Annuals & perennials Ideas, Tips & Guides

I was happy to see a really good selection of G. phaeum, including ‘Samobor,’ in this year’s catalog from Digging Dog Nursery, whose amazing Northern California gardens made the cover of Martha Stewart Living’s 2006 annual March garden issue and will be featured in May 2009 in Gardens Illustrated.G. phaeum is called “the mourning widow” for its downward-facing, eggplant-purple blossoms. (Click on the top photo to really get the idea.) In the case of ‘Samobor,’ the widow wears dark chevrons on her foliage, too. Not all of them dress alike: G.p. ‘Lily Lovell’ has slightly bigger flowers and bright green leaves (no markings); ‘Langthorn’s Blue’ has subtle dark speckles on its leaves and brighter, violet blossoms; ‘Album,’ as its name suggests, is white-flowered, with green leaves.I grow the phaeums in deep shade to half-day sun, and they sow themselves around, some individuals proving more or

On my radio show and podcast, we talked about why having extra-early and extra-later bloomers—from spicebush to Clethra to goldenrods and more—mean important insects and even birds will choose not just to stop by your garden, but call it home and raise a family.Read along as you listen to the May 11, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).read/listen: choosing native plants,a q&a with broken arrow’s andy brandQ. I know that when the subject of native plants is raised, peopl

The candelabra primulas, ranging from white to reddish (even bawdier than my favorite bawdy primrose!), require no care whatsoever: Plant a few in a shady, moist spot (the classic location: streamside) and let them do their thing. I started with several maybe eight years ago. If they’re happy, they will colonize, sowing around and moving a bit, with more plants some years and fewer others.The ones nearest to the edge where bed meets lawn here sow into the turf, a habit I consider generous of them, not thuggish. I simply dig out the little babies early in the month, when the foliage is the size of baby salad greens, and move them into new spots or pot them up to share with friends. They don’t miss a beat; the foliage quickly expands to nearly 12 inches.Primula japonica blooms from mid-May until almost July for me, and in the most a

First, my general thinking: No two gardeners’ potential places to stash such treasures will match in temperature or humidity, so when I say the basement works well here, your cellar might not. I have identified my best spots by experimenting, and by killing many things in the process. But every year I score another victory or two because I don’t let failure stop me. (Isn’t all gardening like that?)And this: If I don’t have the right spot for a plant–often a combination of high light but cool, 50ish-degree conditions–try forcing dormancy or semi-dormancy versus forcing it to limp along, suffering. If you have non-hardy plants you’ve tried keeping as “houseplants” in your heated home, only to see them go wretched and leggy, think about letting them rest, or close to it, next time. Water very sparingly and keep them as cool as possible.Extra heroics: Adding a growlight hood for 12 hours a day in, say, a cool basement could make a

Spring, and also fall, are perfect times to add some bird-friendly plantings, since many are woody plants, and also to provide for the most important thing off all: water. Big surprise–it’s all about keeping them fed, watered and sheltered in every season. Here are the essentials:1. water needed 12 months a yearWater is required 12 months a year, preferably moving water; curious birds cannot resist a drip or spillway, such as the little waterfalls in each of my two small garden pools. Even when those are shut down due

J UNGLE CONDITIONS NOTWITHSTANDING, some things are still standing here, and even looking good. I wanted to make sure to give each one its due so that these brave souls, who didn’t pack up and float away lately with all the you-know-what, know that I appreciate their courage and tenacity.

Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide, using the arrows beside the captions. Enjoy.One disclaimer about this wonderful genus: The plants exude a sticky white sap or latex when cut or damaged. Some people are allergic to the chemicals in it, which can cause skin rashes or other reactions. Exercise caution, especially in touching your eyes and mouth after working with the spurges.M

THE MOST COLORFUL CREATURES HERE as April turns to May: returning male birds in mating plumage. The last week included the arrival of rose-breasted grosbeaks and Baltimore orioles…but I am straying, as the point is plants, right? Oops.

I ALWAYS START TO FEEL BETTER, like we’re turning a corner, when the hybrids of Helleborus x hybridus (the orientalis hybrids) jump all the way up out of the ground and start showing off. After a couple of weeks of timid semi-bloom, with the flowers hugging close to the ground on unextended stalks as if in fear of assault by lingering winter blasts, here they finally come.

Andy is nursery manager of Broken Arrow in Hamden CT, a destination nursery with an extensive retail operation plus a giant mail-order catalog of unusual things. His 25-year-old personal Epimedium collection includes more than 150 kinds, with other shade treasures such as Solomon’s seal, or Polygonatum, and some lookalikes also on his radar.Broken Arrow, where he has worked for 25 years, is known for unusual things: “Especially if it’s variegated, dwarf, or has contorted branches, or there’s something that’s not quite looking right about the plant”–in the very best way, of course–Andy says you’ll find it there. Plants with an irresistible twist

Northern (also called upland, or inland) sea oats is native to Eastern North America, says the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, specifically “from PA south to n. FL, west as far as s. IL, e. KS, and central TX,” and into northern Mexico. It’s easy to grow, and some birds enjoy its seeds, as do small mammals. Me, too.Chasmanthium likes a semi-shady to shady spot where the soil is moist, and it can even take poor drainage. This is a low-maintenance plant suited to that hardest of spots–a shady slope—because sea oats forms strong, widening clumps, and also reseeds (some gardeners in certain locations say it does t

‘Sheffield Pink’ has 3-inch-wide, pastel-pink blooms in October here, lasting a month or longer, and though the catalogs all describe them as “apricot-pink,” I don’t see any hint of orange in its blush. The plant will grow from about 2½ to 3 feet, and as with any garden mum will perform best if divided regularly and flower most prolifically if pinched once or twice. The routine:When the first signs of growth appear in spring (May for me), dig the old plants and toss the oldest, woody bits, replanting vigorous divisions 18 inches apart. Note: There will be far more than you can use, especially if you haven’t divided in awhile.O

The backstory: About 20 years ago my longtime friend and fellow garden writer Ken Druse and I were working on a book about native plants, called “The Natural Habitat Garden,” and I joined Ken as he traveled around the country photographing natives, in nature and in gardens.One of our wildest stops was up in Sebastopol, California, at California Carnivores, which has been open and dedicated to cultivating these dramatics plants–including various native American species–since 1989.  (A highly recommended destination if you are near San Francisco.) In 1998, Peter wrote “The Savage Garden,” but a lot has changed in carnivores in 15 years since the first edition–and even more so in the 40 years D’Am

Maybe it’s Mercury retrograde that has me (a Gemini—one of the signs most heavily influenced by the antics of Mercury) plum tuckered out; maybe it was just this strange season of lots of wet and no heat. Maybe it’s the book I’m 200ish pages into writing that needs to be 300. But don’t worry; I’ll make it to the finish line on all fronts. I’ve been on an amazing new diet with my sister and my best friend that’s making a big difference. Onward; but first a little walk together, yes?Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows next to each caption. Enjoy.Categoriesannuals & perennials bulbs edible plants slideshowsTagsMargaret Roachmargaret roach garden

I KEEP WONDERING WHY (SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING) the first weeks of spring seem to be so inclined to glow in solid gold. Is it something about co-evolution and early season pollinators liking the color, or just a side effect of how we’ve selected what plants we make our gardens from over the history of the nursery industry? (These are the kinds of things I think about, you see.) Whatever the “why,” the “what” is pretty great, and so an homage to spring’s favorite color: yellow.I love the way gold makes things seem to advance; the way it grabs my attention, screaming (never whispering).

I DON’T KNOW WHAT MORE I CAN SAY in praise of hellebores. I’ve told you that I rely on them for my garden’s earliest burst of major perennial color, and that they are among my favorite evergreen groundcovers, happy even in some tough spots here and asking for little care.

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.

‘Hot Summer’ (a 2010 release, but new to my garden this spring from Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm) is one of an impressive selection of recent Echinacea hybrids that seem to be getting better and better, almost insisting that I wake up to coneflowers again and make some room.  It was discovered in the nursery of Marco van Noort, a Dutch breeder, in 2007.The most exciting thing about ‘Hot Summer’ (Zone 4-9; 30-36 inches tall) is that yesterday the flower in the top photo was another fiery shade altogether. Each 4 1/2-inch flower opens yellow-orange and passes through an aging process to deep red, so once you have a lot of flowers you can have the whole fiery spectrum on the plant at once (ca

Joseph and I are two peas in a pod, you see, but also apples and oranges. Joseph, who gardens in Michigan, and I are both seed-catalog madpeople—but we’re mostly mad about different catalogs, and different items.Back on the first of December, I wrote to Joseph, author of “Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener,” to ask him if in, say, a month he’d be ready to talk about the latest catalogs.Silly me.“I just finished puttin

I blame my orange house trim for my obsession with vivid colors, but what about you–how do you choose what you’ll bring home to pot up? What’s your container-garden color palette this year? Any new plants to recommend?Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, and toggle from slide to slide with the arrows on your keyboard, or the ones beside each caption. The newest photos are in the bottom row, the 2011 update, but I’m growing a lot of the ones from 2010 again, too.Categoriesannuals & perennials container gardening slideshows

MY MOTHER KEEPS SPOUTING some crap about how my catnip is really called Nepeta cataria. See the words “pet” and “cat” in there?—I’m telling you, she talks in word puzzles, though she’s no Will Shortz. She blathers on that it’s “a perennial that self-sows” (what?).

For a moment I thought I’d have to start shipping you divisions myself (KIDDING), but then ‘Will’s Wonderful’ got a proper new home, thanks to a chain of emails, and Ellen, and the good people at Lazy S’s Farm in Virginia, who propagated mine and then carried it for years. Update 2019: Lazy S’s is closed, but my friend Kathy Tracey at Avant Gardens sells it, thankfully.Also thankfully, my favorite mum, like all his cousins, is a prolific type, so these will be the first of many next-generation ‘Wills,’ I hope, who’ll find their raucous ways into more fall gardens.I mean, I’ve since learned to like ‘Sheffield Pink,’ for example, but there will always be only one ‘Will.’ Glad he’s staying in circulation.Categoriesannuals & perennials

I asked Dan Long, founder of Brushwood Nursery (a.k.a. GardenVines.com)–full disclosure: I’m proud he is a seasonal advertiser on A Way to Garden–about these special Clematis:Q. I’m starting to explore more of the non-vining types of Clematis here in my garden. I have one old plant of C. recta purpurea ‘Lime Close,’ for instance, with its amazing purple foliage (below) that is now so big and enthusiastic it has outgrown every support I’ve tried, yet it’s not really a climber. Any tips, and any varieties to recommend? A. It’s not commonly known but there are actually hundreds of species of clematis. Most are climbers, some are shrubs and several are herbaceous perennials.For pru

Thankfully, for the latter areas, I have old clumps of lower-light plants to divide, including those in this new slideshow of my top 54 shade subjects. I included some woodland-garden shrubs and trees for those seeking to manufacture some shade of their own—or wanting to add more understory structure to what nature has provided.a mostly alphabetical tour of 54 favorites for shadeplant profiles of shade subjectsPerennialsAstilboides tabularis Aralia cordata and Aralia racemosa Cimicifuga, or Actaea, racemosa Dicentra ‘Gold Heart’ Epimedium Ferns:Japanese painted, and Autumn fern plus a wider range

IFEEL ENTITLED TO ANOTHER ROUND OF MAKE-BELIEVE, since the tenacious winter dared to deliver yet another ice storm this week, just when I had spied an entire square foot of soil and thought we’d turned a corner. This time, the stuff that dreams are made of: I’m imagining the vivid blooms of Lathyrus vernus, the spring vetchling, bouncing on their wiry stems in a sunny spring garden.

So many plants seem at their loudfest and most insistent now, don’t they?, positively shouting from all corners of the place. That’s a tender thing, Oxalis vulcanicola, up top, defiantly hanging on and getting more fiery each day as if it dares frost to just try to take it down.Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows beside each caption (or the arrows on your keyboard). Let this newest gallery be the matching bookend to the one about garden gold that I posted in spring. Enjoy.Categoriesannuals & perennials conifers deciduous Nature slide

Its native range, says the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, is New York and southern Ontario to Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa to Maryland, also appearing in the mountains from Georgia to Tennessee.  Depending whom you ask, twinleaf is hardy in Zone 4 or 5 to 7 or 8.The New England Wildflower Society’s Garden in the Woods, in Framingham, Massachusetts, was the first place I saw it in profusion, though it is apparently not technically a

Background: Barry Glick–a serious plantaholic who’s even a vegan and is sometimes also referred to in mock botanical Latin as the Glicksterus maximus–is a native of the Philadelphia area, and has been gardening since childhood.  In 1972, he purchased 60 acres of a 3,650-foot-high mountaintop in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, that became Sunshine Farm and Gardens (which you can stroll though and shop from at sunfarm.com).  Barry’s a garden writer and a longtime lecturer—but most of all I love how he was described in one magazine article I read recently:“The Flower Child Who Became the Flower King.”snippets from my q&a with barry glickIN THE TEXT BELOW, I harvested just the briefest details from conversations with Barry before, after and during the show taping, so be sure to listen in as well as read (the podcast player is just above), for extra unexpected goodies. Examples: the fact that a Number 8 “camel-hair” brush—which Barry uses for hand-pollination of hellebores—is actually made fro

First, a recap of what Impatiens downy mildew (the fungus-like Plasmopara obducens) looks like:Did your impatiens seem to collapse in 2012? Early signs of infection may have been leaves that looked yellowish, as if the plant needed feeding, or foliage that curled under or seemed to wilt. Sometimes, a white material (the downy mildew) is visible on the undersides of leaves. Eventually, plants may defoliate, drop their flowers, and basically collapse. The fungus loves moist conditions and cool nights in particular. Particularly disturbing: symptoms happened earlier last year than before—as early as June.The disease, which attacks Impatiens walleriana (the species our

ONE OF MY 2012 TROPICAL PLANT PURCHASES is starting to scare me. The so-called Rex begonia vine—no begonia at all, really, but a gorgeous grape relative from parts of Southeast Asia and Australia—is not going to fit through the door this fall if this lusty behavior keeps up. Meet beautiful Cissus discolor, which I intended to overwinter indoors as a houseplant…oh, dear, what was I thinking when I trained it upward instead of in an easier-to-carry-in hanging basket?

IF YOU HAVEN’T even started bringing in your houseplants or are in a warmer zone, the first part of the discussion talked about taking stock of what needs storing and evaluating and prepping potential overwintering spaces at your home.  I recapped that quickly yesterday in Part 2, then got on to specifics how to store dahlias, cannas, elephant ears and more. You can always subscribe to the free podcast on iTunes. (Select the September 12 and October 17 shows from among the weekly programs I do with Robin Hood Radio, the nation’s smallest NPR affiliate, in nearby Sharon, Connecticut.)Part 1 (September 12 edition Part 2 (October 17 edition) Other Pushing-the-Zone ExperimentsREMEMBER, it’s always an experiment–but it’s worth trying to carry over treasures from one year to the next rather than composting them now. From the archives and elsewhere, some plant-specific tactics to inspire your efforts:Japanese maples, top photo (or other marginally hardy shrubs and small trees) in pots How I grow Zone 8 Farfugium (Ligularia, above) a

Ever wonder, for instance, why some blue hostas turn dull by high summer, or certain yellow and variegated varieties fade worse than others? Or did you know that ‘Halcyon’ (a blue hosta) has produced all the “sports” or mutations above, and more? In a story and a podcast, get to know our most beloved shade-garden standby more intimately than ever before.I suppose I already knew that there are more than 6,000 named hosta varieties, though perhaps merely 500 are truly garden-worthy, says Tony, whose standard is what he calls “The 10-Foot Test.” Meaning:“If you can’t tell it from 10 feet away witho

I AM IN DENIAL. It simply cannot be time to move over and make room for them again in here, can it? But yes, the nights are already cooler than my fancy-leaf begonias and bromeliads would like, and before long it will be colder than everybody tender will tolerate outside.

That’s what the flowers, which are technically borne in clusters called racemes, look like to me: a string of little fans, or pennants, dancing in the breeze. The tubular blooms start out red, but fade gradually so that each raceme includes some red, yellow and white individuals.A few seedlings of Ipomoea lobata, spaced a foot or 18 inches apart, will lustily cover a garden arch with mostly three-lobed leaves, growing to 10 or even 15 feet in a season. They’ll manage well in full sun to part shade (but will definitely have the most visitors in the former setting).  I don’t fertilize energetic annual vines like this, because I want flowers, not just foliage.how to sow spanish flag seedsAS WITH OTHER morning glory relatives,

In the early 1990s, when I was working on a book called “The Natural Habitat Garden” with my friend Ken Druse, we traveled the country interviewing native-plant enthusiasts and photographing their gardens. One memorable stop was the home of Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, outside Wilmington, which today is the botanic garden called Mt. Cuba Center, with more than 50 acres of display gardens on more than 500 acres of natural land.I’d never seen native terrestrial orchids before, or the vivid red and yellow wildflower called Spigelia marilandica anywhere, and that day I learned that some discerning and forward-thinking experts such as Mt. Cuba’s first horticulture director, the great Dick Lighty, were already busy selecting “better” forms of native plants for garden use–a trend that has accelerated and become one of the hottest areas of contemp

THE ALLIUMS WERE OFF THIS YEAR HERE (too wet last summer and fall when many summer-dormant kinds want to be dry), but I’m having a good peony crop in 2012.