Podophyllums

Podophyllum Pleianthum Short Form

Podophyllum Pleianthum Flower

Podophyllum "Kaleidescope"

Podophyllum Delavayi

Podphyllum Pleianthum Large Form

     Some of my favorite shade plants are the podophyllums.  I remember when I first saw these growing in the display garden at Heronswood--They were enough to make us stop in our tracks and say "Whoa!  What is that?"  At that time they were just being made available to gardeners here and one basically had to get down on bended knee and beg the nurserymen who had them to sell you one. If they deemed you worthy they would, otherwise you just had to wait.
     How times have changed! Now they are relatively easily available, and they grow so well in my garden that the next thing you know they will be on the noxious weed list. All of the above shown podophyllums like the same conditions and all are equally easy to grow, so the main consideration in choosing one is the leaf shape and coloration and the ultimate size of the plant. The first picture above, that of Podophyllum pleianthum short form, is one I got from Heronswood many years ago. It is only a foot to a foot and a half tall and the leaves are very shiny.  I like it quite a bit because it is a nice and neat plant.  The Podophyllum pleianthum large form was also from Heronswood, and it may have been labeled as a Podophyllum cross or just as a large form, I don't remember which.  In any event, it is about 3 or 4 feet tall and the leaves are one to two feet across. The leaves on this one are matte and not shiny like the short form.  Podophyllum delavayi is my favorite of the lot-- each seedling has slightly different markings on the leaves.  Kaleidescope is a clone that was introduced and named by Terra Nova Nurseries, a large tissue culture and wholesale nursery in Canby, Oregon. Because it is a Terra Nova plant, many nurseries carry it.
     All these podophyllums are shade plants and they all appreciate rich moist soil, but the great thing is that they can grow quite well, thank you very much, even if those conditions are not exactly met.  I have grown them in basically full sun and they have done just fine; I have grown them in the darkest shade and they have done just fine; and I have grown them near the base of our native willow which was a very dry location and they did just fine.  Indeed, I have them all over my garden in varying conditions and they all do well.
     These plants' natural growing habit is to form colonies over time. This is evident from the pictures I have posted. Some of them are taking over large areas of the garden, although they do it in a polite way, unlike some invasive plants like petasites.  I once tried to dig up the colony of the Large Form pictured above. You can see that I did not succeed.  Apparently, podphyllum will grow from root cuttings, so if you try to dig one up and leave any roots behind, new plants will grow from those roots.
     These plants have also self sowed in the garden, albeit in a restrained way. They grow easily from the seed which is contained in fruit like capsules.  If these are left on the ground all winter and then squashed open to reveal the seed, and those seeds then pressed into the soil, you will soon have baby podophyllums.
     Podophyllums are available from Far Reaches Farm,  Cistus Nursery, and Keeping It Green Nursery.

Fargesia robusta

Fargesia Robusta behind Lioness Sculpture

Fargesia Robusta and Camperdown Elm

     I grow a lot of bamboo in my garden--it creates evergreen structure, privacy, and a sense of the exotic.  I have probably grown 15 or 20 different kinds and I have to say that the best of the lot is Fargesia robusta.  This is a clumping banboo, not a runner, and it is a tight clumber. That means that although it widens every year, it does not send out long running underground shoots like some bamboos do. However, as you can see from the photos, it is not a plant for a tiny space. The clump eventually gets fairly large.  The two clumps which I have in the garden have been there for about 10 years and I planted them from 1 gal. containers.
     The reasons I like this bamboo so much are because (1) the culms stand straight up and do not lean over like a fountain as some fargesias and other bamboos do; (2) the height is about perfect for most gardens--some bamboos get so tall that they create a lot of shade in the garden--this one is tall enough to screen the neighbors, but not so tall that it creates too much shade; (3) the culms grow so close together that this plant creates basically a solid screen at lower levels unlike some bamboos, particularly the runners; (4) the pattern of white and green on the culms is beautiful;  (5) this plant looks good all winter--it has never suffered damage from the cold as some clumping bamboos do; and (6) the overall shape of the plant is beautiful--I have never pruned or thinned the plants in the pictures.
     I originally got this bamboo from Jackie Heinricher of Boo-Shoot Gardens.  Boo-Shoot Gardens is a wholesale bamboo nursery near Anacortes, Washington which is responsible for the introduction of a large number of clumping bamboos to the general public. Before the advent of Boo-Shoot, you could only get clumpers like this one from tiny specialist nurseries, usually run by aging hippies, and they generally cost a fortune for a small plant.  Boo-Shoot succeeded in tissue culturing bamboos, which is a form of propagation whereby certain cells of a plant are induced to create a new plant in the laboratory. This method can produce thousands of new plants in short order. I would recommend going to Boo-Shoot's website and checking them out.
     There are now several forms of Fargesia robusta on the market. The ones shown in the pictures are what I believe is called Fargesia robusta "Green Screen" or "Campbell". It is available from  Bamboo Gardens, a bamboo specialist nursery in Oregon.
  

Geranium Anne Thompson

View of South Terrace

     On the south and west sides of my house are large terraces which are comprised of pink gravel and concrete pavers. These were put in place when the hard surfaces of the garden were constructed almost 20 years ago. We had a local landscape architect, Bart Berg, do this work. The pink gravel is crushed marble from eastern Washington. The view above is of the terrace as it runs along the south side of our house, so this area is pretty much in full sun, except for any shade cast by the plantings in the bed to the right.
     There is a long and narrow bed which runs alongside this terrace--it is only 2 or 3 feet wide (I am not good at judging the exact measurements of a space). Long and narrow beds always pose a design challenge.  The usual advice is to plant them with only one kind of plant and that is pretty much what I have done here. When I first planted this bed many years ago, I used Verbena Homestead Purple which makes a great drought tolerant low lying pool of purple and I liked it here quite a bit. The only problem with it was that it is not reliably hardy in our climate, so I had to replant it every year.
     Then one year I had a lot of Myosotidium seedlings, so I planted the entire border with  Chatham Island forget-me-nots. That would have been quite the extravaganza if it had ever taken off, but unfortunately there is something about this bed that myosotidiums do not like (prima donnas that they are). All but one have since died out.
     I had grown geranium Anne Thompson in another part of my garden for almost the entire time my garden has been in existence. Anne Thompson is like its more well known sister Anne Folkard in that it has chartreuse foliage and magenta flowers but unlike Anne Folkard, it grows in a neat mound instead of weaving and traveling everywhere. It has proven to be a long lived and great performing plant--it blooms almost all summer. Furthermore, the plants which I had in the other part of my garden were being invaded by bindweed and the only way to get rid of that obnoxious weed which was intertwined through the roots of the geranium, was to dig up the geranium and bare root it and take all the bindweed roots out. So I did this to two of these geraniums, and in the process, divided them and replanted the divisions where you see them in the picture. Thus, all the plants in this border (there are at least 30), are divisions from two established clumps.
     I do not commonly see Anne Thompson in nurseries--it's sister, Anne Folkard is much more commonly available. But I noticed that Plant Delights carries it and extolls its virtues over Anne Folkard.

Alliums

Allium Beau Regard

Allium Lucy Ball

Allium christophii

Allium Globemaster

Allium Globemaster

     They say you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many alliums. These wonderful, easy and carefree bulbs are in bloom in the garden right now and they are putting on quite a show. I have grown a lot of different alliums in my day and I have definite opinions on which ones give the greatest bang for your buck.
     At the top of the list must go Allium Globemaster. This one, while each individual bulb is relatively expensive, is well worth the cost. I have found Globemaster to be long blooming, to have large, nicely colored heads, to multiply well, and to last well in the garden over the years. This means that you can divide the bulbs periodically and build up your supply that way without having to break the bank.  If I were going to plant only one allium it would be Globemaster.
     Second on my list would be Lucy Ball. This one, while less expensive than Globemaster, performs just about as well in the garden and also multiplies well. Third would be either allium schubertii or christophii,  both of which have a looser head, but even more gigantic than Globemaster.  Schubertii is bigger and more spectacular than christophii. They also grow lower to the ground and hence are better as a front of the border plant. Finally, I like a relatively new one (at least to me) called Beau Regard. The heads of this are larger than those of Globemaster and the stalks are much thicker. I don't have as much experience with it than with others, though, so I don't know how it will perform long term in the garden.
     Other alliums that I have grown include Firmament (also a good one),  Gladiator (another good one),  Round and Purple (a good name if ever there was one), karataviense, giganteum (this is a straight species that I would not grow--the hybrids are better), flavum and moly. The latter two are small yellow flowered alliums which provide shots of clear yellow in the garden at a time when there is otherwise not much of that color. All these alliums are worth experimenting with in the garden.
     I grow alliums all over my garden except in deep shade. They are great for just sticking in between established perennials, since they will usually grow above the expanding foliage and that foliage will hide the browning leaves of the alliums.  They grow wonderfully with poppies beacuse they bloom at the same time. Another good combination is with eremurus, as the picture I posted yesterday and which I use as a background for this blog will attest.
     I have bought alliums from many sources in the past, but the place which has the greatest assortment of alliums now that I know of is McClure and Zimmerman Bulbs. 
http://www.mzbulb.com/dc.asp?c=152 .  I have purchased many bulbs from them and would recommend them, especially for alliums. Another good source is Brent and Becky's Bulbs, brentandbeckysbulbs.com . I have also ordered from them and have been pleased with what they send.

   

New Template

    You may have noticed that I changed the template for this blog. My husband thought the all black background that I was using was too funereal, hence the changes.  The background photo is one I took several years ago in my front border and so I am posting it here so you can have a better look at it.  When I posted this on Flickr I called it Foxtail Lilies and Friends.  I will be having subsequent posts about everything in this photo--eremurus (foxtail lilies), alliums, opium poppies and eucalyptus.
     By the way, I post my photography on Flickr, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindajcochran/

Oriental Poppies

Bolero Oriental Poppy in Front Border

Bolero Oriental Poppy

Garden Glory Oriental Poppy With Alliums

Closeup of Garden Glory Oriental Poppy

Manhattan Oriental Poppy Closeup

Garden Glory Oriental Poppy

     Oriental poppies, while not exactly rare or unusual, are one of my favorite plants. Ever since I took up photography, I have become more and more enamored of them. As these pictures illustrate, there are many more cultivars of this plant than one usually sees in garden centers. I have certainly not grown all the available ones, but of those I have grown, the ones pictured above are my favorites.  Bolero, the one in the first and second photos, is one I just got last year and this is the first year it bloomed. I like it for its color and for its habit and form. It seems to be less blousy than some and the flower seems simpler and more like a wild poppy. The plant itself is neater than many oriental poppy plants.
     Garden Glory is the largest and most spectacular oriental poppy flower I have grown. Because of this, however, the flowers tend to flop around a bit and they do not die away gracefully. It is worth it to grow in my opinion simply for the beauty of the flower.
     Manhattan is another one, like Bolero, which has relatively neat foliage and flower heads that do not flop.  I also particularly like the color which is sort of a dusty plum.
     One oriental poppy that I used to grow but do not any more is Patty's Plum. This one has received much attention in recent years and is often seen in nurseries, but in my opinion it is not a good plant. The flower only looks good for about a day, and then it is really ugly for the rest of its existence.  Its popularity is probably due to some great photographs of the flower (taken on the one day it looked good) that were used to market it.
     Oriental poppies have a somewhat awkward growth habit in that the foliage dies away after they bloom, leaving a large hole in the garden.  The trick is to plant them beside other plants which don't fill out until later in the year. One plant which meets this criterion is Melianthus major. I will be having a post on this plant in the future, but, suffice it to say that in our climate melianthus is best cut to the ground every year and under this treatment it does not fully expand until after the oriental poppies go down. This is also a good combination because melianthus and oriental poppies like the same conditions--sun and well drained soil. 
     Oriental poppies are drought tolerant and deer resistant. I grow them in my front border where they get no water and they have done quite well. If you want mass quantities of them, they are easily propagated by root cuttings. I will have a post in the future about how to do this.
     Oriental poppies are found in most retail nurseries, but they do not always have the most desirable cultivars. For a mouthwatering view of some of the available ones, look at the Darwin Plants listing of oriental poppies,  http://www.darwinplants.com/site/genus.asp?GenusId=Papaver . Darwin Plants is a company which supplies plants to nursery wholesalers and retailers, so their plants will appear in mailorder lists and in retail nurseries. If you see one there you like, you can always ask your local nursery to try and obtain it for you.
    

Beschorneria

     As I promised in my post on Garden sight lines, I am going to tell you about the Beschorneria I have in a pot on my south patio. I got this plant many years ago and I think it was labeled Beschorneria dekosteriana. When I look on the internet, I am told that it is really Beschorneria yuccoides ssp. dekosteriana. That is probably why it is indistinguishable to me from the straight B. yuccoides.
     In any event, I got this plant at least 10 or 12 years ago, and it has been growing in this pot ever since. Of course it was much smaller to begin with and had only one rosette. After Beschorneria blooms, the rosette that produced the bloom dies, and it makes offsetting rosettes, all of which will be capable of producing a bloom at some time. In a pot like this, all the rosettes have limited space in which to spread out, so they make this nice full plant. I don't know what this plant would look like if I had planted it in the ground--if it had survived, perhaps it would have spread out more.
     This brings me to the point of survival of Beschornerias planted in the ground in our climate. When I first got onto these plants I tried to plant them in the ground in various places in the garden and none of them survived our winters, at least not in any presentable fashion. My take on marginally hardy plants is that if they don't survive our winters looking good, I don't want to grow them because I don't want to have to look at an ugly plant while it struggles to recover from its winter damage.  It's Ok if they die completely to the ground, and then come back, but I don't want to look at some tree or shrub which looks half dead. Did I mention that Beschorneria is evergreen? That's what makes it so amazing that it survives the winter in this pot.
     At first, when I had this plant in this pot, I took it into my sunroom to winter over. Then, one year it became too much of a chore to do that and I left it out to fend for itself. Lo and behold, it wintered over with nary a browned leaf! It has now wintered over, outside, with no protection from the elements whatsoever, for probably 10 years.  Even the winter of 2010, where we got down below 10 degrees F. did not significantly damage it. It is my belief that this plant does so much better in pots here because the drainage is better in the pot than in the ground.
     This plant, which is from Mexico, is also quite drought tolerant. Although it appreciates being watered and fertilized in the summer, it does not need that. So if you grow this plant, you can go away on long vacations and not worry about it dying for lack of water, even in a pot. The summer I was away from my garden a lot and did not water much, if at all, this plant did just fine, thank you very much.
     Beschornerias are now more commonly found in nurseries than they used to be, although you may still have to search for them. Places to get them include Plant Delights, Cistus Nursery (a great nursery on Sauvie Island near Portland), and Dancing Oaks, another great nursery near Monmouth, Oregon. Monrovia lists Beshorneria septentrionalis in their catalogue, which, again, to my mind is not much different that B. yuccoides. Beschornias are also easy to grow from seed and I have even had them self sow in my pink gravel pathways.
     So, if you are looking for an easy care pot plant that stays nice looking all year round, that is low water use, and that produces flowers that the hummingbirds love, then Beschorneria is for you.