garden because of the electric lime color of the flowers and the way its pleated leaves capture raindrops. Seeing it at Flower Factory convinced me that the big group of Lady's Mantle in my garden had not gotten out of control. It was in the process of turning itself in a swath and I realized I was lucky I did not pull out most of the plants before I visited Flower Factory. 

I always have a stack of empty pots but never know who takes what. Now I am going to rinse down all the containers from this haul and take them back to Flower Factory when I go out there next. 

Here's my latest haul. I could barely managed to pull the wagon; it was so loaded with plants. 

I had a list of plants, the number I wanted of each and their location to make shopping easy. I also brought my catalog with me. But what I really appreciate is the fact that Flower Factory uses a scanner and so my receipt lists all my plants by name. Since I make i.d. cards for them and keep track of what I planted where, this is a real boon to my record-keeping. 

I mainly bought more of the plants that have been doing well for at least a couple of years or more in my garden. A week later and all but two plants are in the ground and looking good. 

FERNS: 3 Dryopteris australis (Dixie Wood Fern); 1 each Osmunda claytoniana and Polystichum makinoi

GENERAL PERENNIALS: 3 Heuchera 'Lava Lamp', I each Heuchera 'Blackberry Crisp' and Heucherella 'Brass Lantern'; 3 Verbena hastata, 1 Geranium 'Dragon Heart', 1 Origanum 'Norton's Gold'

GRASS: 9 Carex rosea, 5 each Carex Pennsylvanica and C. davillariana, 1 Sesleria autumnalis (Autumn Moor Grass)

Expert advice

When someone in the know offers a clue as to the best way to site a plant, it is foolish not to take their advice. I know I don't always do it, but the times I have done so resulted in such beautiful displays that I need to remember to be open to expert advice when it's offered. 

I've been growing Epimedium grandiflorum 'Waterfall' for eight years. The breeder gave it a name that says how the plant looks as well as telling you where to put it: Someplace where the waterfall effect will be obvious, if not emphasized. I put mine on a gentle slope above a low wall where its cascading leaves provide a striking display all season. I underplanted it with Hosta 'Rhythm & Blues,' not realizing how well the Hosta foliage would add to the downward flow visually.

Slightly to the right of the above group and a bit lower down is Tricyrtis macrantha. Gene Bush, of the late Munchkin Nursery where I found this plant, calls it the "King of Toad Lilies." He also said to "give it a rock, log or edge of a bed to flow down and over." In my case, I gave it a rock edge of the bed and it flows like a dream. 

Both the Epimedium and the Toad Lilies have become stars of my garden because I let someone else tell me what to do; a much-needed lesson for this control freak!

Market finds

I love Foxgloves but only the peach colored varieties which are always in short supply around here. I almost ordered some from the East Coast but decided against it. So I was thrilled to discover Digitalis 'Dalmation Peach' recently at K&W in Janesville. I was even more thrilled to discovered a vendor selling them at the local West Side Farmers Market last weekend. That color is perfect with Berberis 'Orange Rocket'. 

I don't buy many annuals other than herbs like Basil. But the same vendor was selling Salpiglossis plants, an old variety that is rarely seen these days. I fell for it and bought three of them. The colors range from dark red to almost black with wonderful purple-striped variations in between. The variety is 'Royale Mix'.

When is a fern not a fern?

That's the phrase that caught my eye when I saw this charmer on the Far Reaches Farm website last year. Pteridophyllum racemosum is a Japanese plant that looks like a fern that flowers.

It made it through its first winter and bloomed! I am thrilled as it is even lovelier in person than on-line.

I planted it by this mossy grindstone thinking that the growing conditions would be right; but it turned out to be the perfect photo backdrop as well. Far Reaches is not offering this plant at the moment, so I am even more pleased that I splurged last year. 

Loree made me do it!

You know who I mean: Loree Bohl of Danger Garden. I don't know how many times she's shown her stunning Hellebore, 'Jade Tiger' (below). Every time I see her photos of this plant, I swoon. Then I say to myself, "I really need to get one of those!"

LOREE BOHL/DANGER GARDEN

But finding one for sale locally has not happened. Nor has it been easy to find them online. But this year I finally discovered them at Fraser's Thimble Farms. The price was pretty typical until I realized that not only was this nursery in Canada but it was in B.C. and not eastern Canada as I had been thinking.

It's bad enough that I order from nurseries in California and Washington state, but I decided I had to draw the line somewhere. So I gave up on my dream of 'Jade Tiger' in my garden. Until it unexpectedly appeared at White Flower Farm (below) under "new" plants that they'd just put online. 

No more oohing and aahing and searching. I plunked down my credit card and bought three of them. Whether I will keep them together to create a swath or spread them around the garden is still up in the air. But I am going to have fun playing with these beauties. Thanks, Loree. That GBBD photo made me finally do it!

Slim favorites

I get email updates from a lot of garden sites as I am sure many of you do as well. Thus I signed up to get a free catalog from Proven Winners. I am not crazy about their emphasis on what I consider overly-colorful foliage, but they do offer some nice plants. I trust their name and the quality of their plants, so I took a long look at their "Gardening Simplified" catalog when it came in the mail Monday.

But I didn't turn down a page corner marking something of interest to me until I was more than halfway through the book. I found two shrubs under space-saving hedges that caught my eye. Both are fastigiate, meaning nice and narrow and able to fit into tighter spots in the garden. 

This spring I am going to go looking for Taxus x media 'Stonehenge,' a shade-tolerant yew (above). Our Arborvita hedge (last May, below) is suffering from growing in too much shade and its multi-trunk form is getting severely battered from snow and miserable winters. I am thinking that perhaps I can replace a couple of the Arborvita or just start another hedge in front of it. We put in the original hedge to screen our neighbor's parking area where they keep a camper along with their cars.

They are fabulous neighbors but they need to shovel snow from their parking area too close to our hedge for its health — something we did not think about when we sited it. So a replacement hedge that is not as close to their parking spot — or maybe even a fence — needs to be something Mark and I look at this spring. 

On the same page as the Taxus 'Stonehenge' was this skinny Elderberry, Sambucus nigra 'Laced Up.' I moved Sambucus 'Black Lace' because it was too much of a spreader. But I would like a dark leaved shrub in that same spot to echo the Cotinus across the path. So this might nicely do the job. Then again, I saw this lovely treatment of 'Black Lace' Elderberry on Plant Lust. I don't know if it ever occurred to me before I saw this photo that this Elderberry could be a willowy, elegant plant.

It made me think twice. Perhaps what I really need to do is to prune out the horizontal growth and try to make the Elderberry I already have grow as vertically as I can make it. Or maybe I should  put my 'Black Lace' in a pot where I can shape it to my heart's content — and add 'Laced Up in my tight corner. 

A number of local nurseries carry Proven Winners plants and shrubs, so I can wait to decide what I want to do until I see the actual plants this Spring. 

Snowdrops make an appearance

Ha! Don't be silly. We still have deep snow cover though the temperatures are finally rising up to normal for this time of year, so perhaps Spring will make an appearance. Despite the weather I do have snowdrops, courtesy of Carolyn's Shade Garden in Bryn Mawr, PA.

I have ordered snowdrops "in the green" from Carolyn Walker a few times over the years. Buying them this way — in growth — is the best way to guarantee snowdrop success according to the experts. Though it will be a while before they can go outdoors, they should manage quite well potted up by a sunny, cool window. 

I've found ordering snowdrops "in the green" has advantages that I had not realized when I first ordered some:

1. First, I get something green and growing at the moment when I am most desperate to get out into the garden, but can't yet do so.
2. Unlike a bouquet of Tulips from the grocery store, these plants will go into my garden and not onto the compost heap.
3. And most important, when I plant them out, all the spring bulbs — including other snowdrops — will be emerging. I will be able to easily add these newly-arrived snowdrops to groups of the same already in place in the garden. And I can see where there are holes at this season where I can easily slip in a few new snowdrops. Something that is very hard to do in the autumn when I could plant them as dry bulbs. By that time of the year I can't remember the spring garden at all, nor can I work well from photographs. So snowdrops "in the green" are a win-win purchase for me. 

Carolyn mailed them last Monday and they were at  my door Wednesday morning. You can see how they were packed in shredded paper that cushioned them from the slightest bump or jarring. I slowly let the shredded paper slide into a plastic bin until I could see the ziplock bag holding the plants. 

I double-checked Carolyn's receipt against my original email order to her and then got to work potting the snowdrops up. I'd brought a bag of potting soil and a group of pots from the cold garage into the house a few days earlier in preparation. I knew I would not want to work with such cold material, nor would I want to subject the plants to yet another shock.

I bought some very typical varieties like G. elwesii ex Carolyn’s Shade Gardens (a species snowdrop from Carolyn's own naturalized plantings) and G. nivalis ex Carolyn’s Shade Gardens (another species snowdrop which Carolyn described as the "progeny of the vigorous strain that has thrived on her property for over 100 years".) The pots are on a shelf under my big Boston fern. 

I also opted for two snowdrop varieties that are new to me: G. 'White Dream' (syn. G. nivalis ‘White Dream’) which have a pronounced white stripe on the leaves and according to Carolyn are a vigorous strain and should multiply rapidly. The stripe is visible on the few larger leaves but not from the angle I took the photo.

The other new variety for me is G. ‘Jonathan’ (unique single snowdrop, G. elwesii) with extra large, globular flowers and broad blue leaves. It was found in 2000 in a North Yorkshire garden by snowdrop author Michael Myers. The picture below is from Carolyn's website, but you can easily pick this one out in the photo of my group of potted snowdrops. It reminds me somewhat of G. 'Diggory,' which has large flowers but is much more expensive. 

My two G. 'Jonathan' bulbs!

Everyone is potted up with their id tags, ready and waiting for the snow to melt and the ground to thaw so they can be planted in the garden. Exactly how long a wait that proves to be is anyone's guess!

Cornish inspiration

We all have certain flowers that we love; the ones we never tire of and can't have enough of in our gardens. Among my loves are Erythroniums, Fritillarias, Primulas and Hellebores. So I was thrilled when Gardens Illustrated magazine took its subscribers on a digital visit to Bosvigo, Wendy Perry's garden in Cornwall. I'd come across her garden before and fallen completely in love with it because we're clearly fans of many of the same plants. I printed out the pictures of the garden from this digital tour on 8 and 1/2 x 11 inch paper so I could study all the details.  (Frits, Erythroniums and Aenmones in Bosvigo below). 

Looking at these pictures of her woodland garden made me think about what I am growing in the garden where the Tiger Eye Sumac came down last summer. That area in my garden has all four of my favorite plants but they're not knitted together nearly as well as the ones in Wendy's garden. The appeal here lies in both the related colors and the spread of the plant clumps.

So, of course after drooling over these pictures, I went online and added a few more things to my previous order from Klehm's Song Sparrow Nursery. Two mostly yellow Hellebores ('Sandy Shores' and 'Spanish Flare'), another dark one ('New York Night') and Epimedium x youngianum 'Royal Flush' (below). I first saw this Epimedium on the website of the Elizabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle and have been on the lookout for it ever since.

There are already Erythroniums, Galanthus and Primulas growing in this area that should be ready for diving this spring. The Hellbore and Epimedium foliage will help to cover the bare spots left by the ephemerals. Wendy has wonderful dashes of blue in her garden from Corydalis (below) which I will swap out for the blue of Brunnera or Jacob's ladder (Polemonium) which I am already growing successfully, 

Wendy's garden is two acres so she can grow more plants and larger swaths of them than me. But these views offer inspiration and ideas for smaller gardens based on color, texture, foliage and understory trees. It's a perfect classroom image for a spring garden! Here are the plants from Klehm that I will add to the area in the photos at the bottom.

Hellebore 'New York Night' (above) and H. 'Spanish Flare' (below)

Here are Primulas, Epimedium and a Hellebore already growing in the area where I will add these new plants. 

You can see I've already got the yellow, pink and purple color combo started. 

At the far edges of this bed are two different pink Peonies and Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart' with its pink flowers and yellow foliage, so I think my new plant purchases will work well here.  I don't think I will ever miss the Sumac that I took out since its given me all this lovely space for new plants.