Category — Flowering plants (that aren’t bulbs)

In my case, that title should read, Never For Strawberries. For growing strawberries in strawberry pots in my area poses several problems.

First of all, in our hot, dry, rainless summers, any fair-sized terracotta pot can dry out, killing the contents, in the course of a single relentless sunny day. A largish terracotta pot, like a strawberry jar, might take two. Those of us who tend to be distracted by things in life other than gardening learn this the hard way.

The first year I got my strawberry pots, I innocently put strawberries in them. Since I have very few garden spots involving full sun (my second strawberry pot problem), I used alpine strawberries, white alpine strawberries to be precise, which I got from a specialist catalogue at a very special price. They were alpine strawberries with runners (most alpine strawberies don’t have them), which appealed to me: I could propagate more, because at this price, I wasn’t going to be able to afford to buy them.

The first year I put strawberries in the strawberry pot, the plants in the bottom of the pot went dead after a few weeks. I realized this was because watering from the top meant that the water either evaporated or ran out the side holes before it got to the bottom.

I regrouped. I set up my simplest bottom-watering system, which is to put the pot in a plastic bulb bowl – with the plug still in the hole, so the bowl holds water. This way , the plant has a reservoir of water to draw on, and, in the case of terracotta, the pot itself wicks up some of the water, so it’s a little less porous (read: liable to dry out the soil).

This time, the bottom plants did well, and the top ones died. Same problem, only in reverse. I did try watering from the top and using the bottom-watering system as well, but this was tiresome, and I never did get any strawberries.

I planted the strawberries somewhere else, and retired the strawberry pot. A year or two later, I was overwhelmed with my usual fall influx of spring bulbs. I thought: I’ll just use this strawberry pot as a bulb pot. After all, I don’t water them; they like to be dry in summer. And the terracotta will ensure they get drainage.

So in went my antique maroon-dark Philippe do Comines tulips at the top; in the side pockets went tiny, early-blooming Iris danfordiae.

And for a few years, all was sort of well. The I. danfordiae bloomed the first year, but needed replacing in each coming year, so while they accepted the strawberry pot, they weren’t exactly happy there.

The Philippe de Comines bloomed for a couple of years, then went blind. (On reviewing this post, it came to me that I should explain this. My tulips did not look at an eclipse or a Day of the Triffids meteor shower and suddenly become unable to see: what happened was that they continued to put up single spears of leaves, but didn’t bloom. That’s how bulbs go blind.) When I finally dug them up, they had split into many tiny bulbs, ready to be grown in a bigger space, so they could mature and bloom. They had always looked a little short for the tall strawberry pot, anyway.

I transplanted Philippe de Comines into other containers. That left the strawberry jar empty. Where it sat until recently, when I was in dire need of transplanting one of my lavenders.

Looking around for pots – if there were a portrait of me as a gardener, it would be me looking around for pots, preferably in a noble pose, like stout Cortez and his companions, viewing the ocean and each other with wild surmise* – looking around for pots, I spied the strawberry pot. Empty.

I had to peel back the root layers from my lavender; it really had gotten awfully  potbound, and the pot it was in was wider than the strawberry pot. But much shallower, I reasoned to myself (or perhaps to the lavender). The strawberry pot would give the lavender more root room, and after the radical cutting back I’d given it on top, I expected great things. Since it’s one of the more compact lavenders (knee-high ‘Rosea’, with pink flowers – really mauve in my climate and soil), the proportions should be right for the strawberry pot when it grows out. At least that’s the vision.

But what about the side pockets? While cleaning up in another large container, I was inspired: here was one of the places I’d dumped my little bearded iris roots. Since I hadn’t had a place for them last fall, I just slipped them into any container that had a spare slice of room. They weren’t doing very well, because they didn’t have much sun in those crowded conditions. They were alive, though, which had been the point of the exercise.

Now I thought: what about putting them in the side pockets of that strawberry jar? Bearded iris don’t like being buried deep; they actually prefer to be partly out of the soil, so they’ll be all right in there (soil tends to settle and sift from the pockets, leaving the roots of whatever’s in them exposed). Neither one of them has to have water to barely survive, so an occasional summer watering would probably keep them in decent shape. And the combination might look cool in that pot, grey-greens against dark terracotta.

So that’s where I put them. The iris and lavender are waiting: will they be the final epoch of my strawberry pot? Or will it need renewal next year?

Next post: about those alpine strawberries and what happened to them

* leaving out the mass murder bits. For those of my readers who know Cortez only from Keats, his progress through the Americas was marked by the kind of slaughter, torture, and lies that the Nazis (or some previous U.S. governments) could have taken pride in.

I thought calibrachoa was a tender perennial. That’s what it said on the label: hardy to zone 9, a zone-ruling I’ve tried to believe I could actually get away with in my area, if I protected the plant. Yet unless we have unusually warm winters, a zone-9 classification usually means the kiss of death.

I bought calibrachoa at my local drugstore, one of my sources for those cheap common annuals I pretend to despise but actually find pretty handy for tucking in between perennials when they are drooping, flagging, dormant, or nonflowering. Calibrachoa is a newly-fashionable plant, generous in its flowering, good in containers.

It’s no accident that it looks like a minature petunia; the two are closely related, and calibrachoa was once in the same genus. (Some people argue that it still should be. Lumpers vs. Splitters, round 873.)  Like petunias, calibrachoas are from South America, but they took more time to get into gardens outside their home country. Suntory, the Japanese breeding program that has come up with heat-tolerant fuchsias, started working with calibrachoas in the late 1980s. Their work has obviously come to fruit (or flourish), since you can now find plentiful-flowering calibrachoas in every nursery and drugstore.

So I tried calibrachoa last year, thinking of it as an annual, and I was pretty pleased with the combination in this pot (photo at the top of the post):  the dull purple of purple sage (not the Zane Grey kind, the culinary kind: Salvia officinalis ‘Purperascens’) sparked up by small, pink-orange trumpets of Calibrachoa calimor ‘Desert Shine’. I didn’t expect it to be more than a seasonal show.

But hark. I was repotting some perennials which badly needed it (we can often get away with doing this in January in our climate; January is bare-root-planting time here, and we generally get a warm spell that makes it fairly pleasant to do) – I was repotting perennials when I saw something that shouldn’t have been there: green calibrachoa leaves, peeking out of the sage pot.

Since we’ve had a winter ranging into the mid-teens F (in the neighborhood of -8 C), cold for us, we have definitely dropped below zone-9 minimums. The University of Illinois website, where I got some of my calibrachoa information, says they are hardy to “zones 8 or 9″, which may be good enough if you live in Illinois, but is entirely annoying if you live in more-or-less zone 8. In the hills, no zone is sure. I’ve had to drain the water pipes several times this year, usually a sign that every borderline plant I have (brugmansias spring to mind) will be deader than a doornail.

So: is calibrachoa actually hardier than advertised? That would make a refreshing change. Or (my secret hope) do I have some hardy calibrachoa sport, some maverick that will change the world of calibrachoas as we know it?

It’s dangerous to draw conclusions. I’ll just keep my eye on that calibrachoa and see what happens.

A letter from Sylvia

 Dear Pomona,

As you may have heard we have had a colder winter here than usual.  We have had more frosts than I can count and snow.  Look at my poor hellebore!  But the hellebores don’t mind, though on a cold morning they looked like this. By the afternoon it was looking better.

These plants comes upright no matter how many times it gets flattened in the cold – I find it just fascinating, exciting, thrilling….!

These two pictures were taken on 1 Feb before the snow and 2 Feb in the afternoon.  Now I know our frosts are mild compared with some areas, I don’t know how cold these plant will cope with or if they cope with hot summers.  Hopefully someone will tell us.

Look at these beautiful flowers and colours – wouldn’t these earn a place in your garden at any time of the year (the above are a selection of flowers in my garden taken over the last 2 years).  I know they would be in my garden even if they bloomed in summer but they bloom just when we need them most – winter.  The first of my hellebores flowers just before the snowdrops in January. They don’t die down leaving a gap in the bed over summer but have leaves that make a good back drop to the summer flowers and stop me forgetting where they are! Now you see why they are my favourite plant – why are you not growing them Pomona?

There are several species, I have grown the green flowered Corsican hellebore (Helleborus argutifolius)  and our native Stinking hellebore (H. foetidus) in a previous garden and both are worth growing with lovely foliage. There are other newer varieties developed for their foliage. I also have the Christmas rose (H. niger) but it is a variable plant and mine doesn’t flower until February or March and is low growing. The species I love and grow lots of is the Lenten Rose (H. orientalis as it used to be called now renamed H. x hybridus).  These are often seed raised and are variable.  Luckily for me we have a specialist grower locally and his greenhouses are full of these plants all in flower.  It is so difficult to decide on which ones to buy.

 I bought my first hellebore hybrid many years ago and moved it to my present garden but it doesn’t flower until March. So I went early in the season, to the local nursery, a few years ago and bought some plants. They are fairly expensive but I had some Christmas money!  I hoped that buying early would mean the plants flowered early and that is just what happened.  While other hellebores are still just showing buds at ground level, this lovely dark double flowered one is at its best and like my iris is just in front of a window.

Did I mention that they flower for a long time gradually fading as the flowers age and the seeds ripen.  They do self seed for me, they are easy to pull up if needed, the seedlings don’t transplant very well unless they are left for a few years to grow and then moved before they flower.  I usually cut off the flowers in April or May to build up the plants, rather than allow them to seed.

Well, Pomona have I convinced you to find a place for these lovely plants? I have read that they don’t like to be moved but I have moved several without any problems, as they like to be left alone they are really easy plants. Visit Frances  at Faire Garden for some great care tips,  though I cut my leaves off in December as I have an earlier season. More hellebores for me, definitely, I have a red one that was new last year and hasn’t flowered yet (it was a present via mail order) and I want a creamy yellow one!

I do hope, you and all my blog friends that don’t have them already, will get some hellebores providing you have a suitable climate.

Best wishes Sylvia (England)

Last month, Sylvia (from England) revealed the winter flowers of her garden. When I found a flower on my ‘Freckles’ clematis one morning, I decided to follow her lead. To me, it’s amazing to find things flowering when, every night, I am draining my pipes so they won’t freeze.

‘Freckles’ (a Clematis cirrhosa cultivar) is pictured at the top. I wrote about it earlier this year, describing it as a winter-flowering clematis. I didn’t know how right I was. Since it’s a selection from the Beleares, where they don’t have much frost, or may not have any: huge, old bearing fig trees are common, some of the rosemary grows well over your head, and almonds have green fruit in March), I thought this clematis would shut down for business once the weather got really cold. It hasn’t. Not only have I got this flower, the leaves are still fresh and green.

All pretty sparse, as you can see, but I’ve had this clematis for less than a year. Can’t wait to see what it does next winter.

Another flower that is gracing my doorstep is the ever-beautiful Iris danfordiae. A small iris, all head and no stem, it has a fresh mild fragrance which you can enjoy more of in the house. I put Iris danfordiae in shotglasses or tiny jars, one or two at a time; they last for a few days. I like to put them someplace handy, like the kitchen table, so I can lift the whole bright nosegay up and sniff it for refreshment. They’re also great for sickrooms, because they’re small enough not to take much room on the bedside table, low enough that someone lying down can really see them, and easy to sniff from a prone position.

Those of us who plant bulbs in containers can bring these treats up close, where we  can see (and smell) every bit of drama as they unfold. Since no porch is big enough to hold all the plants I want to have close to me, I like getting to rotate plants in their prime so that they’re nearer to me. It helps that I plant bulbs in lightweight fiber pots, easier to schlep.

Iris danfordiae has always been an annual for me, but this time may be different. In Janis Ruksans’s well-named book Buried Treasures, I found a possible cure. Ruksans (his name is spelled incorrectly, as I don’t have diacritics in WP –if anyone knows of how to do them, I’d be grateful to know) – Ruksans tells of how I. danfordiae tends to split into tiny grains after flowering. This would explain the disappearance of my bulbs. His solution is to give them a good dose of fertilizer and plant them more deeply, 15-20 cm (about 8 inches), about twice as deep as you’d ordinarily plan a bulb this size.

So I planted my Iris danfordiae deep this year, and next year will tell if that tactic works in my area and in pots.

Violets are great in containers, forming a kind of miniature groundcover which allows other plants to grow through later in the season. Right now, they’re in their own,  coming out in strength. This unnamed passalong variety I got from the yard of my friend and former bandmate, Dan Scanlan. He lives in a twenties-era house which has a lot of plants from the old garden in it, including these violets. When our band rehearsed in his garage, these violets scented the entryway every February. I remarked on them so much that he gave me a few clumps.

I’m fascinated by violet varieties and history – at the beginning of the twentieth century, they were the most popular cut flowers in the U.S.  I’ve bought fancier named varieties, in search of exotic beauties – but this nameless Viola odorata, living on in abandoned homesites and old gardens around our county,  is the one I keep liking the best.

The final flower – and I do mean ONE flower – is even more common than the violets. For some reason, one of my Dutch Master daffodil pots is far in advance of the others. I can’t think why; I planted them all last year (usually, an old, established pot will bloom before a just-planted-this-fall one). And they were all pretty much in the same place, so none got more sun exposure than another. Just another of the mysteries of garden life.

Dutch Master is a common hybrid: too old to be new and different, to young to be antique. Yet when it is blooming on my doorstep in winter, it’s not common at all.
Next post: A letter from Sylvia. All about hellebores.

The list in the last post was made of Digitalis purpurea variants (ones I hadn’t already posted about).

This post is a list for those who like to fantasize about the strange and unusual: mostly perennial, mostly species foxgloves. Any foxgloves which look as if they have flowers like D. laevigata automatically go off my wish list, but that doesn’t mean they won’t look just fine on yours.

Digitalis cariensis subsp. trojana, offered by Sequim Rare Plants, is creamy, with amber gold throats and a long, bright white tongue. A great description which makes me want it, even without a photo, especially since it’s a perennial. SRP says this foxglove does better when it gets afternoon shade and regular watering. It’s shorter than some, usually about 30” (about 3/4 of a meter) tall. and hardy to zone 6, or 5 with protection.

Digitalis ferruginea – A late-blooming perennial from Southern Europe, whose blooms are described as creamy yellow flecked with rusty brown. They are also described as rusty red, more in keeping with the common name of this plant, rusty foxglove. It can run tall – between 3 to 6 feet (about 1 to 2 meters) is the rather vague designation – and it’s another one of those biennial-or-perennial types. (Usually, this means one or two seasons of bloom.) A cultivar, ‘Gigantea Gelber Harold’ is purported to have large pure yellow flowers from June to August, coming in at 5 feet.  The pictures show flowers that look similar to D. laevigata.

Digitalis ‘Goldcrest’, which I found at Jackson and Perkins, was at first a mystery: it might be a purpurea variation, I thought (the flowers look the right shape), or it might be some variant of Digitalis obscura: annoyingly, J&P declines to give botanical names, nor do they bother to tell you whether it’s a biennial or perennial, so there’s no way of knowing. ‘Goldcrest’ is a pretty looking flower, “flushed with gold, apricot, and rose, with dark brown freckles” as the copy says; a kind of deeper, darker ‘Sutton’s Apricot’. Fortunately, the 2009 Plant Delights catalogue arrived to solve the mystery. ‘Goldcrest’ is another name for ‘Waldigone’, a cross of Digitalis grandiflora and Digitalis obscura, so it is perennial, “a nice clump-former, adorned with small glossy evergreen foliage, topped throughout the summer with 18” (45 cm) branched spikes of large apricot flowers, each higlighted by interior brown specks.” The Plant Delights photo shows a much less vividly-colored flower than the J&P photo. This could  be from soil and climate differences, cultivar differences, or vividness by computer manipulation.

Digitalis grandiflora is one of  strawberry foxglove’s parents, and that is where I have described what I know of it.

Digitalis lanata (means “woolly”) is also called ‘Grecian foxglove’, even though it’s not the same as the D. laevigata ‘Grecian foxglove’ I discussed earlier. (Yet another reason for Latin names.) It is a hardy biennial or perennial with creamy yellow flowers – always a great color in a flower, if you ask me.  As perennial foxgloves seem to do, it flowers in late rather than early summer. Digitalis lanata hails from Greece and the Danube, quite a spread of territory. Perhaps it traveled in the hands of the flower-loving Ottoman Turks. I have tried getting this foxglove from seed numerous times, and never managed it. I’ve never seen a plant of it, so I haven’t had the opportunity see it that way, either. I would love to bring it to flower at least once, just to see it.  Seed germinates in about 26 days (a lunar cycle) at 70 degrees F. Available at JL Hudson.

Digitalis lutea, or Straw Foxglove, is native to North Africa and Europe. Its species name, “lutea” means “yellow”, and it’s possible that “straw” refers to the type of yellow. A picture in Antique Flowers shows it with tiny narrow blooms of buff yellow. This is yet another of the ones that I have seeded year after year, with no result.  But I would like to grow it. Yellow to white inch-long flowers, dark green foliage, and perennial habit sound good to me. JL Hudson quotes Jelitto and Schacht in his catalogue, as commending, “ A noteworthy, graceful, long-lived, lime-loving species.” So maybe liquid calcium will encourage it to sprout. We can but hope.

Digitalis obscura, a Spanish perennial, offers an entirely different type of foxglove experience. Its ombre-dyed orange bells remind me more of aloe flowers than D. purpurea, at least judging by the picture in the High Country Gardens catalogue. Perhaps the camera lies: HCG calls the flowers yellow-and-brown.  (HCG offers plants only. If you prefer growing from seed, you can get them from JL Hudson, who says the seeds germinate in 1 to 2 weeks. In my experience, that’s quick for a foxglove.) The flowers of D. obscura don’t have the closed-in look of D. laevigata & co., but they do look smaller and narrower than D. purpurea flowers, and they hang their heads more heavily. The leaves are reputed to be evergreen and lilylike, and the plant can go woody, like a lavender or sage.  D. obscura does well in full or partial sun, and grows to about 18” (about half a meter) tall by 12” (about 30 cm) wide, the kind of miniaturization you often see in plants from the mountains. Its mountain home also means, I’m guessing, that it likes a well-drained, mineral-rich soil. It’s certainly a low-water plant, though I would also make that case for Digitalis purpurea.

Digitalis parviflora ‘Milk Chocolate’ – Frances of Fairegarden  brought my attention to this foxglove. Since what I can see of the photo shows the same closed-bell flower as D. laevigata, I probably won’t be fighting to get this one into my garden – though I am intrigued by brown flowers at the moment.  And the shape of the spikes is cool. I  might succumb.

Digitalis thapsi ‘Spanish Peaks’ -  Goodwin Creek Gardens says that this perennial foxglove is small, growing about 1’ x 1’ (about 30 cm each way).  They describe the spikes as reddish purple, attractive to hummingbirds. The leaves are fuzzy, and it grows in partial hade to full sun, z. 4-10. Needs well-drained soil. Select Seeds confirms that this cultivar is from Spain. That sounds obvious, but cultivar names can be tricky, since they’re often used to refer to the namer’s associations with the plant, rather than the plant’s association with its world. GCG describes ‘Spanish Peaks’ as two to four feet tall, and mentions that the flowers are spotted with deep maroon.

Digitalis viridiflora, from the Balkans, has greenish-yellow inch-long flowers, as the name suggests, A hardy perennial, Digitalis viridiflora flowers from June to August, and grows 2 to 4 feet tall. It likes moist soil, and fall sowing. I have a weakness for greenish-yellow flowers, and just think how cool it would look next to a wild Digitalis purpurea, if they flower at the same time. D. viridiflora is perennial, too. I’ll be trying this one soon. It’s available through JL Hudson.

As exhausted as you may be by the subject of foxgloves, I’m sure I haven’t covered them all. For an extensive list of foxgloves in cultivation, try: Hardy Plants . (But be forewarned; they haven’t got photographs. Strictly botanical information only.) If you have any favorite foxgloves – or just know of other varieties that deserve their turn – I hope you’ll leave a comment.