The Perfectly Imperfect Woodland Garden

Post 73

I can imagine the perfectly imperfect woodland garden in spring.

For an understory it would have bluebells and forget-me-nots, daffs and species tulips, hellebores, trilliums, woodland poppies, primroses, may apples, wild ginger, ferns, barrenworts, money plants and plants I do not yet know the names of.

The midstory would be azaleas, rhodos, fothergillas, dogwoods, serviceberries and magnolias.

All this would be under ancient trees, with an modest farmhouse and a few well-used outbuildings sharing the plot.

And, of course, this bucolic kingdom (too small, comfortable and unpolished to be an estate,) would be somewhere near a convenient village center, but hidden away, maybe reached by a dirt road winding off a rarely-used street.

Could such a place exist? Yes. of course it could. In fact it does, tended by a retired geneticist who still comes out and digs up a primrose here and there to gift a worthy up-coming plant sale. May we all have her vigor, intelligence, generosity, humor, busy life and green thumb at 92! Hmmm, and would we had and have such virtues at an younger age too.

While few of us live in such natural splendor, many of us garden yards that are at least partially shaded by big trees. This expanse of spring loveliness is an inspiration of what can be done under such conditions.

All these plants spread on their own and grow well between tree roots.

Do you need some of the plants listed and pictured above?  if so, you are in luck. It is almost time for the Ned Wolf Park plant sale.

"Ned Wolf Park is located at the corner of Ellet St. and McCallum St. in the beautiful Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia.  This year we've scheduled our annual sale of perennials, shrubs, annuals & miscellaneous garden stuff for Saturday, May 11th from 10 am to 1 pm. "
http://nedwolfpark.blogspot.com/

The Easy Beauty of Quince and Bluebells, with a side glimpse at the Golden Apples of the Hesparides

Post 72

 This time of year it is hard to chose what to write about. So much is burgeoning forward.  In past years I've written about old-fashioned tulips that come back along with kerria, as well as lungworts and hyacinths.  This still leaves too many choices from the bulbs, shrubs and early perennials that appear around now.

But even spoiled for choice, it is hard to resist this:

Extraordinary, yeh?  Well the ancients thought so. Well before there were any sort of noteworthy apples in Europe there was quince, called the honey apple, a hard fruit that has to be cooked and mixed with honey to be edible. And these were its flowers.

Above the blooms are in full flower; on the side they are just starting, most of the blooms are just pale, round peas thickly clustering the bough. So when they bloom it is like there is hardly room for them. No roses have ever clustered so densely.



My bush is Chaenomeles x superba "Cameo. "  There are varieties that have orange or red flowers, but I like this color best --its crayon could be called "Caucasian Flesh."  And yes--quince is originally from Caucasia. 

It is absurdly easy to grow in sun. In fact, the only real effort needed to tend it is to offer a periodic douse of  restraint. It grows to about 5 feet to five feet, so keeping it within three feet by three feet (best size for my small garden,) means I need to prune after bloom and in fall remove the suckers that appear. That's all. Easy beauty, -- no wonder quince was decicated to Venus and said to be the apple of the Hesparides.

And do you know what else is easy? Virginia Bluebells.

Nothing beats true blue in the garden (Caucasian Flesh may be a tie, though.) Bluebells, our native ones, flourish around here as long as they get some sun.  In fact, they spread.

If early quince flowers look like pale peas, early bluebells look like violet fingernails. Thats right, like many true blue plants in the borage family, they start pink. Above you can see early blooms top right and left, the one in the middle has broken out into blue. They are all surrounded by epimedium, both the yellow flowers and the leaves, plus a few muscari. All this is right under a tree--normally a hard place  to plant.

Here it all is a few days later, the bluebells all now beginning blue. I like having them with some epimedium, which is a superb, tough groundcover.  Because the bluebell is a spring ephemeral, after about three weeks of ever-enlarging bloom it will start to go to seed. And it's pretty round leaves will start to look charred and raggety. But said leaves will by then be covered by the epimidiem,-- which never looks bad. 

So, between bluebells

 And quince

It's not hard, this time of year, to find easy beauty in the garden.

Gardening Spring: Kerria & Tulips

Post 34

What has sprung up this spring? The  picture on the left was taken recently and shows local spring staples like tulips (the bits of color spotted about) and kerria ( the big yellow blob to the left of the birdbath.). Both are common around here because they are easy, and if done well, attractive.

Kerria japonica Golden Guinea:

Here is a picture of a small bit of Kerria just beginning. What I like about this plant is that it can take a fair amount of shade, fills in an awkward time of year (the one between blindingly brassy forsythias and either horribly or gloriously brassy azaleas,) and when done right, is not brassy at all. It is a mellower yellow than forsythia, and naturally grows in a squiggly way. If you let it squig and do not plant it in too solid blocks (or buy the double flowered version, which too my eyes is way too dense,) and cut it back hard right after blooming, you will be rewarded with a woodland plant that spreads just enough to let you easily divide it and use the suckers elsewhere. It will even do some reblooming later in the summer.

Tulipa clusiana:  Here you see kerria with one of my favorite tulips, Lady Tulip. It has a graceful form where the stalk is not overwhelmed by the flower, which shows that it is a species tulips, an old type of tulip that naturalizes easily.  In good conditions can count on it coming back for, well, a lot longer than non species tulips. Carolus Clusius (1526-1609),humanistic botanist,  is supposed to have first brought it to the Netherlands and hence Europe. Give it sun ,water and good drainage. After bloom deadhead most but leave a few to develop seeds, seeds that may end up in places you never expected.

This is a back, utility part of the garden. Yet somehow it has acquired a stray euphorbia and a small Lady tulip. Good surprises are part of what I love about the garden. Sure, you can rip up everything that does not fit with your plans. But why would you want to? Sometimes things turn out better than your plans could have imagined. Next year,  I may try to plant more of this combination of Lady tulip and wood spurge. It works.

Now, while my main investment is in species tulips, I admit to having a hard time passing up the cheap bags of bulbs they sell in the box stores. So if the price is right, I give in, knowing I'm getting tulips good for at best 2 or 3 years.

Here is a bunch in bloom right now. They make me think of the stately tulips in old Dutch still lives. The painterly feathers of red on cream were then the result of a potato blight which caused the color to "break," which made the tulips rare, expensive and the cause of a financial crash that briefly ruined the baroque Dutch economy.  Now, of course, these tulips are not the effects of a blight, but bred to look this way. Still, they are a lovely reminder of how silly humans, and even  whole societies, can be.

From a few years back, these tulips on the left are another of my favorite tulips, but I can not remember what they were called, nor have I seen them again. They were a strong, jubilant pink that fanned  out in ruffled, variegated stripes. They looked good from bud to bloom to falling apart, as they are pictured here. I do hope they turn up again. 

I had a neighbor who once told me that our

contiguous front yards were poisoned, that the soil had been harmed in some way. What he meant was that when he plunked a plant down into said soil's embrace, the plant would die. But it died because he paid no heed to what the plant needed. 

He had dry shade with low pH but he expected plants to grow that needed different, easier conditions.The soil was difficult--all compacted clay riddled with tree roots. But he did not care to improve the structure of the soil with compost or dig out some of the tree roots.  Still, he could not fathom why a plant, a living thing, did not thrive under such stringent conditions.

Anybody can get a plant, but it is care, taking care, that makes a garden. I like kerria because it reminds me of this, just as tulips remind me how silly we humans can be, and how we all need care, all of us, if our lives are to flourish.

                                                          

                                                          
How to Kerria: Kerria does well in all but the deepest shade, is not fussy about soil type and has the main drawback of growing like Topsey. So cut it back hard after blooming and in the spring or fall, dig up and transplant any suckers to where you want more of it. Because you will want more of it.