Liberated Gardener

Salt Cedar Likes it Sunny and Dry

Tamarisk (Tamarix spp.) is a risk if you plant it in the southwestern US. It evolved on floodplains in Spain and spreads along creeks in dry country. In higher rainfall areas it's not a threat and is in fact terrifically drought hardy and has tiny pink blooms in summer. 

 

Called salt cedar because it pulls salts from deep in the soil and then spits it out from its leaves as a way to discourage competitors. Haven't noticed that effect in our garden. Our salt cedar has an underplanting of leadwort that looks happy and is blooming too. I cut the salt cedar back hard every other late winter or whenever it looks ragged. It's a small tree, but I treat it as a large perennial and whack it back as needed.

With winter pruning it only gets about 8'-10' high and about 3' wide. Very light and airy appearance, good contrast for low-growing, horizontal plants like the leadwort. It's also next to a gardenia and the frilly foliage and blue-green color make a nice contrast. We just give it mulch in winter and no fertilizer. And certainly no water after it's established. I think there's no risk of losing it in summer. 

 

 

Free-Ranging Formosa Lily

When other plants in the summer garden look like they want a vacation, Formosa lily launches a fleet of bright white flowers. With fragrance. 

 

The stalk in full sun is about 6'-7' tall. It gently seeds in around the garden so plants in shade are appropriately shorter. Sometimes 2'-3' high. Blooms through the month of August and into Sept. here in NC piedmont, zone 7. Once the 8" long flowers pass, their drooping form is replaced by upward facing seed pods that look like a candelabra made of skinny gourds. Seeds ripen by fall and seedpods can be left to dress up the winter garden or cut and sown wherever you need something upright and drought-hardy that blooms in summer.  

Originally from the island of Taiwan, their latin name is Lilium formosanum. Some varieties have pink or red color on the outside of the petals. 

  

Creeping Jenny Swings Both Ways

Most plants like things just-so: very wet or very dry; lotsa shade or lotsa sun. But not both. Creeping Jenny reliably swings both ways: wet or moderately dry, shade or sun. 

And it's a very low-growing ground cover that can work it's way under other perennials that go dormant in winter--like peonies--and keep the garden from looking empty in the off-season. 

The variety of Creeping Jenny in the photo is called Lysimachia nummularia "Aurea" because of it's yellow-green color. The straight species is a light green. The coin-like leaves inspired the common name, moneywort. ("wort" is old English for "plant")

Native to Europe and Turkey.

Can tolerate some occasional foot traffic--possible lawn alternative if you're not playing a lot of football.

 

Verbena bonariensis for Dry, Sunny Sites

Verbena bonariensis helps you break one of the basic rules of garden design, so I love it.  It's 3'-4' tall but very skinny, so you can plant it in the front of a flower bed without blocking the view of other plants. Designer Edith Eddleman calls it a "see-through" plant for that reason. 

And it likes to gently seed in. We have one in the front-yard vegetable garden now that will have to be moved when we replant that bed in the late summer/early fall. But more often, wherever they seed in is just fine, as they can stick their heads up above the crowd, but no one is yelling "down in front!"

Drought doesn't bother them once they are established--they think sunny and dry is delicious and they come back reliably in zones 7-10. 

They are from South America and although not invasive,  some gardeners have complained of having too many seed in, but we haven't had that problem. 

If you find yourself with too many seedlings showing up, you can reduce their numbers by swinging through the garden a few times in the summer with hedge clippers to cut them back along with other enthusiastic seeders and perennials that grow too tall. Snipping them back with multiple chops that remove about 2" at a time and letting the clips fall where they may, saves the trouble of carrying the clippings around and lets the organic matter decompose in the bed where it belongs. 

 

Palm Trees in Snow

June of 2010 had over 20 days with temps of over 90 degrees. Feels like global-climate-disruption to me.

Thankfully, the last few days have topped out in the 80's with low humidity--so not as cool as the picture below from last winter, but still it was pretty refreshing to be outdoors and not covered with sweat. Felt like a warm fall day. It lifted everyone's spirits. 

 

The windmill palm is planted in front of the Durham Senior Center near the downtown, with the People's Security building in the background. (also called the Durham Centre? I think)

It's one of 9 palms and a half-dozen banana trees and other tropical looking plants that compose a Florida Garden. I figured that while many retirees want to move to Florida, in Durham, we could bring Florida to our seniors. 

The Florida Garden was planted with help from SWOOP (Strong Women Organizing Outrageous Projects), the Senior Center staff, Redmill Landscaping, Talberts Lumber, the Rock Shop, Sands and Soils, B&B Topsoil, Stone Bros. and Byrd Garden Center, Keifer Nursery, Durham Garden Center, Southeastern Hardy Palm Society, Keep Durham Beautiful, Downtown Durham Inc., Daylily Garden Club, Mark Ellis Landscaping and Best Rental.  

We're in zone 7 and the windmill palm is the only palm that's considered reliably winter hardy here. Bananas (Musa basjoo) can survive if their first winter in the ground isn't a harsh one. So we did lose a few, but not all of them. Other plants in the Florida Garden: brugmansia, gardenia, tea olive, banana shrub, red hot pokers, creeping Jenny, Salvia guaranitica, creeping raspberry, black taro. 

Here are some of the SWOOP volunteers finishing up the garden in Oct. of 2009. 

 

Lily of the Nile

It's hard to get enough blue flower tranquility. Nature seems to have an easier time painting with loud-mouthed yellow, white, red and pink. 

And true, the color blue gets lost at a distance, especially when compared to the flaming four mentioned above.

 So, even though I lose one every few winters, I keep planting Lily of the Nile for that great dose of earthbound sky. 

And the silver spotted skippers like them too for a different reason. 

 

 

Humming Birds Like the Color Blue !

Okay, I've received a hummingbird feeder as a gift and sometimes I've even bought the liquid to refill it. But the truth is, much as I enjoy hummingbirds, their feeder in my garden should be re-christened a "starver" as that's what would happen if they depended on it. 

The local hummingbirds and I have better luck with the deep blue flowers of Salvia guaranitica. 

 

Salvia guaranitica is from southeastern South America and is deciduous. I have a happy one in all-afternoon sun and another happy one in all-day-dappled-shade. The clump can spread over time. Meaning it makes a good passalong plant. The only maintenance it needs is some mulch applied in winter to a mildly fertile soil. Has been very drought hardy as long as you water it the first year to get it established. 

Grows 3'-6' tall--cut it back hard in spring if you want to keep it shorter and stockier. Blooms from early summer to autumn. It's also called Anise-Scented Salvia, tho I find the fragrance of the leaves even less attractive than anise. So you may not want it where you would brush against it, like right next to a path. Like most salvias, the scent of the foliage makes them unappetizing to deer--unless they are starving. 

Best part is that the nectar is very attractive to hummingbirds. One of our plants is in front of our living room window and gives us a good view of hummers all summer. So this live humming bird feeder has basically turned the store-bought feeder into yard art. 

And the time I would have lost by re-filling the feeder--I can spend actually watching the hummers. 

  

Big, Tall and Bright Yellow: Rudbeckia maxima

I enjoy watching this plant almost as much as the goldfinches love eating the seeds in fall. Rudbeckia maxima is sometimes called Giant Brown-Eyed Susan because of the flowers and sometimes Dumbo's Ears because of the leaves. 

It's about 6'-7' tall in my garden. Blooming in June/July. The seedhead stays on into winter. Goldfinches will latch onto the stem and get the thing swaying from side to side as they snack on the seeds. 

 

I wouldn't call it Dumbo's Ears, but I see why others would. 

 

The large size of the leaves tell you that this plant evolved someplace with plenty of moisture. Like moist piney woods of Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma. 

However,  normally, plants with a bluish-green tint caused by a coating of wax are from areas with droughty summers. Below, the water is beading up due to the waxy coating.  You can see the underlying green of the leaf where I rubbed the wax off with my thumb.

 
 So this perennial--also called a coneflower--can take a surprising range of wet and dry conditions. I suspect that the areas it evolved in are wetlands that go through periodic droughts. 

Some sources say it's deer-resistant--deer (aka long-legged rats)  tend not to like waxy leaves (think about how that would feel to chew). Other sources say it's not deer-resistant. I think that many plants that are unappealing to deer, become deer food when their numbers are too high and they are forced to eat whatever is out there due to hunger. 

A great garden plant as an accent or in masses. Divides well in late summer. Not evergreen. doesn't need a lot of fertility or watering when established. 

Maybe this plant should be called Leggy Brown-Eyed Susan. 
  
 

This Poppy Will Wake You Up

Spanish poppy, Atlas Mountains poppy or Moroccan poppy, whatever you call this cheerful perennial, I like growing it. 

The latin is Papaver atlanticum "Flore Pleno."

I've detected a mild and pleasant fragrance in the morning when I get the paper. The apricot/orange color is good enough to eat (tho I don't think it's edible, just speaking figuratively). Deer don't like the fuzzy evergreen leaves (unless they're overpopulated and hungry), it has cute little salt-shaker seed pods,  it doesn't mind drought, blooms from mid-spring into early summer and reportedly seeds in, tho I haven't seen that yet after 2 or 3 years. 

Does well in clay loam amended with gravel and lime and bonemeal in our Mediterranean garden with permanent mulch of purple gravel. In many cases I've had Mediterranean plants seed into the gravel mulch moreso than they do in organic mulches, so maybe this poppy will start reproducing--hope so. California poppy and horned poppy and breadseed (also called opium poppy) have all happily seeded into the gravel mulch. 

It's Mediterranean heritage means that it doesn't need rich soil and doesn't need much rain in summer. I'll bet that if you're losing these plants it's during a rainy summer, when their roots want to be dry.

Next time plant them in a raised bed or top of a slope that's amended with gravel or sand. 

And don't be afraid to plant lots of them. Orange goes with everything in my book. This is one poppy that won't put you to sleep. 

Why Aren't Fire Pinks Pink?

One of my sweetest discoveries on a first trip to the NC mountains were the flaming color of fire pinks. 

I've planted and killed this plant a few times before I started ignoring the plant labels (full sun and well-drained soil) and started paying attention to the conditions it liked. 

By following the plant labels, I had planted fire pinks in my yard in sunny sites in my well-drained clay loam (mostly of a chocolate cake color and tilth). They would last long enough to bloom and then die in a year or two. True they are not long-live perennials, but somehow I didn't think that was the problem. 

One day while enjoying a swimming hole on the Eno River, my eye caught the flash of red of a fire pink at the wood's edge. I slowed down enough to size up it's conditions: 

1) the plant had afternoon shade, and

2) was growing in between some boulders in gravelly soil (hence really good drainage)

Next time I came across a little nursery with some fire pinks for sale, I cleaned them out of all 7 plants and put them in a spot that gets dappled sun/shade and in a berm of gravelly soil amongst some boulders. 

Those plants are the picture at the top of the post, happily blooming like fireworks in early June. 

So why if the flowers are fire-engine red, are they called "pinks" ?

Same reason that dianthus are also called "pinks." Look at the edges of their flower petals and they look like they've been cut with pinking shears.....