Tropaeolum polyphyllum report

Tropaeolum polyphyllum with pink California poppies

     I have previously posted about Tropaeolum polyphyllum here and here, and today I am going to report on what has been happening in that bed near the lionness at Froggy Bottom where I have this exquisite plant.  First of all, I have been excavating in the bed, trying to find tubers of the tropaeolum so that I can have some for the new garden.  As I said in my earlier posts, this plant is hard to find in nurseries, and so I particularly needed to dig up some tubers.  I did manage to find some, but let me tell you, they are not all that easy to find! Anyway, even though that digging seemed to commit mayhem in this area, by now, you could hardly tell that any digging had been done.  I think this tropaeolum is the sort of plant that is somewhat difficult to get started in a garden, but once it is, it is pretty much there to stay. 
     Other developments in this bed are that the pink California poppies that I had wanted to get started here have, in fact, been established, and I think they go well with the tropaeolum flowers.  They will have the added bonus of extending the season in the bed because they will bloom longer than the tropaeolum, and they will bloom again if cut back after their first bloom.  You can see that an orange flowered poppy has also invaded the bed.  That is what happens with these poppies, I have found.  Other colors sometimes pop up, particularly if you have a number of different color strains in your garden like I do.
     Other plants in this bed include Scilla peruviana, which I previously wrote about here.  You can see one of the last of these blooms in the upper left hand corner of the photo.  This year the bloom time of the scillas was earlier than that of the tropaeolum, and I suspect that will almost always be the case.  I also planted some Yucca linearifolias in this bed and you can see one of them in the upper left of the picture.  Finally, some alstromerias which I wrote about here have seeded themselves into this bed and in a few years will probably take it over, unless something is done about them.  I haven't yet decided what I will do with them, if anything.