Spring Fragrance

Here are a few plants that are blooming with some amount of fragrance in my garden  None are wafting fragrance so must be smelled up close.  A little known charmer with kind of erratic branch structure is Lonicera syringantha, flowers resembling lilacs.   The light lavender flowers are tubular and in small clusters.  The fragrance is very nice though a little faint on a wet day.

Next, planted also next to a concrete porch for added warmth, Choisya ternata, and with bigger flower

clusters, more attractive foliage, slightly more scent, and bigger plant size, Choisya 'Aztec Pearl'.

It's a good thing they only call these "Mock Orange" because their fragrance can't compare with actual orange blossoms, which can waft their beautiful scent quite a distance.

But the winner in my garden is the wild False Solomon's Seal, Smilacina racemosa, with an exquisite scent worthy of a great perfume.  It is a scent that seems to overwhelm the senses.  While they are blooming, assuming the deer leave them alone or I put wire around them, I try to make a daily pilgrimage to delight in sniffing them.

Over time they make delightful clumps.

The true Solomon's Seal, Polygonatum commutatum, has charming little flowers hanging down under the stems but no fragrance I can detect.  They spread by rhizomes that add an angular bead-like joint on every year, and have medicinal uses.

Second prize would go to Daphne odora but it is not blooming yet this year.  It has a vibrant scent as well.

An honorable mention is given to Daphne x transatlantica 'Summer Ice', which has a lovely scent but just not as strong or entrancing.

So, what is your favorite fragrant flower blooming now?

Hannah

Alpine Strawberries

One of my successes last year was to start Alpine Strawberries from seed and get fruit the same year.  The varieties I started last year were Alexandria and Delicious.  Here are some in a strawberry pot-

They are blooming already.  The ones planted in the ground are also blooming.  This year I bought more seeds from The Strawberry Store-  Fragola Quattro Stagioni (4 Seasons), Fragola di Bosco, these 2 are Italian Alpines; also Ali Baba, Baron Solemacher, Mignonette, Reine des Vallees, Ruegen, and Yellow Wonder, all of which are runnerless, and finally a Wood strawberry that makes runners from ebay.  Even though the seedlings are initially very small, they develope quickly and seem tough, I haven't had trouble with them dying off like some native plants I have tried.

Alpine Strawberries have small delicate berries, but with a more intense flavor than large strawberries.  They also keep blooming and fruiting all the way until frost.  It is fun to look for the little fruits, and they make a neat and well-behaved plant in the border.  I'm trying to work them into more of my borders where they add a lot of charm.  The Wood running strawberry will have to be planted where it can spread.  It is already making runners in the pots as a seedling.

Hannah

Fast Starting Plant Winners

A couple of plants that I started this year win the Fast Starting Award, achieving bloom under lights in a short time.   Agastache aurantiaca, a native perennial, was started 1/17/11 and has been blooming since 4/18/11, and Asperula orientalis, a Euro-Asian annual that self-sows, was started 2/7/11 and has been blooming since 4/15/11.  The remarkable thing is they are blooming under lights.  The Asperula is supposed to be sky blue but is a pale magenta or lavender under lights.  I will have to see how that changes if grown outdoors.

The Agastache aurantiaca smells heavenly, too.  I am in process of hardening off some plants and getting them set out but have been hampered this year by cold temperatures and lots of rainy days, still continuing.  I also started Agastache foeniculum last year and it has made it through the winter outdoors, and this year I started other Agastaches as well- cusickii, occidentalis- a Northwest native, cana, rupestris, and a few other native plants with seed from Alplains.  None of them are blooming yet.

My Cinnamon Basil also is blooming but is not getting an award since that is not a desirable quality in a Basil plant.

Happy growing , Hannah

Ephemerals- Now You See Them, Now You Don't

Ephemeral plants work very well  in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), since most start growing from seed from fall to early spring when the rainy season begins, or emerge from bulbs or tubers from late winter to early spring, bloom in spring, then by the time the dry summer weather arrives go to seed or dry up and go dormant until the next rainy season.  This means they require no irrigation and also they start growing before the terrible weed grasses, my biggest weed problem, have started to grow, so can suppress them once they are established enough to come up thickly.  My favorite plant for this is Anemone nemorosa.  They grow from underground rhizomes that look like little woody sticks.  I started out with just a few from a friend, and over time they multiplied extraordinarily to become dense stands of delicate leaves sprinkled with colorful flowers.

 I started a program to dig them in summer when dormant and then I replant the area sparsely, and use the extra rhizomes to plant in other beds.   Those come up the next year sparsely, but bloom-

They can transform a very weedy grassy bed-

 into a delightful patch of flowers that suppress grass, but do best in shade to part shade-

The blue-purple variety 'robinsoniana' is delightful-

As is the frilly variety 'vestal' with a pompom in the center, ethereal but less vigorous, so rarer, than the others-

I surveyed some of my beds that used to be overrun with weeds, some of them are getting close to being filled in sufficiently with successful plants to keep weeds from coming in.

But my long front bed where I killed grass over one winter with newspaper and black plastic had too much exposure to the large lawn area and the irises, roses, daylilies, and fig trees I planted there didn't cover the ground enough to shade out invading grass, so it is a nightmare of reinvasion-

Mulching with newspaper can help a little, here some Ajuga and Columbine are valiantly waging war on weeds for me, maybe they will make it-

Columbines can do a fantastic job of self-sowing, I tried scattering the seeds in the front bed last year-

They are the scalloped leaves with slight purple tints on them mixed in with the Ajuga.

Another ephemeral that I am enjoying is Lunaria annua, the Money Plant.  I have 2 colors, white and the usual purple.  They sow themselves delicately and like shady places, so are a welcome accent with heart-shaped leaves.  And after the seed pods dry out, they make lovely silver dollar-sized shimmering dried floral arrangements.  I also learned they have an edible tuber like a parsnip-rooted parsley, and may actually try some out this year.

 The white ones are coming up more thickly, but I don't consider either one as problems, they are sedate self-sowers.

Then there is the queen of the native ephemerals, Trilliums, which make a lovely bouquet and have deepened here to a magenta from their initial white.

Then there are the incredibly elegant Bleeding Hearts, which at least here are not in evidence much in the heat of the summer.

  And who could forget these blue charmers, which are too aggressive in their exuberance and have to be yanked in late spring because of their decline into grey masses of mildew-

I just love the borage family.  I'm not going to go into all the bulbs which fit this category.

Happy gardening, Hannah

Even Thorns Can Have Serendipity

Today I took on the unpleasant task of removing some diseased roses.  I have 5 climbing roses on a deck.  Last year I had to cut a lot of dead wood out of Reve d'Or from some unknown disease, and this year he was all dead except for one twiggy cane from last year.

 He had been vigorous and a good bloomer of peachy blossoms, this is 2008, so it was sad.

But he was very thorny, and was always catching my clothing or hat when I went by.  I have a painful knuckle where he got me today with a thorn through my glove.  But I was very surprised to find on the thick base of the plant a nice clump of Turkey Tail bracket fungi, which makes a nice medicinal tea.

So I broke them off and need to trim them up, then I can actually try making the tea!

Next rose over is my favorite, Zepherine Drouhin, who has the distinction of being first and last rose to bloom in my garden as well as keeping a few blooms all season of a lovely hot pink.  This is the first flush in 2008.  She shows little sign of the disease.

 Peeping out on the left is the magnificent red, Dublin Bay.  He is younger a few years and a slower grower.  His blooms are a fantastic red and very long-lasting on the bush.  He shows almost no signs of the mysterious disease.  He was finally achieving the height of the deck in 2008, which gives him better sunlight.

Next rose down the line is similar to Reve d'Or in color but a deeper peach, Crepuscule.  She was very beautiful in full bloom (2008) but also very susceptible with only one new little cane untouched.

She has very lovely coloration, deeper in the center.

On the far side of the overbearing Hall's Honeysuckle and therefore in too much shade is a rose that was supposed to get very large but has not yet, same age as Dublin Bay, Awakening, with a smaller light pink bloom.   Someday when she makes it to the top of the deck perhaps the additional light will spur her on.

But a newer addition to the garden, a NO ID once-blooming white rose, has been vigorous growing on one of my deer fences, and was knocked over last year when my husband was taking out a hornet's nest, necessary in spite of hornets being valuable in the garden for eating pest insects, because it was too close to foot traffic and hornets were aggressive and stung 3 people.    Perhaps it will fill in where the other roses are missing.  Once-bloomers do have a vigor of bloom that compensates a lot for not reblooming.  I freed a couple of heavy T-posts when I removed the Wisteria and Silverberry that I used to strengthen the fence and hold up the rose, so it should put on quite a show again this year, thanks Carol O.

Present also by the deer fence are the short climber Fourth of July, with fireworks-like splashes of red and white, Austin roses Evelyn and Heritage, fragrant pinks, and the large and magnificent Apricot Nectar.  Hopefully they will not be affected. It is good to see new growth, and new hope springing forth.

Hannah

Another One Bites the Dust

It seems once I got started cutting back hopelessly overgrown and out of place plants, an addictive desire to chop has taken hold on me...  I have to start somewhere in spring to build those gardening muscles back up, anyhow.   I meant to trim my gigantic Silverberry, Elaeagnus ebbingei, left, but it is overgrowing its neighboring Aronia plant, which has fantastically healthful berries,  on the right, and had to be cut back drastically last fall just to reach the berries-

It is also running over the delightful rose Betty Boop on the other side, which has white petals edged in rose that fade to cream petals aged in peach.   I had to face the facts, horrendous trimming will have to keep happening every year as long as it is there.  So I got out my loppers and folding saw again and spent a couple of hours lopping off branches and a couple more sawing through the bark and breaking off the ones over 1 1/2 inches that were too big for the lopper.  Then I decided the ducklings were getting totally carried away with the newspapers and chipped the branches so I would have wood chips to put in the ducks' box.   I also raised the ducks' water with 2 bowls so they couldn't keep flooding the box.  Now the spilled water is going into the bowls instead.

I decided this more substantial trunk deserves having my husband assist with the chain saw for final removal.  Still a few branches left to cut off first.

Aronia are free and clear.  They will thank me with berries.  Silver chaos of shorn branches and leaves on the ground.  Since they are thorny they are good candidates for my shelter program- instead of chipping all the branches I will pile some up somewhere I may want to smother some weeds, and create a brush shelter for little critters to escape from the cats.  Before cats I used to see 3 kinds of lizards in my yard- Sceloporus (Fence or Spiny Lizards), Elgaria (Alligator Lizards, fierce and large), and Eumeces (Skinks, long, skinny, shiny and smooth), in addition to the occasional salamander and lots of garter snakes, which were becoming scarce but have been making a comeback since my brush shelter program was implemented.  Putting tarps on the ground or mulching with newspapers also helps provide shelter for the garter snakes.

 It was sad to chop down the Silverberry since I do actually have lots of room and the Silverberry has lovely evergreen leaves with silvery undersides.  Its main draw is the wonderful fragrance that wafts from it in fall.  But you should have seen the disaster after a really heavy snowfall bowed all the unpruned branches to the ground.   Fortunately in addition to the silvery form I also have E. ebbingei variegata, with yellow edges to the leaves and a much reduced size and vigor, to continue to perfume the air.  Here it is behind and contrasting well with Berberis thunbergii, with also a weeping Mulberry,  and low Bird's Nest Spruce peeping out above the feathery variegated Phalaris grass in front, which can be invasive but in the right place will defeat a lot of those pesky weeds and make a nice full ground cover.  The Euphorbia wulfenii on the right has browned out from it's early spring chartreuse.

So, I have to make up for one of many garden "Oops!" when I chose plants in a new locale, failing to research the full mature size of the plant before picking a location.  Plants look so cute in the nursery.

Hannah

Fine Feathered Friends

We are plunging back into duck-keeping.  Four little downy ducklings are attempting to turn a box lined with newspaper into a pond.

Previously we raised some Golden 300 ducklings, hybrids named for supposedly laying up to 300 eggs a year.  They were not being carried by the local feed stores this year so we settled for some unknown Khaki Campbell ducks, which seem to have almost as good a laying reputation on the internet.  They must be closer to wild duck stock as well since I've never seen the rowdy pond building activity in the Golden 300's.  It's strange how people get a weird notion of eating duck eggs, even a farmer I knew couldn't seem to stomach the idea.  Imagine the best chicken egg you've ever eaten, cracked into a fine china bowl.  Then imagine the slightly yellow-tinged whites, runny around the edges, become crystal-clear and firmer, and the magnificent deep gold yoke taking on a succulent glory hitherto unknown.  There you have a duck egg.   But ducks are not as good at ripping the moss out of a lawn, or taking grass down to bare ground to turn a lawn into a garden.  They are also not as good at using up left-overs and food scraps.  Moss removal, fertilizer added-

OTOH, ducks are tougher birds, and require less shelter in winter.   Most of the time they don't even go into the house at night but stay out seemingly awake all night.  Silly chickens head for the house at dusk and can be seen totally stretched out at night inside.  This comes in handy if a chicken should escape from the run during the day, as generally they will be desperate to roost come nightfall.  But we had one set of chickens that was extremely unruly, Silver-laced Wyandottes, which are a rather heavy dual-purpose black and white barred chicken, though I had seen some cute bantam birds at a fair with the same name (?).   The Wyandottes all escaped and RAN for the barbed wire fence of the neighboring pasture or the woods when chased.  Not only that, they did not return to roost, for several days.  I finally had to get up in the dark and go out and surprise them at rest in order to recapture them.  The more docile Rhode Island Reds above will allow me to come up to them in the garden and pick them up.  Nice girls.  Good layers of brown eggs.  I can put them out in a fenced bed that needs some cleaning up and let them wander around, without worry, and pick them back up to put them back in the chicken tractor later.   But I would give RIR's first prize for complaining, the cup always seems to be half full for them.    I do a mean complaining hen imitation.

Ducks are a lot of fun when given a chance to swim in a wading pool too.  They are insanely happy when they hit the water and dunk and splash and groom their feathers with great zeal.  They do not have to have lots of water all the time, though, as long as they have a bucket deep enough to submerge their heads and wash their eyes.  But they do know how to enjoy themselves.  Even the little ducklings are blissfully submerging whatever parts of them they can when given some fresh water.  And who can resist this-

Happy spring, if it can ever decide to actually warm up around here.

Hannah