Some pretties

'Quietness', a Buck rose. I have previously ragged on this rose, but I was stupid. I moved her in the winter to the west side of the house which is pergatory for roses, expecting her to croak, but she fooled me. She loves it and is growing and blooming. And I'm a happy gardener.

'Quietness' - Not only a beautiful face but an exquisite fragrance as well.

A fading flower

Easily a 4-inch bloom

And more coming.

Dianthus chinensis - the brightest, most cheerful flower in the garden

'Maman Cochet' on her way back from the thrips invasion

Same flower the next day

'Sherry Lane Carr' daylily and larkspur

'Capitaine Dyel de Graville', a sport of the Bourbon, 'Souvenir de la Malmaison'. I call him Lady Killer.

'All American Magic' daylily

'Pinkie, Climbing'

'Mary Guthrie'

Again - she just thrills me.

'Marchessa Boccella', one of a few Hybrid Perpetuals that grows well in Florida.

She's fragrant, too.

And seems to enjoy living in a purple pot.

She's a very sweet rose and bush.

'Madame Abel Chatenay', my baby. I would have a whole garden of her if I could.

A close-up of her. The tinge of brown is thrips damage. She fared well against them and never even balled.

Covered with buds

Salvia farinacea aka 'Victoria Blue', a completely wonderful perennial companion plant for Florida

'Lilian Austin' and an immature Purple Coneflower bloom - I like Lilian a lot.

The peahen has paid our neighborhood several evening visits since Saturday. This time when I heard her I followed her voice and caught sight of her just as she flew from the neighbor's front porch roof up to the turret roof. Very regal, don't you think?

Roses still sleepy but awakening

‘Clotilde Soupert’ is the early riser of the garden, up and at ‘em at the crack of dawn. Everybody else takes after the gardener for whom 8AM is really early. So it’s looking like the old clock on the garden wall is saying about 6:30, maybe quarter to seven. ‘Leonie Lamesch’ is not only awake but cheerful. She’s just off the patio, and I can see her from the back door, dotted with her small but happy red/pink/cream blossoms. She appears in the next four photos. She’s only been in the ground for about a year and only has two mature canes, so though she’s strikingly pretty, she’s not a candidate for a full bush just yet. You can guess that I love her foliage.






‘Mrs B R Cant’ is really lovely this spring compared to previous years. Being on Fortuniana rootstock, last year I followed conventional wisdom and pruned her quite hard, including removing leaves. Then last season she grew wacky with eight-foot canes sprouting from five feet high on the bush. She looked like she was trying to be a climber, but those heavy canes just flopped over and laid down on other plants. Growth was going horizontally through the bush, and she wasn’t very leafy at all. My excuse for her was that she’s growing way under two huge oaks and deprived of enough sun. So last month when I was on my pruning rounds, I could not make heads or tails of her, because she was such a jumble of confused growth. I removed most of her leaves just so I could see what was where. Then I decided to shorten all that long stuff to match the rest of the bush, remove dead stuff and downward growing stuff, and end it there. My conclusion was that last year’s pruning forced contrary growth. Of course, that’s only my observation, one admittedly influenced by my prejudice against Teas on Fortuniana.



Well, she has more leaves and is bushier this year. (She was so non-foliated last year that she was un-photographable.)  See that nearly horizontal line in the middle of the bush? That’s one of those canes I mentioned before. In my experience some Teas sprout shoots at nearly right angles from the original cane, and I believe cutting exacerbates that habit, causing multiple shoots near the cut. So I’m going to see if minimal cutting helps her. I know the pros will strongly differ with me on this, but I’m just trying to achieve some normalcy for her without a clue as to what her normal really is. By the way she's about six feet tall and close to eight feet wide.



She has a lot of buds on her but has been loathe to make any cane breaks down low. None last year or this year so far.



‘Polonaise’ is looking good after this winter’s transplant. She has a good many buds already on her few canes.



‘Mary Guthrie’ surprised me yesterday with this bright flower which is exactly true-to-life color. She was relocated, too, for the sake of these scrumptious flowers. No black spot yet, the gardener said with a wry, little chuckle. HMF says she's fragrant, but dumb gardener didn't know because she has never taken a whiff!



Happily, more bright flowers are coming as seen in this photo.



In my last post you saw the red new canes of ‘Maman Cochet’. Now about nine days later they are almost green and about four feet long. Her middle is looking nicely full.



My in-the-ground ‘Borderer’ is also blooming and filled with buds. She’s quite a small bush – maybe two feet tall and four feet across.



Here’s the full bed. From front to back, ‘Borderer’, ‘White Pet’, and ‘Leonie Lamesch’. ‘White Pet’ has buds but no flowers yet.



This is ‘Francois Juranville’, my rambler that cascades from the rebar arbor. This is his third season in the garden, and being a once-bloomer (though my fingers are crossed for some repeat here in sunny Florida), there were no flowers the first year and literally only a handful last year since he only blooms on old wood. This is the first flower I’ve seen this year. I chose this rambler for its fairly large and double flowers and for the color. It seems most ramblers are small-flowered and white, and you know how much I like color. See those shiny, healthy green leaves? Those are Wichurana leaves. They are the other reason I chose this rose. No black spot. An evergreen climber that would cover my vacant arbor was what I was seeking. Flowers almost didn’t matter. These will definitely be a bonus.



Here’s FJ in February. He’s been bulking up lately, throwing thick new canes all over the place. I keep trying to tuck them in so they go vertical. If allowed to go straight out from the existing verticals, I think he’d be happy to take the whole garden.



The first flower (that I’ve seen) of ‘Duchesse de Brabant’. Only a year in the ground, she’s young and flimsy, but she has at least grown in all directions and is maybe two feet tall and almost five feet wide. She’s in a cooler location than my first DdB which I think will keep her better foliated with pinker blooms. Obviously, being a Tea Rose, heat should not be a problem, but for three years I could not keep leaves on the bush from which this plant was cut. So if she’s more comfortable out of the scorching sun, it’s fine with me.



‘Blush Noisette’ has one open flower and some buds though she’s far from covered yet. She has leafed out some since the hard pruning but not a lot.



You may remember that I love Dianthus chinensis. Summer, winter, it doesn’t matter. They’re green and blooming. This is a new color that I got this winter – in fact, two of them. I love the color! Oh, wow! It just occurred to me that this one is planted at the feet of purple Clematis ‘Venosa Violacea’. Sometimes things just work out, don’t they?



I am so excited about the new scapes on several daylilies. These are the Early Season DLs, and I must admit that I didn’t realize that early meant this  early. This particular one is Bob Carr’s ‘Inherited Wealth’. This is one that I am itching to see bloom. I chose it for its gorgeous and abundant flowers that I had seen in photos even though it supposedly does not rebloom. In my long, long growing season I love and demand rebloomers. So we’ll see about this one. I can always hope it will decide to bloom again, right?



Yesterday I blew the leaves out of the gravel paths, so the garden is tidier. I was feeling like a really low-down garden-keeper with all those oak leaves covering everything. They keep dropping – month after month. I hope they’re done, and I hope I can mulch them up with the lawn mower. So with the garden cleaned up and blooming, I’m almost a happy camper. If some little elves would come and spray the weeds in the front circle gravel with RoundUp, then I would be a full-fledged happy camper. This photo was taken way back in February (apparently when I was pruning), and since the weed is of great proportions, maybe I’ve already pulled it. Let’s hope so.

Garden remodel continues

Tis the season, you know, for reinventing the wheel, garden-wise.  It has happened every year so far in my garden.  I guess I’ve given up vowing that it won’t.  What the heck.  We move furniture around. Why not roses and other plants?  Today after work I spent the most productive two and a half hours moving plants.  Don’t you feel thrilled with yourself when things go well and smoothly??  That was me when I came in at dark.

Working in the front garden – as everywhere – certain things must happen before certain other things can happen.  How many times have I walked past certain roses and certain empty spaces in total frustration with the status quo?  Don’t answer that.  Well, today things were moving! 

‘Mary Guthrie’ has been jammed between two ‘Red Ruffles’ azaleas and the Tea rose, ‘Duquesa’, literally buried under these other plants.  The damp ground made the move easy.  She was up and out in seconds and in her new home next to ‘Louis Philippe’ in minutes.  I was amazed by her large size since I’d never been able to see her where she was.  Now those big, bright pink single flowers will be much more visible.

‘Capitaine Dyel de Graville’ and ‘Mystic Beauty’ were in an even more awful situation.  I had planted them very close to each other (two feet apart) as babies, knowing it was probably unwise, er, definitely unwise.  The double whammy was a lack of sun, so they were looking pretty scrawny – if you could see what you were looking at.  When ‘Pink Perpetue’ moved away to Rose Petals Nursery, she left a prime space on the front circle.  The move of ‘Mary Guthrie’ left an opposing space across the path, so these were the destinations of CDdG and MB, both being kin to ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’.  After some bed preparation of MG’s former spot (lots of sand astonishingly close to the surface) I slipped the Capitaine out of the ground. Wow! He was bigger than he looked. Now he’s settled in next to ‘Duquesa’ with room in front for daylilies.

‘Mystic Beauty’ was a bit more reluctant but did submit, and on the way to the new spot, it dawned on me (palm to the forehead!) that I had planned to put MB next to ‘Duquesa’ and CDdG next to SDLM since MB is basically SDLM’s twin – just the opposite of what I had actually done.  Oh, well, move on, right?  So as I dug MB’s hole, it occurred to me that what I will have is a bank of ‘Souv de la Malmaison’ – three bushes next to each other! This could be quite a sight in full bloom!!  And MB will be surrounded by echinacea plants, because seeds have sprouted all over that area, and so many seedlings are growing there that I transplanted several over to CDdG.  This is a prime example of how a garden evolves and grows.

The azaleas got planted elsewhere, and a displaced Ilex crenata ‘Compacta Holly’ was placed in CDdG’s old spot.  And a good time was had by all!


My January hardscaping efforts finished off the edging on this corner and made a place for seven daylilies, using the last of my topsoil pile.  The bare shrub behind the daylilies is ‘Pinky Winky’ hydrangea, and behind that is ‘Mrs B. R. Cant’.  On the right is my new camellia that was potted on to a large pot since my ground is inhospitable to camellias.


The old plastic edging was allowing soil to spill out of this bed, and with more composted horse manure to be added soon I had to make a change in the edging, so I chose the same scalloped concrete blocks that I used in the new bed under the ‘Francois Juranville’ arbor.  It really wasn’t as difficult as you’d think. It took about half an hour. Those invisible bushes behind the newly planted daylilies are ‘Red Ruffles’ azaleas, looking much the worse for having been through the freeze.


As a way to hide new basal shoots from marauding squirrels, I planted snapdragons at the base of ‘Leonie Lamesch’ (above) and ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’ (below).  When they get bigger and bushy, I think they will offer some protection to the new cane breaks.  Speaking of squirrels, my plan to rid the garden of them was peanut butter and plaster of paris bonbons.  I read a report that hypercalcemia would result in a heart attack for the squirrel.  Alas, after I made 20 of them and put them out last Saturday I was doing more research and found an actual experiment where someone tested the lethality of these bonbons.  A squirrel was fed nothing but the bonbons for four days and didn’t die. Drat!!  Anyone need a big bucket of plaster of paris?




Lovely new growth on ‘Maman Cochet’ (above).


This is my ‘Quietness’.  Admittedly, at only one year old she has been in a less than total-sun position, so I moved her to a possibly less beneficial position on the west side of the house.  That means no sun until one o’clock in the afternoon.  Have I doomed her?  Well, possibly, but I made room for daylilies, so what’s done is done. Go for it, ‘Quietness’!!  I think it will take me all of one minute to prune her.


A Mophead (Hydrangea Macrophylla) making a break from winter.  Yay!!


‘Foxy’ Foxglove, having survived our summer, is blooming beautifully.


One of the snapdragons that I planted last winter along the front sidewalk next to the garage lasted through the summer and has become quite large this winter, and now it’s blooming beautifully, too.  I’ll have to be more lavish with my care of the new ones I have to plant, so they’ll live long and bloom again.


Remember last summer when I was dropping coneheads around the garden?  Here is one of the results.  I’m still dropping seeds around.  I really think echinacea is my favorite plant and flower.


Volunteers.  A weed at the top of the photo and ‘Victoria Blue’ Salvia seedlings.


Another Echinacea ‘Purple Coneflower’ seedling.


And a sweet viola volunteer.  Teensy, teensy blue flowers.  Love them!


David Austin’s ‘Lilian Austin’, a gift from Carol, is now in a big pot.  Hopefully, the clay pot won’t dry out too much in the heat of summer.


Newly planted daylilies. These are ‘Chinese Scholar’.  My planting plan was to keep plants of the same cultivar grouped together rather than scattering them around willy-nilly, figuring they would have a bigger impact that way.  There’s another cluster like this one nearby.


I also tried to plant the daylilies with roses of a similar color. These Dianthus chinensis (my other most favorite flower) will go under ‘Polonaise’ and some other red roses.

I’m really loving the cut in my job hours though I felt differently when it happened.  One extra hour a day is wonderful for getting a lot done in the garden before dark sets in.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the rain gauge registered .90 inches.  Happiness is almost an inch of rain!!