Category — Shrubs

‘Penelope’ is one of those obliging roses that will bloom even in shade. It’s one of the Pemberton roses, Joseph Pemberton being a British clergyman who bred them in the early twentieth century.

OK. I’m going to take a brief break here.

I’ve made a nomenclature decision. I know that, properly, a cultivar name goes in quotes. And it bothers me not to have it in quotes. But when I repeat this throughout a blog, it just looks fussy and too much. So from now on, cultivar names will go in quotes the first time in the post. After that, I’ll assume you’ve been introduced, and quotes will never darken the blog post again.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Pemberton roses are also called Hybrid Musk roses, but they don’t really have much musk rose blood (or chlorophyll) in them, so I’m calling them Pemberton roses after the styling of Graham Stuart Thomas.

When it comes to old roses, you can’t go wrong following that Font of Rose Wisdom, Graham Stuart Thomas. (I also just found a very fun and informative article on an old-rose grower north of Seattle).

Penelope, like many of the Pemberton roses, is a sort of semi-climber; you can train it over things but I wind up basically leaning mine up against a tree, where it lolls and sprawls and sometimes flowers.

One of the advantages of the Pemberton roses (besides that they will actually bloom in high shade and semi-shade) is that you can put them near where you walk; they tend to have few or no thorns. At least the types I’ve grown (Penelope, Buff Beauty, Cornelia) are like that.

Another advantage is that Pemberton roses aren’t temperamental, like hybrid tea roses. They have nice graceful foliage, usually a bit shiny, which seems to be pretty pest-resistant (barring the deer). Pemberton roses take the same care as a shrub rose or most of the David Austin roses, which is to say, they need to be fed and watered, but they don’t require constant manicuring or inordinate amounts of fertilizer and pest-killing.

Though Pemberton roses were a repeat-blooming breakthrough in their day, don’t expect them to act like roses developed since WWII, where constant blooming action has been the breeding aim. Pemberton roses give you a flush of bloom in late spring/early summer, and occasionally come up with a rose or two as the season goes on. When it starts to cool in the fall, they generally have another blooming session.

I enjoy the way Penelope fades from a pale peach to a very faintly peachy off-white. Hotter weather definitely makes them emerge in lighter colors; cooler weather deepens them.

Not all of the Pemberton roses have the simple semi-double flowers of Penelope, but many of them do. They’re ideal for blending into the woods, so I tend to put them more on the edges of the garden although “edges” in my garden are pretty wavery and definitely irregular. It might be more accurate to say that I plant them further from the house, but not too far to enjoy in my daily ramblings around.

Where to get Penelope

Just so you know, this is a lousy time to plant roses. If it isn’t hot already, it’s going to get hot soon, unless you’re in the Southern hemisphere, in which case, go for it. It’s a good time. Otherwise-do the research, plan for the space (if you’re really organized, you can even prepare the hole), and wait. No plant likes being transplanted in hot weather.

If you’re one of those annoying people who transplants in hot weather and the plants live anyway, go ahead. Mere mortals are more likely to succeed if we wait until fall. If you’re going bare-root, plant whenever the bare-root planting season is in your area.

ask at local nurseries:

There’s a growing interest (no pun intended) in older roses that has finally landed many of them back in regular nurseries. (When I started growing them some years ago, you could only get them through specialists, or cuttings.) If you ask, a nursery might get them in if they don’t have them already. Nurseries get things in to match local planting seasons, so you’ll be assured you’re getting them in at the best time.

try these web sites, or look up “heirloom roses”, “antique roses”, or “heritage roses” on the web (hint: pick a grower in a climate similar to yours. And suss out what Dave’s Garden Watchdog has to say about them (that’s actually two hints)):

http://www.heritageroses.com/welcome.htm – They grow roses on their own roots, which some people (including me) prefer. If you live in a very cold climate, you might do better with grafted roses.

http://www.antiqueroseemporium.com- Another good source of roses on their own roots. They specialize in roses that do well in hot climates.

References

Graham Stuart Thomas, The Graham Stuart Thomas Rose Book, Sagapress/Timber Press 1994.This book is a compendium of three GST titles: Old Shrub Roses, Shrub Roses of Today, and Climbing Roses Old and New. You can often find them secondhand. There are a lot of good books out on old roses, but Graham Stuart Thomas’s books are essential.

There’s a reason why this isn’t a picture of a gardenia. My gardenia is still in the same limbo it was in the last time I posted on it. Except it lost the single dead leaf.

This photograph of ‘Schwartzkop’ aeonium is the only peaceful thing on this page. Enjoy it.

OK, so I’m reading Robert Smaus’s 52 Weeks in a California Garden. (I picked it up at the thrift store. I tried to keep away from the book department. I knew I didn’t need any more books. But a powerful magnetic force grabbed me by my chest, and there I was, haplessly taking books down from the shelf.)

And do you know what he says about gardenias? He says that they should be grown in the sun. Even though he lives in Southern California, which is a heck of a lot hotter and sunnier than where I am. He says even in interior valleys where it’s blazing hot, gardenias like sun. He says he doesn’t know where all this nonsense about gardenias needing shade comes from.

From the Sunset Western Garden Book, that’s where. “Filtered shade in inland valleys,” it says. “North and east exposure in the desert.”

And that’s just the beginning. Logee’s catalogue shows the sun/part shade icons for their gardenias. And I trusted them. But they’re in Connecticut growing in greenhouses. I suppose they can be excused.

Hot Plants for Cool Climates says that gardenias grow best in light or part shade, but do OK in full sun–only if it’s not too hot.

I’m sure I remember the little name markers in gardenia pots having that same semi-shade icon. It’s unlikely I would have bought them otherwise, since I knew I didn’t have any space in the sun for them.

Smaus said that gardenias-in-part-shade was a widespread belief in nursery and horticultural circles. He wasn’t kidding.

Do you know how irritating this is? It’s not my fault, I had bad information. Do you know how irritating it is that I paid attention to that bad information, and not to the evidence of my eyes and hands, while all those gardenias were dying? (Yes, the full truth can be regretfully revealed. That gardenia I talked about almost killing before–it wasn’t my first gardenia. I’ve had many gardenias. And I’ve killed them all.)

To top it off, as I prowled my library looking for writeups on gardenias, I came across a final puzzler: Ruth Stout’s famous gardenia (one that she grew huge and gave away many starts from) was, by her account, “carefully kept out of the sun.” And it thrived.

Huh???

But that was in Connecticut.

References

Robert Smaus, 52 Weeks in the California Garden, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, 1996

Logee’s catalogue, Late Spring 2008 (and by the way, Logee’s is usually very reliable, and specific, cultural information. And they grow a great selection of plants (they are the source of many of my late lamenteds), and ship them in beautiful shape. And no, I didn’t get paid to write this.)

Susan A. Roth and Dennis Schrader, Hot Plants for Cool Climates, Timber Press, 2000

Ruth Stout, How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, Cornerstone Library, 1976 (reprint of 1968 and 1955 editions)

Poison oak. A name to inspire terror. And irritation of all types.

But wait a minute.

Leaves of three, leave them be…maybe.

Now, I’m not going so far as to recommend poison oak as a garden plant—but if you do have it around, you might consider letting it be, unless it’s impinging on your garden space, or crowded up against where you walk.

I put a container garden in a place where poison oak (and a couple of other wildlings) were already holding sway. Periodically, I prune back the poison oak—using the pruners, not my gloved hands, to carry the branches to the edge of the woods. For some reason—maybe because hard-trodden paths outline this site, maybe because I didn’t water or fluff up the soil where the poison oak was—the poison oak never spread much. With a little attention, we could co-exist just fine.

In another spot, poison oak was starting to muscle out the plants I’d put in. Here I dug the poison oak up—carefully—but it was hard to keep under control. This was a place where my garden plants were in the ground, and I watered. The poison oak really seemed to appreciate that. I finally dug up my plants and let the poison oak have its day.

When I dig up poison oak, I think it’s a good idea to talk to the plant first. Lady oak is very powerful, and she really gets irritated when you cut her off at the root. As who wouldn’t. In some cultures, people make offerings to plants before taking them.

So I talk to the poison oak, and I wear gloves, and I use pruners and a spade to get it out. I follow every poison oak root runner to its end, because I know if I don’t, there’ll be a new plant come spring. Using my pruners sort of like chopsticks, I pick up the poison oak branches and carry them to the edge of the woods. And then I wash off using baking-soda-and-liquid-soap paste (cuts the oils), remembering to get between the fingers and toes. And then I wash off again using Tecnu Extreme. And I often follow this up with a third round. I have respect for the powers of poison oak.

Everybody knows that you shouldn’t put poison oak on the burn pile, right? Anyone who inhales the smoke can have their respiratory system irritated to the point of swelling and closing. Next stop: the emergency room.

More on poison oak later, but for the next few posts we’ll take a tulip break.

This is what my gardenia looks like. I gave it too much water and not enough acid in the soil. Too bad I found that out a year and a half after I got the plant.

Ruth Stout claimed that gardenias were easy: you just fertilized them with your own leaves. Mine didn’t grow enough leaves to use as fertilizer. Foliar-spraying iron chelate seemed to help the few that remained before they dropped off for winter. And I read a recommendation somewhere for putting tea leaves on the soil to create acidity, so I’m doing that haphazardly. My gardenia is a plant that won’t flourish where I threw it. I like to call these Cranky Plants, mainly because the alternative is to point the finger at myself.

Sometimes the way to deal with a Cranky Plant is to move it. Vita Sackville-West said that the art of gardening was the art of hoicking a plant out of one place and putting it in another. And it is true that plants that sulk in one place will thrive in another—even if that other place is only a few feet away. (As I’ve found, this also works in reverse; it’s just one more way to kill a plant.)

There may be an obvious reason why the move is a success—the plant’s finally getting enough sun, or shade (gardenias are supposed to like shade, at least in hot climates, but I suspect I gave mine more than it wanted). But sometimes a plant’s reaction to a move makes no logical sense whatever—a stunted houseplant that bursts into leafy growth in the dark cave of an unused fireplace, for instance. Cranky Plants.

Another way to approach a Cranky Plant is by checking out their backgrounds. Where a plant comes from or how it grows well in someone else’s garden each hold valuable information for those who care to read it. If you have a neighbor who’s growing a fine specimen of the plant you crave, that’s the best resource of all.

One thing you should make sure of, though, is that that plant is the same variety as the one you are growing—sometimes even a difference in cultivar can mean different requirements and different hardiness. Salvia greggii, for instance (usually grown for flowers), is good in zones 7-10, so if you live in Connecticut, it’s an annual. Salvia officinalis (usually grown for leaves) and all its variants, on the other hand, are good for zones 5-9, so they would come back the next spring. They could all properly be called sages, as could many of the other varieties of sage, each with its own requirements. And it’s good to double-check a plant’s cultural requirements in a standard garden book (or, even better, at your local nursery): does it need a change of soil or fertilizer?

But it’s easy to say what I should have done. What I actually did was to look at the gardenia on my way out to doing something else, shake my head, and vow to get back to it later.And eventually, I did.

I happened to read that gardenias prefer the drainage of clay pots—not the self-watering pot I had it in, which keep the soil steadily moist. In my case, it kept the soil steadily wet: I’d forgotten that this was the pot I’d experimented with. I didn’t drill a drain hole in its plastic bottom, just put in the self-watering insert. When it rained, the result was a swamp, because the excess water had no place to go.

I finally got around to emptying that pot of its plants (the gardenia and a dead, drowned scented geranium), soil, and self-watering insert tank. (I realize as I write this post that I must do a series on self-watering containers, which are actually great for plants and gardeners when used with some skill.) The pot is lying on its side, and someday, someday soon, I will drill a hole through the bottom.

I also read somewhere that gardenias like acid soils, which can be supplied by putting your old tea or coffee grounds next to them. And the mottled appearance of the leaves (when the plant had them) looked as if it was due to lack of iron—so I got the recommended iron chelate and sprayed it on. Before the last few leaves dropped completely, they did look greener.The gardenia, as you’ve seen, is now in its clay pot, with some tea leaves, and in its now-leafless state I gave it a Sonic Bloom treatment to help it along (more on that later, too). Now I’m waiting for the weather to warm so it leafs out. Or not. Will it live? Stay tuned.

Do any of you have killed-a-plant-and-learned stories? Please comment and let us benefit from (or be entertained by) your experience.

References:

Ruth Stout on gardenias: How to have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, Ruth Stout. My ancient paperback is a 1976 reprint by Cornerstone Library. This classic book, originally printed in 1955, still has plenty of wit and wisdom for the modern gardener.

Plant origins to determine plant culture:

The Gardener’s Atlas, Dr. John Grimshaw, Firefly Books, 1998

The World in Your Garden, National Geographic Society, 1959

Resources on Wildflower Propagation, National Council of State Garden Clubs, Inc., 1981

As you can see, I often buy my garden books second-hand or remaindered, partly for reasons of economy, but also because there are styles in horticulture as there are in everything else, and sometimes information gets dropped which is actually still useful. I admit too I find it interesting to see how trends change over time; it’s a kind of historical horticultural voyeurism. Other excellent references for looking up plant origins are general garden books for your area (I use the Sunset Garden Books a lot, in their various editions) and the nurseries catalogues you get your plants from. If your catalogues (or their websites) don’t have good cultural directions, you may want to consider changing catalogues.

Buying (or getting given) plants locally is probably the best way to get information, because it will apply to your particular climate and soil. More general references often need to be adapted to what’s happening in your yard or house.

Planting gardenias in clay pots, iron chelate, and tea and coffee in the soil: I’m sorry, I just can’t remember where I read these ideas. If I ever find out, I’ll give credit where credit is due.

This is the time of year the wild gooseberries bloom. I’m drawn in by the baroque intricacy of the flowers. I love that they’re hairy. I don’t understand how anyone can eat the berries, though. Too prickly.

The variety that grows in my area is Ribes speciosum, the fuchsia-flowering gooseberry–or at least it was called that in 1959, when one of my old Sunset gardening books was printed. (I looked up gooseberries in my most reliable local wild plant book, and found it listed only as Ribes species–along with the three varieties of native wild currants.)  I don’t even know why the common name is “gooseberries”. They don’t look remotely gooselike, and a smart goose wouldn’t eat something prickly. If you’ve heard of a story behind that name, please leave a comment: I’d like to know it.

Whatever their botanical i.d., these beautiful little shrubs grow in high shade. They tend to make arching fountain shapes as they get bigger–I’ve never seen one more than four feet high, and often they’re only a foot or two. (The Sunset book says 3-6 feet.) With their beautifully-shaped leaves (evergreen in our climate), they are a pleasure any time of year.

Sometimes wild gooseberries grow in stands, sometimes alone.   If you’re lucky enough to have them, cherish them. Though they’re strong, they’re never invasive. They work beautifully on the edge of the garden, where they don’t get too much water. 

Because they’re adapted to the dry summers here, the wild gooseberries  already growing in my area don’t want water in summer. But if you buy them from a native plant specialist, you will have to water wild gooseberries in for the first year or two. Their roots need to get established–and they need to get hooked up to the secret underground network that wild plants have.  (More on that later.)

If you live in an area with wet summers, it’s much simpler to find a wild gooseberry that suits your own climate than to grow the Ribes  from my area. Many wild gooseberry varieties like to grow in moist places, so they’d be well-suited to a watered garden.  Check with your local native plant society, or ask a local naturalist, the ag department, or a Master Gardener.

In some places, wild gooseberries, and their close relatives, currants, are banned. That’s because of something that happened long ago, a story of the triumph of fungus over human planning.

Over a hundred years ago, wild currants were exterminated in many parts of the eastern U.S. when the woods they grew in were lumbered off. Seeds were sent to Europe for breeding and reintroduction. But the currant seedlings came back infested with blister rust fungus, which damages white pines–an important lumber tree. There’s something poetically apt about that.

Plants (and beings in more debatable categories, such as fungus) can kill each other. But they are also vital to each other. 

Using their web of underground fungus connections (mycorrhizae), wild plants send each other nutrients and water at need, so that the whole community thrives. Proving once again that people who think science is all about competition and survival of the fittest are only projecting their own myths on the world. Competition is a part of nature, but without cooperation, the world couldn’t exist at all.

References

Sunset Western Garden Book (first edition), Lane Publishing Co., 1959