Snowdrops: Further Confessions of a Galanthophile

Posted in bulbs for shade, New Plants, snowdrops with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to the US only.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are mail order only.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Galanthus ‘Atkinsii’ described in Snowdrops as having “elegant elongated flowers that suggest the drop-pearl earrings of Elizabeth I,”  I can’t improve on that

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Our current snowdrop catalogue is on line here.

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This article includes photographs and colorful descriptions of the 15 snowdrops I am offering for sale in my 2011 Snowdrop Catalogue.

 

In my garden, I have many forms of Galanthus elwesii, which was named for Henry John Elwes (1846-1922), described as a “true energetic Victorian” combing the world for big game, fine trees, insects, birds, and snowdrops

 

In my article Snowdrops or the Confessions of a Galanthophile, I revealed that I am obsessed with snowdrops.  I described my evolution from a gardener growing a few distinct varieties to a galanthophile collecting every cultivated snowdrop I could get my hands on.  I explained that I could now see the often subtle differences between flowers that others might unknowingly (shall we say ignorantly) dismiss as ridiculous.  To understand how far I have gone down this road, know that I recently found myself describing a snowdrop as having “a bold inner marking with a basal blotch narrowly joined to an apical round-armed V.”  There is no turning back.

 

Galanthus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’, probably the oldest snowdrop cultivar  in existence with records as early as 1703

 

But I didn’t talk about one of the things I find most fascinating about snowdrops.  They are the only plant that I would purchase as much for their colorful history as for their ornamental characteristics.  And how do I find out about their captivating  lineage: I consult Snowdrops: A Monograph of Cultivated Galanthus by Matt Bishop, Aaron Davis, and John Grimshaw (Griffin Press 2006).  This book, always referred to as the snowdrop bible, has all the information anyone could want about the 500 “commonly” cultivated snowdrops.

 

The Greatorex Double, Galanthus ‘Ophelia’

After reading Snowdrops, who would not want Galanthus ‘Ophelia’, a beautiful double snowdrop, when it was originated by Heyrick Greatorex of Brundall, Norfolk, England, a man who lived “an unconventional lifestyle” in a wooden garden shed that might have been a railway carriage?  Or a snowdrop like Galanthus ‘Magnet’ that has reached its centenary [a word not used commonly in the US so I had to look it up] and was probably named for “the old-fashioned child’s game in which magnets are attached to miniature fishing rods for the purpose of picking up painted metal fish, the point being to win the game by catching the most?”  I played that game.

 

Galanthus ‘Magnet’, can you can see the miniature fishing rod?

Galanthus ‘Straffan’, Baron Clarina of Ireland’s souvenir of the Crimean War

Who can resist the indestructible Galanthus ‘Straffan’, the third oldest snowdrop cultivar still in existence, discovered in the later 1800s by the head gardener for Straffan House in County Kildare, Ireland, in a clump of G. plicatus brought back from the Crimean War by the owner, the fourth Baron Clarina?  Or October-flowering Galanthus reginae-olgae, named in 1876 in honor of Queen Olga of Greece, the grandmother of  the current Duke of Edinburgh?  [In the US, we would say grandmother of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband.]

 

The October-flowering Galanthus reginae-olgae, named for Prince Philip’s grandmother, photo Charles Cresson

Galanthus nivalis/Common SnowdropGalanthus nivalis, the common snowdrop, has a 500-year lineage to brag about

 

Even the plain old common snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, an imminently garden-worthy plant, has been cultivated as an ornamental in England since the 16th century.  There are written records.  The species snowdrop, Galanthus woronowii, was collected on the eastern shores of the Black Sea and named by a Russian botanist for Russian plant collector Georg Jurii Nikolaewitch Woronow (1874-1931).

The shiny green leaves of Galanthus woronowii named for plant collector Georg Jurii Nikolaewitch Woronow, photo Charles Cresson

 

Galanthus ‘Blewbury Tart’ found by Alan Street in Blewbury, Oxfordshire, England

Even more modern snowdrops have name-dropping heritages.  Snowdrops tells us that when noted horticulturist Alan Street of the well known English bulb house, Avon Bulbs, and the discoverer of Galanthus ‘Blewbury Tart’, gave three bulbs instead of one to quirky English gardener, Primrose Warburg (1920-1996), she “characteristically complained” and called it ‘Blewbury Muffin’.  This is the same Primrose Warburg who we are told cautioned visitors navigating her treacherous garden slope to be careful, not because they might hurt themselves, but because the snowdrops were irreplaceable. Galanthus ‘Beth Chatto’ was, of course, discovered in the gardens of the internationally famous gardener and writer, Beth Chatto, OBE [Order of the British Empire].

 

Galanthus ‘Beth Chatto’ from the internationally famous Beth Chatto Gardens

 

Snowdrops describes Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’ as the “classic snowdrop….a first-class garden plant with an unquestionable constitution, admired by everyone,” photo Charles Cresson

Other cultivars have discussions of their origins so complicated as to rival the US Tax Code, something I am familiar with from my former career. Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’ is in danger of losing its name to ‘Arnott’s Seedling’, the name under which it was given the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit, but a name deemed unsuitable because E.A. Bowles, “one of the most revered plantsman of all times,” later called it ‘S. Arnott’.  The  International Cultivar Registration Society in the Netherlands has been so advised. Galanthus nivalis ‘Viridapice’ has evidently had many imitators since it was discovered prior to 1922 near an old farmhouse in northern Holland, and confusion is rampant.

 

Galanthus nivalis ‘Viridapice’, hopefully not an impostor

Please do not think I am in any way making fun of this book.  I love it, and I wish all plant genera had books this information-packed and well written dedicated to them.  I list Snowdrops on my Blotanical profile as the garden book I am currently reading because I am always reading it.  Rumor has it that a new edition is in the works (for an update from John Grimshaw, click here), and I will buy it.  If you like snowdrops, you should own it too.

Well, based on the tales found in the snowdrop bible, what cultivars are in my future?  I am intrigued by ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’, a vigorous double, whose namesake (1877-1944) struggled to create an English garden in India when her husband was Governor of Madras.  I have my eye on ‘Merlin’ with its solid green blotch, whose stock was maintained by Amy Doncaster (1894-1995), “a greatly admired, no-nonsense plantswoman” who collected my favorite plants, snowdrops, hellebores and epimediums, in her woodland garden.  Finally, I would like to grow ‘Primrose Warburg’, a rare yellow snowdrop, because I think I might be just like her when I grow up.

Galanthus ‘Merlin’ whose stock was maintained by no-nonsense plantswoman Amy Doncaster

 

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.), click here.

The view from my office this morning:

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New Native Shade Perennials for 2011

Posted in native plants, New Plants on January 18, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Sweet Wakerobin, Trillium vaseyi: I saw this trillium last spring in a local garden and fell in love with its large red flowers and huge bright green leaves; native species to just south of PA (photo Arrowhead Alpines).

In my previous article, New Shade Perennials for 2011, I highlighted some of the new non-native plants I will be offering at my nursery this year.  I also described my blog’s two audiences and my philosophy about what plants I grow in my gardens and sell at my nursery.

This article features some of the 17 native plants that are new (or returning) to my Spring 2011 Catalogue.  For a full description of the ornamental and cultural characteristics of these plants, please consult my Spring 2011 Catalogue by clicking here or going to the sidebar of my homepage where it is permanently posted in more manageable chunks.  For an illuminating (I think) discussion of why growing native plants is crucial to our survival, please read my article My Thanksgiving Oak Forest in which I profile Doug Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home.


Rue-anemone, Anemonella thalictroides: an elegant wildflower that naturalizes in my dry woodland, I also grow single and double pink forms; native species to PA (photo Arrowhead Alpines)

I am reluctant to enter the “what is a native plant” fray,  but I feel I have to if I am going to use the word native to describe these plants.  For the purposes of my catalogue, I treat all plants indigenous to the US and cultivars of and hybrids between those plants as native, always adding a comment on what part of the US the plant inhabits.  Most of my natives are endemic to Pennsylvania and its immediate environs.  However, many horticulturalists don’t consider cultivars and hybrids of native plants to be native.

To try and address that issue, I went right to the horse’s mouth and asked Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home and Chairman of the Entomology and Wildlife Ecology Department at the University of Delaware, where he stood on native cultivars and hybrids.

Prairie Trillium, Trillium recurvatum: native species to PA (Prairie?) and I think the easiest trillium to grow (photo Arrowhead Alpines).

In responding, Tallamy first pointed out that: “We know very little from experimental data [because] comparisons just haven’t been done yet” between the ecological value of native plants and the value of their cultivars and hybrids.  “Insects have adapted to the chemistry of their host plants, so if we don’t change the leaf chemicals too much when making cultivars, most of the insects that use the native parent should be able to continue using the cultivar.”

However, Tallamy cautions: “Most of our cultivars focus on flowers, … and flower energy budgets are very tight.  If we make flower petals larger, that may come at the expense of nectar production…or pollen production. Pollinators will visit the new flower but get no reward.  Double flowers typically have no nectar production at all….  A big down side of cultivars, even if they do support insects, is that they are clones with no genetic variation.”

Large-flowered Bellwort, Uvularia grandiflora:  it is really the full habit of this plant that grabs you in the garden with its many twisting flowers and leaves on upright stems; native species to PA (photo Arrowhead Alpines).

So how do I apply this to my new native plants?  Well, of the 12 plants  featured in this article, six are straight species native to Pennsylvania and its environs (see commentary under photos).  These plants satisfy even the most narrow definition of native.  The fern is a native hybrid that occurs naturally in the wild and should be as good as any straight species.  The same can be said for the yellow columbine, which is a naturally occurring color variation.  The double bloodroot, although double-flowered, was discovered and not created by humans.  None of these are clones; they are all seed strains ensuring genetic diversity and vigor.

That leaves only the three heucheras described below.  If your goal is to support native insects and through them the whole ecosystem, then purple-leaved heucheras like  ‘Midnight Rose’ are not the plant for you.  Tallamy says, “if [when creating a cultivar] we change a green leaf to a purple leaf, we are loading the leaf with anthocyanins, which are feeding deterrents for insects.”  The same may be true of gold-leafed heucheras like ‘Electra’.  Those two cultivars have also been created through extensive hybridizing of several heuchera species native to the US.  ‘Green Spice’, however,  is a cultivar of a species native to Pennsylvania and probably has leaf chemistry close to its parent and thus beneficial to native insects.

Wild Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis ‘Corbett’: pale yellow and shorter alternative to the bright red species and, like the species, does best in the well-drained but moist soil so difficult to find in my garden; naturally occurring color variation native to PA.

Where do I come out on all this?  I really care about this issue so I try to have the majority of my property planted with straight PA native species friendly to native insects.  I also think any plant with a native background even if it’s a “created” cultivar or hybrid is better than a non-native for supporting  our environment.  But I specialize in  non-native hellebores and snowdrops, and I have hundreds of them in my garden.  Balance in all things, including the garden.

Here are the rest of the new native plants I am excited about:


Dixie Wood Fern, Dryopteris x australis: a naturally occurring hybrid native to just south of PA, the fern growing behind and through my bench in the deep, dry shade of a Japanese maple overhung by a white pine is Dixie Wood Fern on 11/11/10—need I say more?

Indian Pink, Spigelia marilandica:  there is no better way to get me going than to write yet one more shade gardening article that starts “Now you may not be able to have showy flowers in the shade, but….” ; native species to PA (photo Arrowhead Alpines)

Double Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis ‘Multiplex’: naturally occurring double flower native to PA, this is my all time favorite flower—I could stare at its perfection for hours—so it has taken me years to get to the point where I felt I had excess to sell!

Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis: so much to love, the way it spears through my leaf mulch, the unusual blue-green leaves, the pure white flowers, and, believe it or not, the short time they last in the garden—it forces me to savor them; species native to PA.

Who can resist the kaleidoscope of colors that heuchera leaves add to the garden and containers?  If only all these beautiful plants thrived equally well in our tough mid-Atlantic conditions, but they don’t.  I only sell the cultivars whose parents are the heat and cold tolerant heucheras native to the eastern US.  Here are three new tough heucheras for 2011:


Coral Bells, Heuchera x ‘Electra’: cultivar parented by two tough species native to PA and one Pacific Northwest species; with leaves and veins like this, who can resist? (photo Terra Nova Nurseries).

Coral Bells, Heuchera americana ‘Green Spice’: straight species cultivar created from our PA native so imminently suited to mid-Atlantic conditions, pumpkin orange fall color (photo Terra Nova Nurseries).

Coral Bells, Heuchera x ‘Midnight Rose’: cultivar parented by two tough species native to PA and one Pacific Northwest species; yes, it really looks like this  and is a wonderful plant for containers, but requires a little more coddling in the ground because the Pacific Northwest species is more dominant in this cultivar (photo Terra Nova Nurseries).

In addition to the above and what was covered in New Shade Perennials for 2011, I have new snowdrops, hellebores, and hostas, which will be covered in future articles on those topics.

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.), just click here.

The view from my desk this morning:


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New Shade Perennials for 2011

Posted in New Plants on January 12, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Cyclamen coum 'Pewter Leaf' photo Arrowhead AlpinesSpring-blooming Hardy Cyclamen, Cyclamen coum ‘Pewter Leaf’: grows and spreads well in my shady rock garden where it gets the excellent drainage it needs; can’t beat the solid silver leaves paired with the pink flowers (photo Arrowhead Alpines).

My blog has two audiences, one anticipated and one unexpected.  The first is composed of the wonderful, loyal customers of my shade plant nursery, Carolyn’s Shade Gardens, over 340 of whom subscribe to my blog.  My primary goal in starting the blog was to communicate more information to interested customers in a garden magazine-type format without sending emails to customers who weren’t interested.


Japanese Painted Fern, Athyrium niponicum ‘Burgundy Lace’: I love the colors of Japanese painted fern and they can only be improved with more purple; naturalizes in dry shade in my gardens (photo Terra Nova Nurseries).


My second group of readers is the garden-blogging community, an audience I never anticipated  when I started this project.  Nan at Hayefield told me to register my blog with Blotanical, the international garden-blogging registry.  I did, and now I have readers all over the world.  Blotanical is a great site to visit if you like to read about gardening, and you don’t need to have a blog to access it.  Several of my customers have joined Blotanical and enjoy reading the popular articles posted there.  It is also a very warm and friendly virtual community of gardeners.


Helleborus x nigercors ‘Green Corsican’: a superior cross between Christmas rose and Corsican hellebore with many beautiful green flowers and gold-marbled leaves (just a taste, I will cover all my new hellebores in a separate article).


It is the time of year when I send out my new catalogue describing all the plants I will be selling at my nursery this spring.  I have already emailed it to my customers and posted it in Pages on my sidebar here.  It describes over 300 varieties of shade plants, including almost 80 hard-to-find natives and 60 plants that are new this spring.


Silver Lungwort, Pulmonaria ‘Silver Bouquet’: I collect pulmonarias (especially the silver cultivars) for their early flowers and striking wintergreen leaves (photo Terra Nova Nurseries).


Although I don’t do mail order (except for snowdrops), I still put together a catalogue for my customers to use as a reference when shopping at the nursery and planning or planting at home.  This came about because I find that plastic plant tags and most general gardening books are about equally inaccurate in their descriptions of the characteristics and  cultural requirements of shade plants.


White Checkered Lily, Fritillaria meleagris ‘Alba’: unlike most fritillarias, checkered lily is easy to grow and takes shade, it has naturalized throughout my woodland gardens; I love the purple and the white forms.


My catalogue has never included photos, but this year I want to show pictures on my blog with additional commentary for some of the new plants about which I am especially excited.  Complete descriptions and cultural information are in the 2011 catalogue.  Be forewarned  though, you are not about to see the glitzy new cultivars hot off the patent-laden presses of hot  shot plant hybridizers (in fact, you will probably never find most of them at my nursery).


‘Black Scallop’ Bugleweed, Ajuga reptans ‘Black Scallop’:  I usually don’t get excited about ajuga or sell it at my nursery, but ‘Black Scallop’ is exceptionally beautiful and has remained so, photo taken on 11/29/10


With a few exceptions, I don’t offer a plant for sale unless I have grown it successfully in my own gardens for a few years.  That eliminates all those perennials that look great in pots but are miserable failures in the ground or really any plant that requires even a modest amount of pampering to succeed.  I don’t believe in growing or selling those kinds of plants.  So, on with the 2011 show!


Double Snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis ‘Blewbury Tart’: if you have been reading this blog, you know I love snowdrops, and this one is quite special! (just a taste, I will cover all my new snowdrops in a separate article).

Fairy Wings, Epimedium grandiflorum ‘Lilafee’:  I have a large epimedium collection and ‘Lilafee’ is one of my favorites for flowers and fall color (photo Arrowhead Alpines).

Fairy Wings, Epimedium x warleyense: this is another one of the favorites in my collection, the orange flowers are magical in the dry, full shade in which epimediums thrive (photo Arrowhead Alpines).


Japanese Woodland Primrose, Primula sieboldii: foolproof primrose for dry, full shade, treasured in Japan with over 500 cultivars named, but rare in the US; I have been selling several named cultivars but this year I will include divisions from my own collection of unnamed varieties.


Gold Siberian Bugloss, Brunnera macrophylla ‘Diane’s Gold’: I haven’t grown this cultivar but all my other brunneras thrive in my dry woodland, and you can’t beat this gold color (photo Terra Nova Nurseries).


Crocus 'Ruby Giant'Snow Crocus, Crocus tommasinianus ‘Ruby Giant’:  I have always valued this very early-blooming species, which naturalizes in my garden, but ‘Ruby Giant’ has knock-your-socks-off deep violet-purple color (photo Charles Cresson).


Spring Vetchling, Lathyrus vernus: I am a sucker for all flowers in the pea family, and if they grow in full, dry shade, I’m sold; I grow four varieties of spring vetchling and love them all.


Japanese Forest Grass, Hakonechloa macra ‘Stripe It Rich’: a new cultivar of this tried and true grass for shade with gold leaves and white stripes; I treasure its lovely cascading habit (photo Terra Nova Nurseries).


Dogtooth-violet, Erythronium dens-canis: a beautiful and easy dogtooth-violet that self-sows in my dry woodland.


Part 2 of this article will showcase the new native plants I will be offering in spring 2011, and new snowdrops, hellebores, and hostas will be covered in their own dedicated articles.

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.), just click here.

In my post I Need Your Help, I asked readers to send cards to the daughter of Kartik who was the subject of my post New Year’s Resolution to Edit the Garden.  I would still appreciate your help with this appeal.  Thanks.


The view from my desk this morning

63 Comments »

I Dream in Latin

Posted in garden essay with tags , on January 7, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Arum italicum 'Tiny Tot'Arum italicum ‘Tiny Tot’ AKA Lords-and-Ladies, Cuckoo’s Pint, Willy Lily, or Aaron’s Pen

You may have heard that Latin is a dead language.  To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumor of its death is greatly exaggerated.  Latin is the language that professional horticulturists use to talk about plants, study plants, acquire plants, and dream about plants.  When I talk about a plant using the common name, I am translating from the Latin text in my brain.  Why is this?  Is this some kind of nasty horticultural snobbery?  Are we trying to exclude all the “common folk” and preserve our elite status?

The short answer is a resounding NO.  But here is the explanation.

First of all, thanks to Linnaeus, Latin-based botanical plant names are used worldwide.  The botanical name for Arum italicum is Arum italicum in the US, China, Belgium, Nigeria, Chile, and in Micronesia if they grow it there.  If I were to visit a country where I didn’t speak the language, I could still talk about plants with the local horticulturists and visit labeled arboretums because we all use the same botanical names.  Now that’s cool.

[I just experienced this first hand when I watched a video on snowdrops narrated completely in Dutch, which I don’t understand.  But when the narrator said each snowdrop’s botanical name, I understood him perfectly.]

Spanish bluebells at Carolyn's Shade GardensScilla campanulata ‘Excelsior’ AKA Spanish bluebells

But why do we have to use botanical names at home in the US where, according to us at least, we all speak English. Because when I want a Geranium, I want a hardy geranium not a Pelargonium, the annual.  When a customer asks for bluebells, does he want Mertensia virginica, often called Virginia bluebells, or Scilla campanulata, Spanish bluebells, or Campanula rotundifolia, Scottish bluebells, or Wahlenbergia gloriosa, Australian royal bluebells, or Eustoma russellianim, Texas bluebells, or Hyacinthoides non-scripta, English bluebells, or maybe Phacelia campanularia, desert bluebells.  All these “bluebells” are not even closely related—they all represent a different genus—and yet they are all called bluebells, presumably because they have a blue bell-shaped flower.  You can see how confusing this can get, and it happens all the time at my nursery.

Then there are the plants that have different common names in different parts of the country or the world.  In the mid-Atlantic where I was born, we call Narcissus daffodils.  But in the Midwest, where my husband grew up, they call them jonquils.  I honestly had no idea what plant my mother-in-law was talking about when she mentioned her beautiful jonquils.

Epimedium x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’ AKA barrenwort, bishop’s hat, fairy wings, horny goat weed, rowdy lamb herb

Or plants that have more than one common name.  Epimediums, an imminently pronounceable and spellable botanical name, bear the common names barrenwort, bishop’s hat, fairy wings, horny goat weed, and rowdy lamb herb.  Barrenwort because people thought they helped women conceive; bishop’s hats for the shape of the flowers; fairy wings for the leaf structure; and your guess is as good as mine for the last two.  If a customer came to my nursery and asked for horny goat weed, I would have no idea what she wanted (or maybe I wouldn’t want to know).

Or plants that share a common name.  In the western US, Indian paintbrush is the wildflower Castilleja linariaefolia.  But in New England, it is the wildflower Hieracium aurantiacum, also know as orange hawkweed.

summer snowflake at Carolyn's Shade GardensLecojum aestivum AKA summer snowflake

But the most important reason I think about plants in Latin is because common names are always getting me in trouble.  For example,

Gardener:  “I am really disappointed in the summer snowflake I bought last year, it blooms in spring.”  Me: “My catalogue says it blooms in spring.”  Gardener: “Then why do you call it summer snowflake?”

Gardener: “I am not buying that hellebore even though you say it’s your favorite.”  Me: “Why [I’m a glutton for punishment]?”  Gardener: “It smells bad.”  Me: “But it doesn’t smell.”  Gardener: “Then why do you call it stinking hellebore?”  I finally adopted an alternate common name, bearsfoot hellebore, to avoid future conversations like that.

And my favorite:  Gardener: “I didn’t like the iris I bought last year, when it bloomed the flowers were purple.”  Me: “You are right the flowers are purple.”  Gardener: “Then why do you call it blue flag?”  I could write a whole different article on the color I call “horticultural blue”, which results from plant breeders’ apparent need to describe purple flowers as blue.

Iris versicolor AKA blue flag

So Latin makes my life easier.  When I dream I can tell the plants apart!

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.), just click here.

The conversations with gardeners above are fictional and merely meant to represent the problems caused by the use of common names.  For more information on the interesting things you can figure out from the botanical names of plants, visit Hayefield’s 12/2/10 and 12/17/10 posts.

In my post I Need Your Help, I asked readers to send cards to the daughter of Kartik who was the subject of my post New Year’s Resolution to Edit the Garden.  I would still appreciate your help with this appeal.  Thanks.

42 Comments »

I Need Your Help

Posted in Uncategorized on January 5, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

On December 26, 2010, in New Year’s Resolution to Edit the Garden, I wrote about being inspired to edit my garden (and life) by my friend Kartik’s decision to simplify his life after visiting his family in India.  The post really struck a chord with numerous comments, 107 picks on Blotanical by 33 garden bloggers around the world, and several links.  I am writing to you now because three days after I posted, Kartik’s 5-year-old daughter, Tara, was diagnosed with leukemia.  She is in the hospital right now for a minimum of 5 weeks receiving chemotherapy and will need two years of chemotherapy after that.

Kartik and his family have a long, hard road ahead of them, and I would like to ease their trip in even a very small way if I can.  But how to do that?  And then I read Allan Becker’s powerful post in which he describes  garden bloggers as a  “supportive social group that swarms around its members when they need to be comforted, validated or encouraged.”  I hope and believe that what Allan says is true because I am appealing to you to help me provide a small amount of comfort to Tara and Kartik, whom I made part of our community through my original post.

Kartik says the hardest thing for him is when Tara starts acting wild from being confined to a hospital bed 24/7: difficult for an adult but impossible for a five-year-old.  I would like to do something to provide a few moments of distraction for Tara every day.  With Kartik’s permission, I am asking everyone who reads this post and feels moved to send Tara a card representative of your home state in the US or your country.  Opening her mail from you will be a welcome relief, and I intend to send her a map of the world with sticky stars to mark the location of every card she receives.

Address: Tara Patel, 2216 Oakwyn Road, Lafayette Hill, PA  19444, USA.

My hope is that you will do this if you feel moved but not feel an obligation.  Your unwritten thoughts and prayers are welcome too.  If bloggers want to publicize my request among their blogging friends that would also be welcome.

Every day I try to focus on how lucky I am and avoid getting bogged down in the little set backs of life.  I am not usually successful, but Kartik’s inspirational approach to life and the way he is handling his daughter’s illness will keep me focused for a long time now.

Thank you,

Carolyn

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Flowering Wintergreen Ground Covers for Shade

Posted in evergreen, groundcover, Shade Perennials with tags , , , , , , , , on January 1, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

golden groundsel as groundcover in my woodland in spring

Here in the mid-Atlantic (US), we go through long periods of winter weather that are just plain cold without the compensation or covering of snow.  Any patches of exposed ground look barren and downright ugly.  That is why, during this time of year, I treasure any little patch of green, any ground cover that is presentable through the winter.  Yes, I have the usual evergreen  triumvirate of vinca, ivy, and pachysandra.  I can even find good things to say about each of them.  But I want more: native plants, deer resistance, tolerance of dry shade, fragrance, abundant flowers, drought tolerance, and beautiful foliage.  All four of the shady ground covers described below have a majority of these desirable characteristics.

fragrant flowers of native golden groundsel

Our native golden groundsel, Senecio aureus, has to be my favorite all time ground cover.  It spreads as fast and aggressively as any of the reigning three.  It is not a plant to be mingled into your perennial beds: it is a plant for the bare patch—wet, dry, sunny, shady, infertile, clay—where nothing else grows.  Put it behind the garage, around the base of a tree with surface roots, along the bottom of a fence, or in your “hell strip” by the road.  You will be rewarded with evergreen leaves through winter and an abundance of  fragrant flowers suitable for arrangements.

winter foliage of golden groundsel

Golden groundsel is native to meadows and woods of the eastern half of the US.  It quickly creeps to form large, 6″ tall patches of wintergreen leaves even in full dry shade.  In spring, buds emerge bright maroon-purple opening to cheery yellow, 2′ tall fragrant flowers in May.  The new leaves, which appear after the flowers, are large and round, providing a bold texture (see photo at top).  My deer have never touched it.

creeping phlox ‘Bruce’s White’ in my woodland in spring

The other native I highly recommend for wintergreen shady ground cover is creeping phlox, Phlox stolonifera.  Not as aggressive as golden groundsel, creeping phlox can be mingled in your perennial beds or used alone under shrubs and trees.  It moves at a medium rate to fill in around surrounding plants without overwhelming them.  Then, from March into May, it is covered with blue, pink, white, or purple flowers.

creeping phlox with foamflower (Longwood Gardens)

winter foliage of creeping phlox

Creeping phlox is native to wooded areas of the eastern US.  The 2 to 3″ tall mat-forming leaves are completely covered by 8″ tall flowers in spring.  It is very tolerant of soil conditions and, once established,  grows well in full dry shade.  My deer leave it alone.  As an added benefit, it comes in white, ‘Bruce’s White’ (photo above), pink, ‘Home Fires’ or ‘Pink Ridge’, pale lavender-blue, ‘Blue Ridge’, or purple, ‘Sherwood Purple’ or ‘Fran’s Purple’.  The purple cultivars are the most vigorous, and I think the most beautiful.

beautiful colors of creeping phlox

For a refined and elegant, truly evergreen ground cover, I recommend dwarf sweetbox, Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis.  Technically a small shrub, dwarf sweetbox slowly creeps by means of underground stolons to form a 4′ patch over 10 years.  But it is well worth the wait—or if you are impatient, planting it close together—because in February its tiny white flowers produce the most heavenly fragrance for your winter enjoyment.  My patch perfumes my whole garden.

dwarf sweetbox in winter as ground cover under a dogwood

Dwarf sweetbox is native to the western Himalayas in China.  Its stems grow to 18″ with narrow, glossy evergreen leaves and creamy white, extremely fragrant flowers in February in the mid-Atlantic.  It thrives in average soil and part to full shade and, once established, is tolerant of drought.  Deer do not bother it.  It tends to be pricey so I planted very small plants which periodically needed to be poked back into the ground as it roots right below the soil surface.

dwarf sweetbox flowers getting ready to bloom

The final plant that has the characteristics I want in shady wintergreen ground covers is hybrid hellebore, Helleborus x hybridus.  My customers are always asking me what to do with the multitude of seedlings produced by their hybrid hellebores, and here is the answer: move them to a place where you need ground cover.  In three years, you will have 2′ wide plants covered with huge, beautiful flowers from February to May and pristine foliage that remains green all winter—for free!  I have done this under my Kousa dogwood and throughout my woodland, and the result is spectacular.

hybrid hellebores in winter as ground cover under Kousa dogwood

Hybrid hellebores have many different parents mainly native to eastern Europe.  Their wintergreen leaves are 2′ tall and remain ornamental until new leaves appear in spring.  Each plant produces a multitude of large, cup-shaped nodding flowers in many colors ranging from dark purple to pink to white to green with doubles, spots, and picotee edges quite common.  They grow anywhere in any soil and light conditions as long as they are well-drained.  If you want to spoil them, give them organic matter, but no supplemental water is required after they are established even in the worst drought.  They are slightly poisonous so deer do not eat them.

some of the flowers on my ground cover hybrid hellebores

Next spring when you are looking for ground covers, I hope you will consider one of the fantastic four described above.  In the meantime, leave a comment with the name of your favorite wintergreen ground cover for shade.

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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New Year’s Resolution to Edit the Garden

Posted in landscape design on December 26, 2010 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Winter at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens

Kartik, my friend and computer wizard extraordinaire, went to India last year with his wife and children to visit his family for three weeks.  When he returned, I was curious to know how he felt about the trip.  He told me he was happy to be home, meaning literally back in his home and also that the trip confirmed that the US is his home.  He then went on to explain how the trip had changed him in basic and important ways.

Although he does not view India through rose-colored glasses, Kartik marveled at the simplicity of life there and how that simplicity allows a truer appreciation of and sharper focus on “the important things”.  With few possessions, little access to travel, and monetary restrictions, his Indian acquaintances focus on their community, their friends, their family, and especially their children.  Food, conversation, time together is more important there without all the distractions of a consumer society.  Although on balance he would rather live in the US, he missed the simplicity of India.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens Winter 1994

Not one to waste an important lesson, when Kartik returned home, he immediately began paring down his own possessions and lifestyle, ruthlessly eliminating what his family didn’t use or need.  He said it gave him a great feeling of power over our endlessly consumer driven society.  And, as he fixed my computer recently, he pointed out all the technological paraphernalia in my closet that I could do without: keyboards, mice, cables, adapters, manuals, disks, etc., that I was saving “in case I needed them”.  At the end there was an almost empty closet.

After Kartik left, I started to relate his experience in India to my own at my family’s small summer cottage in Maine.  With one big room downstairs and one partitioned room upstairs and no closets, our family is always together and there is no space for “stuff”.  When I return to my much larger, closet-endowed home in PA, I feel overwhelmed by the clutter and more isolated as everyone disperses to the many rooms of our house.

my signature dovecote (see header)

Taking a page from Kartik’s book, I attacked our “stuff’ with a vengeance dispersing mountains of un-needed clutter to the thrift shop, my children’s school, and the local 7-11 parking lot where every item disappeared within a few hours.  I too felt empowered by the process.  Life really is simpler and more enjoyable with less things.

Then I started to think about the garden and how similar principles apply.  I have the same reluctance to edit plants as I have to edit my belongings.  There’s always hope for that half dead shrub, for that ground cover that didn’t fill in, for that perennial that clearly needs more sun.  When the real answer is to move on.  So in 2010 I resolved to tear out all non-performing plants, and the result was a huge improvement.

my son Nicky stuck in a snowbank

A row of boxwoods riddled with phytophthora made way for some beautiful fall-blooming camellias.  Large patches of old hostas were removed to make room for new improved cultivars.  A tangle of privet and wisteria was replaced by a magnificent view of the neighbor’s rose bushes.  And, in many cases, struggling plants made room for more of what was already thriving at the site, adding to the overall impact of the garden.

For New Years, I highly recommend a resolution to edit your garden.  The results will produce satisfaction for all of 2011.

Happy New Year,

Carolyn

Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  For non-performing trees, I use intimidation before removing them.  I threatened a 15-year-old yellowwood that if it didn’t bloom this year, I would cut it down.  Naturally it was covered with flowers this spring.  I know it doesn’t make sense, but it has worked numerous times for me.

My cats, Otto and Olivia, on Christmas

This collage shows “six closets de-cluttered to help me feel more free.”   December 31, 2010.

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Fall-blooming Camellias Part 2

Posted in Fall Color, Shade Shrubs with tags , , , , , , , , , on December 17, 2010 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Red-flowered Camellia japonica (introduction in process)

In my previous article, Fall-blooming Camellias Part 1, I showed you my camellias and provided some background on the development of these remarkable plants.   Here I want to convey the astonishing variety of cultivars available for your fall  garden.

On December 2 (before the freeze), I was privileged to visit the camellia collection of Swarthmore, PA, horticulturalist Charles Cresson who grows over 60 varieties.  Charles not only showed me around his gardens, but helped me stage the photographs—thanks Charles.  Here are some of the incredible specimens I saw.

fall-blooming camellia 'Snow Flurry'Camellia x ‘Snow Flurry’ (Ackerman Hybrid)

fall-blooming camellia 'Winter's Dream'Camellia x ‘Winter’s Dream’ (Ackerman Hybrid)


fall-blooming camellia 'Autumn Spirit'Camellia x ‘Autumn Spirit’ (Camellia Forest Introduction)

fall-blooming camellia 'Winter's Snowman'Camellia x ‘Winter’s Snowman’ (Ackerman Hybrid)


fall-blooming camellia 'Winter's Charm'Camellia x ‘Winter’s Charm’ (Ackerman Hybrid)

fall-blooming camellia 'Scented Snow'Camellia x ‘Scented Snow’ (Camellia Forest Introduction)

fall-blooming camellia 'Winter's Beauty'Camellia x ‘Winter’s Beauty’ (Ackerman Hybrid)

fall-blooming camellia 'Cranberry Ice'Cranberry-flowered Camellia (not introduced)

fall-blooming camellia Ackerman seedlingWhite-flowered Camellia (not introduced)

The two photos above are of  cold hardy camellias that have never been offered  for sale.

fall-blooming camellia "Wax Lips"

fall-blooming camellia "Wax Lips"

Red-flowered Camellia japonica (introduction in process)

Of all the camellias I saw during my visit, and there were many more than appear here, you can probably tell that the red-flowered camellia in the photographs above and at the top was my favorite.  From its plentiful plump buds to its robust red flowers with bright yellow stamens to its dazzling dark evergreen leaves to its lush and  luxurious habit, it is outstanding.  It is a straight C. japonica  species collected by the Morris Arboretum in 1984 on an island in Korea.   The island is the most northern range of this species. Although technically a spring bloomer, it also flowers in fall.  Charles hopes to introduce it for sale soon.

For more information on Ackerman  hybrid camellias, read William Ackerman’s article “Camellias for Cold Climates”.  For a wonderful selection of camellias from a nursery that hybridizes them, visit the Camellia Forest Nursery website.  Camellia Forest is located in Chapel Hill, NC.

Carolyn

Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.

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December GBBD: Add to Your Spring Shopping List

Posted in Fall, Fall Color, Garden Blogger's Bloom Day on December 15, 2010 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

native oakleaf hydrangea ‘Snow Queen’

It is time to walk around your garden again and assess what you need to add to make the end of fall an exciting time in your landscape.  Do you need more late fall-blooming evergreen shrubs like camellias to give you a reason to go outside?  Could your garden benefit from flowers that bloom in December like hellebores or snowdrops to relieve the gray?  Make a list and take photographs so that when you are shopping next spring you know what you need and where it should go.  I know it’s cold outside, but you never know what you might find to raise your chilly spirits like nature’s own dried arrangements (pictured above and first below), which I discovered during my own monthly inventory.


Longwood Gardens conservatory decorated for Christmas

If you need ideas, visit local arboretums and gardens.  I always find a trip to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, highly inspirational and informative.  This time of year you can see the fabulous holiday display, A Longwood Christmas, with half a million lights and 39 miles of cords lighting 75′ trees plus a 4.5 acre indoor conservatory themed for the holidays.  I know I am prejudiced, but I think it is the best in the world.


Today is Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day for December when gardeners around the world show photos of what’s blooming in their gardens (follow the link to see  photographs from other garden bloggers assembled by Carol at May Dreams Gardens).  Here are a few more highlights from my mid-December stroll through Carolyn’s Shade Gardens:

Japanese silver grass with ‘Magic Carpet’ spiraea


fall-blooming Christmas rose ‘Jacob’

native honeysuckle ‘Crimson Cascade’

fall-blooming snowdrop ‘Potter’s Prelude’

black fountain grass ‘Moudry’

purple offshoot of ‘Shell Pink’ lamium

leatherleaf viburnum

fall-blooming species Camellia oleifera


bearsfoot hellebore coming into bloom

fall-blooming hybrid Camellia x  ‘Winter’s Darling’

Japanese silver grass ‘Morning Light’

giant snowdrop (G. elwesii) blooming early

native purple coneflower soldiering on

fall-blooming Ackerman hybrid camellia

re-blooming tall bearded iris ‘Immortality’

My re-blooming iris ‘Immortality’ re-bloomed in early fall and then decided to do it again in late November.  I could bring the flowers stalks inside and force them.  But the fat buds hold such a promise of spring and they make me feel so hopeful every time I walk by them that I can’t bring myself to cut them.  May you find many  treasures on your mid-December ramble.

Carolyn

Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  It went down to 15 degrees last night so the camellias are brownish, but they still have buds coming.  I covered the iris, and all the other plants mentioned are fine!

32 Comments »

Fall-blooming Camellias Part 1

Posted in evergreen, Fall, Fall Color, Shade Shrubs with tags , , , , on December 8, 2010 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Camellia x (Unknown Ackerman Hybrid)

From 1992 to 1997, I earned two Certificates in Ornamental Plants from Longwood Gardens.  Of all the horticultural classes I have taken, these are the best, and I still use the course books as my primary plant reference.  As I worked my way through the 18 required courses from bulbs to perennials to shrubs to vines, I made a mental life list of the plants I wanted in my garden.  Some I added immediately, but others were stored away to be added in the future as I discovered them randomly at the nurseries I visited.  This year, fall-blooming hardy camellias rose to the top of the list.

Camellia oleifera at Carolyn's Shade GardensCamellia oleifera

Bark on Camellia oleifera grown as tree (Cresson garden)

Actually, my flirtation with fall-blooming camellias began about 10 years ago during a tour of the Morris Arboretum when I was given a tiny seedling of their Camellia oleifera (two photos above), which was a cutting of the original and famous ‘Lu Shan Snow’ at the U.S. National Arboretum.  It has grown into quite a large shrub with beautiful cinnamon-colored bark, glossy dark evergreen leaves, and copious single white flowers from late October into December.  It is also completely cold hardy, but not resistant to deer who dined on it voraciously.  There were to be no more camellias in my future until I freed up a space for them inside my deer fence.

fall-blooming camellia 'Winter's Darling' at Carolyn's Shade GardensCamellia x (Unknown Ackerman Hybrid)

This spring I removed several large and ailing boxwoods from a sheltered spot by my patio and simultaneously found a source for specimen camellias—it was a “perfect storm” for my venture into the fall-blooming camellia world.

fall-blooming camellia 'Elaine Lee' at Carolyn's Shade GardensCamellia x ‘Elaine Lee’

I purchased three gorgeous plants.  The first, Camellia x ‘Elaine Lee’ (photos above and bottom), has semi-double white flowers that bloom from November sporadically through January.  It has an upright form with an average growth rate to 5 feet.  The second, Camellia x ‘Winter’s Darling’ (photo below), has miniature, anemone-form deep cerise pink flowers that start at the end of October and continue through December.  It has a moderately upright habit and grows slowly to 3 to 5 feet.  The third is an Ackerman hybrid camellia (photos top, above, and bottom), but I am not sure which cultivar.  It has semi-double deep pink flowers.  All three have beautiful glossy dark evergreen leaves.

Camellia x ‘Winter’s Darling’

These hardy fall-blooming camellias, along with many others, were developed by Dr. William Ackerman at the U.S. National Arboretum by crossing C. oleifera with more ornamental forms to produce superior plants.  They are truly hardy in the mid-Atlantic, but should be sited to protect them from winter sun and our winter winds, which come from the northwest, and mulched in winter.  They prefer a well-drained site in part shade.

fall-blooming camellia 'Elaine Lee' at Carolyn's Shade GardensCamellia x ‘Elaine Lee’

For more information on Dr. Ackerman’s hybrids, read his article “Camellias for Cold Climates”.  For more information on camellias, go to the International Camellia Society’s website.  Stay tuned for my next camellia post which will highlight photographs from my recent visit to a private collection of over 60 camellias.

fall-blooming camellia 'Winter's Darling' at Carolyn's Shade GardensCamellia x (Unknown Ackerman Hybrid)

The U.S. National Arboretum, which is part of the USDA, is the source for many of the best plant breeding programs in the U.S.  It also maintains national collections of plants.  The arboretum is currently planning to deaccession its Azalea and Boxwood Collections as well as part of the Perennial Collection.  In the case of the Azalea Collection, although budget concerns were mentioned, one of the reasons given was that it attracted too many visitors. I may be wrong, but I can’t imagine this happening in the U.K.  If you would like to find out more about this amazing azalea collection and the efforts to save it, go to the Save the Azaleas website.

Carolyn

Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.

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