Spare the rod

My nemesis the sunflower.

Self sown sunflowers from birdseed backed up by variegated giant reed grass (Arundo donax ‘gold chain’).

Harmless and full of promise is how they appear in the spring, now two months later they’re acting more like closing time at the bar. Sloppy drunks hang all over one another, sprawl across the beds, and smother the other sober little plants which have yet to grow. If it weren’t for their summertime good looks and the goldfinches they pull in I would compost them all!

Future birdfood.

It doesn’t take many sunflower seedlings to overtake a bed and between the extra mulching and copious rainfall they’ve had everything they needed to explode. It’s like a lovely tsunami of sun looming over the plantings.

The sunflowers do look pretty with the purple verbena bonariensis, striped leaves of ‘tropicanna’ canna, and the first of the peach colored salvia splendens.

From the top of the bed it still looks pretty but only after I cut down two of the sunflower trees and chopped the rest back in order to clear the pool path again.

The tropical border looking colorful, but as usual not very tropical.

The inner depths of the tropical bed are beyond reach, I’ll have to wait for frost before I can get in there again. Fortunately it’s well mulched and doesn’t need much of anything for most of the summer, so as long as the cannas and reed grass don’t get completely swamped I guess I can turn the other cheek and let chaos rule.

There’s a giant thistle in there as well, I see a steady trail of goldfinches flying in and out feasting on the seed.

Really. Next year will be the year when this whole mess gets back under control. The sunflowers will have to go as well as the chrysanthemums which never did get moved like they were supposed to. In spite of the overwhelming agricultural look of the sunflowers (and I have to admit I really love the show right now) there are a few tropical highlights which have flickered on. The cannas may not be as big as in years past, but I would never go without them.

Healthy ‘Tropicanna’ canna leaves in a sea of green with only a touch of gold.

They’ve still got a good two months of growing before frost threatens and hopefully everything will still have plenty of time to fill in. While other parts of the garden might be taking on a weary look this time of year, these tropicals are just going from good to better, and it’s not just the cannas. The dahlias are beginning to come on as well. The flowers are what I’m waiting for, but on a few the foliage show is even better.

Dahlia ‘happy single flame’ with the dark purple spires of ‘Lighthouse purple’ salvia behind. I wish those salvia were just a tiny bit taller, right now this low planting looks closer to Victorian bedding than tropicalismo!

Although the foliage is fantastic, I wish I could say the same for the blooms of dahlia ‘happy single flame’. They don’t last long and never really make the ‘wow’ impression most of the other dahlias do. The color is great though and I’ll try to hold on to this one for another year or two, even as the others bloom their heads off in comparison.

Peak bloom on dahlia ‘happy single flame’.

One plant which I had high hopes for but is now slightly underwhelming is the Brazilian button. New this year from the HPS Mid Atlantic seed exchange, the buttons are nice enough but there could be more flowering at one time and most importantly have a color less like the verbena which I already have filling in all over. You just don’t notice them in the mix.

Brazilian button (Centratherum punctatum)

But I’m being too negative. The sunflowers are awesome and the patch is full of flowery interest, and whenever I get the chance I sit (with a drink preferably) and watch the comings and goings of the goldfinches, hummingbirds, and bees.

The pink salvia splendens are only now starting to flower having spent most of the summer putting on weight. The large leafy bushes should put on a great show for me and the hummingbirds.

I’m sure there will be more to come from the tropical garden, and if I can only keep a firm hand next year it might even look tropical-ish as well. Right now I’m just happy enough it’s mulched and weeded from the topside all the way down to the low end. Last year the low end was pathetic with its drought crisped annuals and struggling heucheras (is that the correct plural for heuchera?) This year it’s much improved and I can see this becoming a nice transition to the pond garden…. once I get a non-leaky pond in!

Next year the new divisions will fill in and there should be a wall of panicum ‘northwind’ separating the tropics on the left from the heucheras and pond garden on the right.

In the photo above you can barely make out the blue mist of Browallia Americana hovering above the hosta. It’s an easy enough annual (native to Central and South America and across the Caribbean isles) and each year I like it’s nearly true-blue flowers even more. Too bad I can’t get the camera to agree on the color, it always washes it out to a violet.

Browallia americana

So summer is still in full swing here, and for someone who prefers to ignore the calendar there’s not even a hint of the season winding down yet. I like this sense of denial and will hang on to it for as long as I can…. but if pushed I will admit to thinking about next year already. Ok, so I don’t even need a push. I stumbled upon a summer sale at the nursery and took home a cool little banana plant. It’s been a couple years since my banana growing days but I can feel the itch again and who knows what this means for next year’s plantings 🙂

Refueled and ready to go

Oct8

I got a good dose of the tropics last Saturday. The Mid Atlantic group of the Hardy Plant Society organized a tour of the Michael Bowell garden down near Philadelphia. Michael is the owner of Create-a-Scene, a florist/indoor-outdoor landscaping/container planting/nursery owning/seasonal decorating service which is well known around the country, and in addition to the business Michael is both a long-time Philadelphia Flower Show fixture and an in-demand speaker on all sorts of plant topics. My intro may be somewhat lacking and vague but hopefully the garden pictures tell a better story.

Not your average porch plantings, this one comes with a ton of tropicals, fancy pottery, and random art. The hanging baskets are filled with what I think are those odd tropical pitchers (nepanthes) which end each leaf with a bug-unfriendly pitcher trap.

The focus of the visit was Michael’s extensive (addictive maybe?) collection of tropical plants which are arranged throughout the gardens. All of them out for the summer and then in for the winter, and even with Michael’s four greenhouses the task seems overwhelming. Plus on top of that it’s not just a handful of coleus and a potted mandevilla, it’s all kinds of species and families and rare cultivars….

The sheltered side garden of Michael Bowell’s garden. Art, ponds, fountains, arbors, pergolas, and plants… lots of plants. I think most of this garden around the house is mobile and the plants will soon be trimmed and the pots moved back under shelter.

This autumn garden visit by the HPS seems to be an annual tradition and is the setting for an informal cutting swap of whatever members bring along. The icing on the cake however was Michael’s generosity with his own cuttings. As long as care was taken, members were allowed to take cuttings of any particularly irresistible plants they came across along the way. I tried to show restraint but then as soon as the formal tour ended I had to run around one last time to snip a few begonia, geranium, and coleus cuttings. I’ll let you know how I make out 🙂

I felt like it was a garden that almost required entertaining. Seating areas and enclosed spaces really defined the different parts of the garden.

For as interesting as I found the garden, it took me a few minutes to work through my anger issues before I could really enjoy the garden visit. I was a little irritated with that the powers that be for sending rain showers on the one morning I wanted to do an outdoor tour. Nearly three months without any serious rain and there we were driving an hour and a half through steady rainfall and then later dodging puddles and soggy lawn. Luckily we only dealt with one brief shower during the tour and then clear skies thereafter (of course my own garden received nothing more than a light drizzle all day).

I think I should finally get myself a lacebark pine (pinus bungeana). My garden is short on evergreens and I love this bark. It’s a clumsy looking tree though and might need quite a bit of pruning and training….

My pictures really don’t do the garden justice and the recent downpour had plenty of autumn leaves falling down on everything, but I hope you can get a good impression of the plants and plantings. My impression of it all has inspired me to evict the sunflowers and bring the tropical garden back to its full gaudy lushness next year!

I resisted taking any flowering maple (abutilon) cuttings since I have no faith in my ability to overwinter them…. but this tall, red veined flower was delicious and when it showed up in front of a purple ornamental grass I knew I’d need something similar next year!

The tour doesn’t end with the garden, Michael is also an expert on orchids and has a couple greenhouses set up to entertain this passion. Oh and did I mention the two story high greenhouse which abuts the house?

How cool is an outdoor deck enclosed by the greenhouse? A dinner out on the deck in January amongst the tree ferns and palms sounds like a good antidote to snow.

The garden is a treasure chest of ideas and creativity. To me it seems like someone came up with an idea and then ran with it, whether that meant carving out a new garden, training a new plant, or scaling a 60 foot tree to hang a little sculpture. Most of the sculpture is metal and neon art by Simple and it’s hung throughout the gardens. I bet it gives off an awesome atmosphere at night when all lit up.

I think this is my first garden tour where an invite was extended to go out through a window onto the roof (future enclosed sunporch) in order to get a nice overview of the gardens. An in-training weeping katsura (Cercidiphyllum) dominates and encloses the far end of the garden.

Oh and dogs, fish, parrots, and poultry also share the garden. What better construction to place at the end of the vegetable garden than a poultry house?

A real beauty or plain ugly? Regardless of your opinion I’m sure this display would melt the heart of any turkey hen.

The majority of my photos were out of focus, overexposed poo-poo, so I’ve got nothing on the vegetable and fruit gardens, but let me slip in one last picture which shows some of the main tropical beds. These included several areas of full and lush plantings, stuffed with all sorts of exotic goodies… I thought they were perfect 🙂

I need to give my own variegated miscanthus more room next year to develop, and definitely put it close to some dark leaved cannas and elephant ears. Cool.

All this tropical inspiration gives me plenty of ideas for next year. I think it’s time again to pack a bed full of completely unreasonable, inappropriate, overblown leaves and flowers. I’ll ignore the amount of work it takes until it’s too late and see what happens.

These are the dreams which will keep me going until we finally get some nice rains and good planting weather. I’m sick of this dry, dusty crust that passes for soil and it’s a shame to be thinking next summer when I should be excited about tulip planting and perennial dividing. I’m sure it will come soon enough though!

The garden formerly known as tropical

Jul23

There’s a spot in my yard (actually most of it inches over into my Mother in Law’s yard) where I like to indulge in a little of the tropics. Last year it was full of cannas, sweet potatoes, and other warm weather friends, but this year it seems to have lost some of that bold tropical flair. As usual it’s my own fault, and as usual it’s a long story, so I’ll try to keep it short. It all begins in April when mulch was purchased for next door, and a willing volunteer was needed to spread it. I foolishly agreed, but the deal was to add a couple tons of topsoil (I said I needed it to fill in along a sidewalk). “I’ll spread all your mulch if you buy me even more stuff which needs spreading”. Let me just say I run a hard bargain.

Look at that three inch drop from the sidewalk into the tropical bed. Clearly an ankle twisting lawsuit in the making!

So the mulch was spread, perennials divided, shrubs trimmed, weeds pulled…. the deal kept getting better and better it seems, but then it came down to the heap of topsoil sitting in the driveway. I used a few wheelbarrows to raise the soil along the walk and was still left with plenty. Finally my plan was coming together hah hah hah. I’m pretty sure I mentioned I might use the topsoil to expand the bed a bit, so that’s what I went ahead and did 🙂

Line the edge with a hose, cut in and dig out the edge, smother the grass with about two inches of topsoil… wow did I hate mowing this sloped little patch of sickly grass!

No one said a word about the tripled in size, very empty bed. I think people around here may be a little wary about asking questions for fear I will plant up a field of dandelions or something. Some people have said I’m stubborn and criticism may tend to encourage me even more. I like to think of it as proving a point 😉

A huge empty garden bed in May. What could possibly make a gardener happier (other than a few loads of compost mixed in)?

The last bits of mulch made the bed a little more suburban-friendly and a few paver scraps thrown down along the center made an acceptable shortcut for the kids. Then on to the real fun! Canna and dahlia roots were lugged out and planted, and that was well enough, but then trouble started brewing. A box filled with a dozen or so rooted chrysanthemum cuttings showed up at the door. I can check on them constantly if they’re right along the edge of the new bed, so that’s where they went. Don’t ask me why I needed a box of chrysanthemums, February is a tough month.

Somehow random perennials invaded the tropical border, that and chrysanthemums….

Then of course I tried to make the front yard more respectable by not having sunflowers all throughout the foundation plantings. Out they came and into the new bed they went. I have a serious problem in trying to show any kind of resolve against sunflower seedlings, they’re all summer and sunshine and it seems borderline criminal to pull them as weeds.

Peony “Do Tell” can’t seriously expect to be the only plant using this spot of sun all year. The sunflowers should take over by July and the peony will just hang out in their shade until next year…. that’s the theory at least.

Things still look awfully barren but until the heat of summer hits it’s all kind of just biding its time. Looking over from my yard you can see the bit of slope which made me hate mowing this spot. Plus I’m not all that crazy about lawn to begin with *yawn* ….. it’s only really good for walking around on while checking the plants out!

Year two of “I should give the table another coat of pain” -June 10th

My grass just doesn’t have the strength to come up through the soil (southerners may have a different experience), and even without soil improvement the new plants are still doing well as they feed off the decaying lawn underneath. A month later and things are looking better. The cannas still give a tropical look, but all the sunflowers are giving more of a neglected-agriculture vibe!

July 13th, about a month later and the cannas are up, the sunflowers are growing, and I still keep looking at the bare dirt wishing for some compost or mulch to cover it up with.

As the sunflowers come into bloom they’re pretty and cheerful… but they’re not the tropics.

It looks lush and green, so I should be happy. Also it’s not the color disaster I grew here last year, another reason to be pleased!

Besides it being a non-tropical border, a few other problems are coming to light. The first is that some of the chrysanthemums relentlessly insist on setting buds and blooming for summer instead of fall. I think I failed to pinch them back enough when planting them out in the spring, but I just don’t have the heart to do it now.

Chrysanthemums blooming in July, hopefully they’ll be on the correct schedule next year…. but they’ll need dividing by then, so I have no idea where to put them all!

To me a more insidious problem is the sunflower blooms. When the first flower opened I cringed. They’re completely pollen free, and because of that they don’t offer much to pollinators, and even worse they don’t set seed as well as the normal types. I thought for sure since they were selfsown from last year’s plants that they should be normal functioning sunflowers but that’s not the case. These all appear to carry the pollen-free gene, a gene which I’m sure came from the birdfeed seed. I’m not big on all the seed conspiracies, but this looks like a genetic insurance policy that keeps farmers coming back to the seed supplier each year, and keeps them from replanting their own crop. Good for a seed seller but not so good for me and all my now genetically tainted sunflowers.

Not much here for the bees.

Luckily there’s a small patch of sunflowers out front which still grow normally. Once these started blooming I noticed a few seeds starting to form in the other patch (I guess a little pollen goes a long way throughout the garden!). I need to make sure I get my seedlings from this area next year.

This sunflower looks like it’s full of tasty seeds, not full of empty husks like over in the other patch.

The sunflowers look pretty enough, but all I see are the black soulless eyes of the walking dead…. ok maybe not that bad, but they lack the busy bees and bugs that usually do laps around the big open pollen filled flowers. The goldfinches have also been very insulting as they touch down to check on the seed supply and come up empty. Hopefully pollen from the front yard will work it’s way back here to at least make the birds happy. Just in case, I planted a patch of heirloom sunflowers in the now completely dug up daffodil patch. They’ll be late, but they’ll have pollen, and I think they’ll still make it before frost.

Sunflowers coming on strong.

I’m still holding out for a few tropical effects. One castor bean seed came up and is now taking off, and “tropicanna” canna is looking healthy. Also if I have nothing better to do this week, a few coleus and sweet potato cuttings can fill in one or two of the still empty spots, and maybe by late August ‘tropicalismo’ will revisit this bed once again.

Castor bean “carmencita” and a few over-fed “Tropicana” cannas. The cannas seem to get much brighter colors when grown on the lean side, or with just a little 10-10-10 fertilizer. This batch has a lot of green in them due to higher nitrogen, probably from some miracle grow.

I don’t know if they say tropical to everyone, but dahlias never fail to bring brightness. This peachy pink with yellow cactus flower makes me think of some overdone tropical drink. Yummy!

Unknown dahlia which I keep saving from year to year. This spring I tried to show some restraint with them since last season planting a dozen or so might have been overkill 🙂

One plant I still need to plant out more of is verbena bonariensis. In almost all my other beds it can be counted on to show up and make a play for taking over any open spot, here in the new soil it hasn’t had a chance to seed in yet. Any transplants made this time of year will shrug off the shock of moving quickly and should be blooming up a purple storm in no time at all so I better get moving.

The grassy tropicalish leaves of arundo donax “gold chain” make a great mix with the sunflowers and verbena. I might have to plant this combo on purpose next year to make sure it happens again!

The tall old fashioned red leaved cannas always make me happy. They’re super easy to overwinter, never look ratty, and always grow as fast as the fertilizer and water will take them. The small reddish blooms which come later in the season aren’t much to talk about, but the hummingbirds love them.

Maybe canna “red Russian”? We call them Polish cannas after the old Polish woman who years ago gave the first ones to a friend of mine.

So that’s the latest from the ex-tropical bed. It may still heat up as the season progresses, but for now it’s decidedly temperate and might remain so for a while. No amaranthus or salvia seedlings showed, and this spring was a bust as far as all the seeds I started, so many of the brightest colors from last year are hushed. For now I’ll have to keep satisfied with my little bit of the tropics in containers.

A couple real tropicals planted in containers where I can best keep an eye on them.

Not to go on any longer than I already have, but those weak little pots of tropicalismo surrounded by weeds and dead grass aren’t just a bad planter arrangement. To me they’re the accent on a new gavel terrace backed by a low stone wall. Maybe a fire pit. I think one of the reasons my garden looks the way it does is because I have a bit too much vision, but we’ll see. I do tend to work backwards and always find the plants first…. who cares if the seating area is still a little “in development”?

Chanticleer (part 3 of 3)

Sep8

Finally! The last part of my Chanticleer visit. I suspect I might have gone on a little too long over my visit, but I really did enjoy the trip and the gardens are just the type of plantings I like to see at this time of year. Lush healthy tropical plants putting on their last big hurrah before the first frost cuts them down. Plus I like to use this blog as a photo record of the year, and I’m sure these images will come in handy during the icy days of winter.

Here’s the last big stop of the tour, the terrace gardens surrounding the main Chanticleer house. As usual it’s a dose of reality when I see plants from my own garden used to so much better effect. The Japanese maple, variegated Pagoda dogwood “Golden Shadows”, blue ageratum and “limelight” four o’clock near the path…. all look a lot nicer here!I’m sure a terrace of bluestone pathways and stone steps would help my garden design immensely, but even the bronze fennel, dahlias, and verbena bonariensis look dreamier and fresher here. The blue of the spiky agave helps too…. hmmm I grow that as well. It’s sitting under the deck in a broken clay pot, wishing it were at Chanticleer. chanticleer dahlias in bloom with japanese maple

The boxwood hedge which I’ve planted around my vegetable garden still needs several years before it reaches this immaculately trimmed state. I like a nice boxwood edging, I think it’s worth the extra work of frequent trimming, and adds a nice touch of control to a bed that might otherwise look to be on the verge of messy.

chanticleer boxwood edged flower bed

Once my own boxwoods turn into a neat hedge I might start to refer to the vegetable garden as a ‘potager’. Sounds so much more refined 🙂 . But I might opt out on planting the prickly ‘bed of nails plant’ (solanum quitoense) in the potager. Although it’s a near relative of eggplants, tomatoes, peppers and potatoes, the spiny leaves might be better suited for a focal spot out front (I love the poky plants!)

‘Black Pearl’ ornamental peppers also look great right up against the hedge, and these could easily fit into my future potager.

If you’re interested in reading a little more about these plants and some of the thoughts behind the plantings, check out this link at the Hardy Plant Society. Jonathan Wright, the horticulturalist in charge of this part of the garden, wrote a great article on this area and some of the practices used to keep it looking at its peak from March into November.

Still in the terrace garden was something new that I liked. An area formerly kept as a cut lawn had been turned over to a flowery meadow of fluffy little red amilias, red dahlias, and violet verbena boanariensis. I wonder if this section will hold over to next year, the grass was boring, but it did give a bit of a calm amidst all the overflowing beds. chanticleer red and violet meadow planting

The area around the house is absolutely crammed with treasures and accents. These huge baskets have more in them than most average gardens. chanticleer hanging baskets

And of course there were plenty of seating areas surrounding the house. A great place to stop for a needed break.

With reds and purples and bronzes dominating some of the other gardens, here the terrace garden leans towards yellows and yellow foliage. I have a real weakness for this color lately and loved the mix. Too bad I had no idea what half the plants were! The best I can do is say the little vine here is probably canary creeper (Tropaeolum peregrinum) a relative of the nasturtiums. It’s supposed to be easy from seed so maybe……

Back to red and purple. The purplish upright dracaena is again one I have, and I will definitely copy this combo with the red leaved coleus. chanticleer red and purple plant combinations

chanticleer ae ae banana I’m almost through my picture horde.

One more here for banana lovers. I believe this is the infamous ‘Ae Ae’ variegated banana. First found in Hawaii, it’s a little cranky to grow and therefore a little expensive to buy. Established pups (offshoots of the mother plant) typically run $200-$300 and fraud runs rampant. Don’t buy seeds and don’t buy from a shifty Georgia nursery is all I’ll say (not that I’ve ever considered it). The leaves are really cool looking though and to have it flanking both sides of the main doorway…..

I’ll stick to my yellows and chartreuse. Here’s a yellow leaved redbud, potted ‘mossy’ plants and a circle of raked gravel. Very calming. chanticleer raked gravel entry

And so on to the exit. No time to sit, but there was still ample color coordinated seating. I bet someone has fun moving the seats about finding them the perfect spot, a good idea I think. I should keep it in mind next time I’m moving stuff to bring the lawn mower through… not that my dead grass ever needs mowing. chanticleer seating

Out the front gate. It’s a beautiful locale and I wouldn’t mind living closer, but I have to question whether our housing budget can handle the zipcode. A quick real estate search of Wayne, Pa shows it to be a tad out of our budget. Even with the sale of our current house, just the down payment for properties running in the 1-5 million range would be an issue. I guess we could lower our expectations, but I want the hayfield too. 🙂 chanticleer neighborhood Thanks for looking!

Chanticleer 2013

Sep2

Last Thursday I made a trip down to Chanticleer Gardens, a “pleasure garden” located just West of Philadelphia PA. I’m glossing over much of the history, but basically it’s the 1913 former summer estate turned full time home of Adolph Rosengarten and his wife Christine. As family members passed away and moved on the Chanticleer Foundation was formed and the property became a public garden. This year marked the 100th anniversary for the property, but the public incarnation is still relatively young, having been formed in 1993. I don’t have many garden visits under my belt, but Chanticleer ranks as one of the best public gardens in the US and I could really see the reasons why.

Here we go! After a drive of just under two hours, please excuse me for making the restrooms my first stop. attractive courtyard at chanticleer

Even the restrooms are a plant lover’s treat with unique varieties, creative uses and just plain artistic furniture and pottery. I had plenty of room for myself since the hot, muggy, overcast weekday didn’t really bring out a stampede of garden visitors. Good thing too, since I made the trip alone and my stupid grin and plant touching probably would have had me escorted out on a crowded day.

The first official garden was the ‘teacup’ garden. It fills the patio right off the house and I love all the gate and bench details leading into it.

The teacup garden is named for the central fountain. Each year this garden is redone with a totally different feel and this year seems to be leaning towards an orange theme.

There are so many special plants here, and orange never looked better. Many of these are tropicals and if you look closely you might notice the upright orange leaves producing a small pink pineapple near the front.

There’s so much texture and subtle color going on. One of the many plants I loved was this melianthus (honeybush). I feel a little foolish for letting my little 6 inch seed grown plant die outside last winter, had I seen the real thing first I probably would have found a winter home for it.

I don’t think I could have found a spot for this big pot of variegated New Zealand flax.

Few of the plants have labels in this ‘pleasure garden’, it really is meant to be enjoyed, but I did scare myself realizing how many things I recognized…. apparently I spend way too much time on the web looking at plants….

Check out the railing here -and the container plantings aren’t too shabby either. The banana growing up alongside the house is the (I think) surprisingly hardy musa basjoo which even I can even overwinter in my much colder zone. The tall white variegated grass (arundo donax) is also hardy. I have both in my own garden, of course they look nowhere near as well grown or well placed 🙂

Continuing around the house are beds just flooded with cool tropicals and hardy perennials. Here’s number two cool plant leaf that I want, it’s the rice paper plant (tetrapanax). Big leaves that start out fuzzy, what’s not to love?

More foliage along the path. I have no idea, but the yellow veins of it matched the ivy creeping along the ground. Fancy. You can also see some of the many seats scattered around the grounds. In my opinion gardens are always best viewed from a comfortable seat!

Here’s another nice seating area.

I believe the three dark green plants along the walk are samples of the infamous breadfruit tree. Maybe it’s just the result of a few too many childhood viewings of “Mutiny on the Bounty” (The 1962 Marlon Brando version) but I think this food staple of the Pacific is a fascinating plant. This plant was the reason Captain Bligh was commissioned to sail to Tahiti in the first place, and this is also the plant thrown overboard when the mutiny takes place. Besides Captain Bligh’s survival story, the story of the mutineers and their descendants on tiny Pitcairn island is also quite a tale. They still live on today as a British territory.

Less contentious is the yellow-green underplanting of variegated boston fern, hakonechloa grass, and others. I’ve heard people say you shouldn’t mix variegated plants, but here I think that theory expires.

Oh, and if all that’s not enough, the glass topped table is actually a terrarium 🙂

Ok, so that might be enough for today since WordPress has locked up twice and both times I had to redo what was lost. Next stop is the former tennis courts….. tennis has never looked so good.

Viva la Tropicalismo!

Jul23

“Tropicalismo” is so very ’90s but being in style was never my strong point. I still love the tropical look with big leaves and bright colors and lush happy growth right during the months when everything else looks a little tired and faded. Too big elephant ears, too bright cannas and just a little too tall grasses always make me smile when the bleeding hearts are dying in the heat. I even like the bright red salvia that is normally reserved for gas stations and trailer parks. Feel free to judge me, here’s a picture of the tropical bed last year.

This was a new area that was the perfect match of big space, full sun, and no planting budget, so I pulled together the leftover canna roots, popped in a couple sweet potato cuttings, and scattered some annual seedlings and with plenty of water and fertilizer it all came together.
As usual this year I’ve fallen behind, and the tropical bed is still a weed infested patch of leftover perennials, a few nice salvias, and an appropriately bright knockout rose.

I finally got around to weeding, mulching, and planting. It may seem like all is lost with such a late planting date, but the experience of a chronic procrastinator has taught me things will still work out fine. Also the late planting allowed several self sown red salvias and amaranth to make themselves known. All good things since I used up all the spare annuals when I expanded the front yard border.
So here it sits, still a little sparse, but ready to take on all the drought and heat summer throws its way.

With any luck I’ll still have the same tastelessly colorful display as last year, minus a few of the exceptionally colorful and tacky tropicana cannas.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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