Gardens are like vitamins

They’re good for your health, and they should be taken daily. These shots weren’t there yesterday, and they won’t be there tomorrow. The garden whispers softly, “Pay attention to me.”

'Bow Bells' by David Austin

Purple Coneflower echinacea

'Unchartered Waters'

'Sherry Lane Carr'

'Fred Ham'

'Becky Lynn'

'Maggie'

Here she is again - all two and a half feet of her! She's grown multiple upright canes recently after being a low-growing squiggly little thing planted in February. Look at all those buds. 'Kent's Favorite Two' is blooming behind her.

'Le Vesuve' starting her second flush

Another 'Fred Ham' - seems too pretty to be a guy.

'Indy Indy' - love, love, love her!

'Leda's Lover'

'Secret Splendor' and 'White Pet'

'Modern Marvel' - always double with another blooming behind

Clematis 'Venosa Violacea'

'General Gallieni', Tea rose, 1899

'Alexander Hill Gray', Tea rose, 1909

Dare I hope that 'Arcadia Louisiana Tea' will bloom in all her many-petaled splendor? She bloomed slightly early in the spring. The word flush would definitely be an overstatement, and they all balled from thrips. She normally has over 100 petals, so the heat probably - hopefully - helps.

Here's the shady lady, 'Mrs. B. R. Cant'. I can't get over her blooming in the shade.

Maybe in her day, 1901, she used a parasol.

There's no doubt that Mr. Cant, the hybridizer, was her DH.

Spring continues to unfold

‘Serratipetala’ is a Found China Rose, discovered in France in 1912. Its flowers are so petite – an inch and a half across. The petals are serrated, and the blooms have a flat form that darken with age. What that means is that when I went back the next day, this flower was crimson with touches of pink. To me, it’s an incredibly interesting rose. Also incredible is the fact that it grows larger than both HMF and Vintage Gardens report. Mine is growing in a pot and not a large one, because I thought it would be a diminutive, three-feet tall rose bush. I’ve been thinking of putting ‘Serratipetala’ in the ground, but every place I consider may not be big enough. After all, if it grows to a 5x5 bush in a pot, what will it do with the blank check offered by good old terra firma? Another gardening unknown to wrestle with.



Seemingly bunches of daylilies are sporting flower buds. Oh, be still my heart. Some of them are newcomers, and I don’t even know what I’m getting excited about because I have forgotten who they are without my cheat-sheet. It’s simply hard for me to believe that spring is on the move.





‘Mrs. B R Cant’ is beautiful again. She’s not a typical delicate Tea Rose but a sturdy, robust one. Even her fragrance is strong. She has tough, pretty much disease-proof foliage, too. Beauty and brawn.




‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ has many buds and some flowers, too. This cluster was rather breathtaking to me.



A couple of days ago ‘Polonaise’ was looking like this. This evening there were two gorgeous open blooms. I went running in the house but not for the camera. I wanted DH to see these red roses. With long face and mumbled protests he came out…and enjoyed himself and the garden and the swing and the lovely cool evening in the shade of the oak tree. Some things are worth the effort. And that’s my long excuse for not having a photo of Polonaise’s first blooms.



The two big fat buds one over the other in the lower half of this photo were gloriously open today. I would suggest that you use your imagination, but you can’t even come close.



‘Richard’s Rose’ is a tiny, little bug-eaten thing, but he has a couple of new shoots and is putting up a good fight. I think I see evidence of a squirrel attack. I also think I should put up a defense perimeter around the little guy.



Right next to ‘Richard’s Rose’ is the bare-root “Pink Hollyhock” from Walmart. The other one I planted didn’t come up. I hope this is ‘Summer Carnival’ since other cultivars don’t stand much chance in Florida. This one looks like the Summer Carnivals that I’ve grown – so far.



A bud of ‘Marchesa Boccella'. I guess my hard pruning didn’t hurt her, and since she’s looking fairly bushy, I guess maybe it worked out okay. You can see her whole self in her purple pot below.




Here’s a volunteer from last year’s seed project whose name I can not remember. I think I have more in the front garden. How fitting! SDLM and Polonaise now occupy a red, white and blue bed. Well, in the heat of summer SDLM will be off-white anyway.



Now she’s gorgeous pale ‘baby pink’.



This ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ is now six feet wide, fitting from edge to edge in this bed, but she’s only about three feet tall and hardly thorny at all.



I’m really pleased with this ‘remodeled’ bed. You are free to use as much imagination as you need to picture Richard’s Rose, the hollyhocks and coreopsis, and the daylilies and purple coneflowers – in a few years – filling in between ‘Louis Philippe’ on the left and ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’ on the right. Packed in like sardines, aren’t they?


Referring to my cheat-sheet, this one is ‘Seductor’. Won’t be long. I’m going to try to count buds this year on the daylilies. I’m not really as compulsive as that may sound, merely curious.



‘Maman Cochet’ has a rather imperfect bud, perhaps from thrips. They’re baaaacck !! Crap-ola!



‘Maman Cochet’ (on the left) is looking much fuller already now that her new canes in the middle are taller. These bushes (‘General Schablikine’ is on the right) are about five and half feet tall, and this portion of the bed is about ten feet wide.



Here’s a close-up of the young canes in the upper left quadrant of ‘Maman Cochet’, showing flower buds already. When these flowers are spent, these canes will sprout new shoots from about two inches below these buds at the abscission point, and the rose will get taller in this way and make more flowers again at the ends of all that new growth. By the way, Maman is French for mother/mama. Monsieur Cochet was the breeder of this rose.



‘Maman Cochet’ is a huskier Tea Rose than ‘General Schablikine’ who has already had one basal break chewed off by an %^$## squirrel. These roses are three and a half years old, planted in September, 2008 and still quite juvenile in their maturity. The General definitely needs more basal breaks…and some barbed wire.



‘Maman Cochet’ is apparently an earlier bloomer than ‘General Schablikine’. Some Tea Roses definitely wait for hotter temps to start their blooming. Of course, YMMV.  he-he. Now that I know what that abbreviation means, it makes me chuckle. Your mileage may vary. Hmmm, garden mileage. It is rather variable, isn’t it? And I feel like some of us (moi?) have garden mileage envy. In reality, fast or slow our gardens should be accepted unconditionally and not judged against others. Gardens should be green…not gardeners.

Gravel down

Remodeling has its stages if not quite its finales.  No, mine’s not done – yet, but it will be.  I have hopes for April arriving here, too, but more than anything I’ll just be glad when February is gone.  Quite surprisingly (at least to me) the two nights in the 20’s that we had a week ago did hardly any damage – except to brand new canes. They’re toast, but all the early-spring foliage is fine. That’s a relief.  In fact, looking in the rearview mirror, it was almost much ado about nothing, but then panic and worry is part of the human condition, isn’t it?


The gravel isn’t two colors.  It’s just dry and wet.  I hosed it down to settle the granite dust and compact the gravel, locking the cut stones together and making it less squishy under foot.  ‘Louis Philippe’ at the top left finally got his trimming today. He had gotten wide, and with so many side-shoots coming off thin canes he was hanging so low that you couldn’t see the daylily on his right.  He was also invading the path.  So I trimmed off bottom canes where they came off the older cane, lightening the load and allowing the canes to return to vertical.  Trimming continued, taking off dead stuff and whatever would run head on into the fence.  I did not shorten or thin him, my reasoning being that everywhere you cut Louie three or four new sprouts happen, clogging up his structure bigtime.  So right or wrong I kept the cuts to a minimum.  We’ll see how he does.
  

‘White Pet’ (center bottom)  is leafless still, never having acted like he thought it was spring.  Very smart of him, eh?  To his left is ‘Borderer’, fully leaved out and oblivious to those mid-20’s temperatures.


‘Leonie Lamesch’ at the bottom center is now leafing out, and I’m waiting to see if any basal breaks utilize the camouflage offered by the snapdragons and dianthus planted at her feet which, of course, have to start growing real quick.  The ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ on the left in the island isn’t as well leafed-out as her sisters in the front garden, but she’s pretty large at six feet across (but oblong).  My new shady sitting area by the tree swing came about as a result of dumping rejected crappy soil from the new ‘Mary Rose’ bed and the ‘Mme Abel Chatenay’ renovation.


Here’s the view from the swing area.


And here’s the swing area waiting for another half yard of gravel to complete it.  This is at the top of sloping ground and piling the dirt raised the area, requiring a bulkhead of sorts and a wavy one at that.  I’m really happy with it since it neatens up the garden nicely.  Going to have to invest in a string trimmer though.  That St. Augustine will be a bear to mow up to the edging.


I have visions of a bistro table and chairs over to the left… someday.  The poor, beautiful white camellia was relegated to the pot for lack of suitable camellia-soil in my garden.  It hasn’t grown a millimeter, but at least it’s alive.


The medallion of broken paver blocks is buried. I was going to remove them because the area puddles and then raise the level of the crossroad with extra gravel, but after seeing how un-far a ton of gravel goes, I decided to leave the blocks where they were as filler.  Can you foresee the bed on the left ever being widened?  I sure hope not!

That’s Louie on the left.  The daylilies had become so green and strong in the false spring. Now they’re all  pale and limp like frozen lettuce. I was thinking tomorrow might be the day they all get cut back.

I like this view.  One might get the impression that I live on a huge country estate instead of the postage-stamp sized lot hemmed in with fences.  I’ll have to somehow incorporate this view into the garden more.  I wonder how.  Did you notice that the tree previously designated for removal (extreme right) is still there?  I’m saving my pennies.


This is ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’.  She hasn’t really done much since being moved to this spot more than two years ago.  Believe it or not, her first year there leaf-cutter bees deleted so much leaf area that she started to decline, and I thought I would lose her.  Since she was the only one attacked, I attributed the attraction to the wax begonias I had planted all around her.  I have no proof, but I haven’t used them in the garden since and there have not been anymore leaf-cutter bee attacks.  Maybe this year she’ll impress me.  To her right on the arbor is ‘Jaune Desprez’, supposedly a huge Noisette climber but a snail-paced grower.  It’s all of five feet tall after two and a half years.  Again, maybe this year it will begin to do something… and maybe not.


On the inside of the left leg of that arbor is the pink hollyhock that came in a bag from Walmart.  I hope you are duly impressed.  I’m hoping it’s baby pink.


Here’s Louie again in all his slenderness.  I was amazed at the thinness of his canes since he’s been there since February, 2007 – one of my first five roses.  He’s more than six feet tall.


Daylily Point planted with ‘Inherited Wealth’ and ‘Marietta Dancer’.  Across the path is a baby ‘Mary Rose’, a David Austin rose that I am incredibly excited about.  Interestingly, a neighbor gave me a couple of old magazines recently because they had roses in them.  Imagine my glee when there before me was a cluster of luscious blooms of ‘Mary Rose’.  Oh, my goodness!  I can’t wait.


Of course, that’s exactly what I’ll have to do since here is all twelve inches of ‘Mary Rose’.


A postscript:  Recently moved 'Mystic Beauty' is looking really bad - like almost dead. I can't understand what the problem could have been.  'Baronne Prevost' on the other hand is a definite dead.  At the time I moved her into the big pot she had five canes.  Almost immediately they started dying.  Today she had one and a half good canes.  It took almost no strength to pull her from the pot, and she went to the pile of Louie's trimmings.  And now I'm wondering which roses will go into their places.  I've been dreaming of 'Maggie', but she's a big rose bush. (Groan) ... more digging and rose-moving in my future, I guess.