Ornamental plants Ideas, Tips & Guides

LET’S HEAR IT FOR the little guys: It’s their moment. Click and meet them.

I was already thinking about succulents, after writing a story about succulent-wreath how-to with Katherine Tracey of Avant Gardens. Remember? (That’s another of her creations up top: a box of succulents, meant to be hung vertically, like a framed mini wall garden. Here’s Katherine’s how-to on making a mini-wall garden.) Then during spring garden cleanup, I noticed that some Sedum ‘Angelina’ (a gold-colored, ferny-textured groundcover type) had fallen out of a big pot I’d placed on the terrace last summer, and planted itself in the gravel surface, and the surrounding stone wall. (Again, those succulent voices: “Hint. Hint.”)The next nudge came when I spontaneously pulled into a garden center last month—one I’d never been to—only to find an irresistibly low price on overstuffed pots of hens and chicks. I brought home a bunch.And then the final push: At Trade Secrets, the big annual benefit garden show held in nearby Sharon, Connecticut, it was as if someone had announced a theme: Every vendor seemed to be featuring succulents in one way or another.Dave Burdick (remember him?) of Daffodils and More in Dalton, Massachusetts, whose specialties include not just rare

Generous Andrew and Bob, who got ‘Supreme Garden’ at Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, potted three in a terra cotta pot and shared it in December. The bulbs are not as big as those of classic red amaryllis like ‘Red Lion,’ and neither are the individual flowers. But each of my bulbs finally awoke and pushed up two flowers, and each in turn holds six flowers. Do the math: That’s 3 times 2 times 6, or 36 flowers. So far ‘Supreme Garden’ has been at it for nearly two weeks, with signs of fading just beginning.I’ll cut down the flower stems when the blooms finish, then grow the plants outdoors in bright filtered light all summer, feeding and watering like I do my other houseplants. In fall I’ll withhold water and put the bulbs, pot and all, in a closet somewhere to really force it to rest. Not that ‘Supreme G

Her names derives from the German for “lady of well-rounded form,” but I grow her a little on the lean and wiry side, which if you’ve ever seen me will come as no surprise.  I grow several plants weaving up and out through the perimeter of an old winterhazel, or Corylopsis spicata, whose foliage (like that of ‘Matrona’) has a pinkish-purple cast in places (in the winterhazel, it’s on new growth). You can see a Corylopsis leaf with this characteristic in the upper right of the photo above.These two same-but-different plants have become good friends, and the Corylopsis shades the Sedum just enough to make it stretch to 30 inches or thereabouts (24 would be more the norm in full sun). It also

I ALMOST LOST MY COLONY of Angelica gigas this last non-winter and dry spring/summer, but various species of bees and wasps and other insects are very glad I didn’t. The Korean angelica, a biennial with unearthly wine-colored flowerheads, is just one of the primary pit stops abuzz right now in the late-summer garden–and many of them are in the family that’s variously called Umbelliferae or Apiaceae.

Decades ago, I inherited the big old Clivia plant that had inhabited the sunroom of the home I grew up in for years before that. All these eons later we still live together, Clivia and I, as we have at several locations in between, though now there are multiple plants, each a division and each monstrously bigger than the one I started with.And then maybe 15 years ago I bought a yellow-flowered Clivia [above] at a botanical garden plant auction, and last year a young plant of a Clivia species unknown to me arrived in the mail as a gift from friends….so you get the idea. I like clivias. A lot.Alan Petravich, who a

IPLANNED ANOTHER SLIDESHOW of what’s blooming here, the third weekly installment since spring 2011 started taking hold. And then…my camera angrily decided against it this morning, as I headed out to document the latest arrivals.

If you have a spot for a big shrub (my oldest of four or five here is more than 15 feet across and maybe 12 feet high) perhaps you want to adopt one? In the North, bottlebrush buckeye will do in either sun or shade, but they really sucker up nicely in semi-shade or shade, making a July splash with creamy wand-like flowers. The handsome foliage goes gold in fall.The full story on how I almost lost my beloved first-born bottlebrush buckeye is here (and probably in the photo links below, too). Miraculously, in just two years it has already regained half of its lost bits, and growing strong–even if it doesn’t yield any pears. Categoriestrees & shrubs

Taxus baccata ‘Repandens Aurea’ came to me like so many plants as a rooted cutting many years ago, a misshapen little nothing two gardening friends convinced me to order by mail. (You can sometimes get one at Forest Farm, though not every year.) It is about half way now to a mature size of perhaps 12 feet across and 2 to 4 feet high, and though it’s still irregularly shaped the yew has taken on considerable presence when I recall the wretched thing it was the day that I unpacked it from its traveling suit of wet newsprint.I actually have three of the spreading golden yews here. (Why is it that I order everything in threes? Is it my lopsided version of Noah’s Ark?). The one shown (top) is swimming in a lake of big-root geranium, G. macrorrhizum. It’s a bed where I recently decided to up the golden quotient by adding a cutleaf golden staghorn sumac, Rhus typhina ‘Tiger Eyes’ (background), another plant whose leaves I lo

BETWEEN WEEDING, WATERING, EDGING, MULCHING, I noticed there are some new things blooming…like several dozen.

I knew nothing at all when I heaved the then-very-rare, chest-high young Sciadopitys verticillata out of the ground in the borough of Queens in New York City, and plopped it unceremoniously into a bushel basket for the trip several hours north. I picked a spot for it when there was nothing but one giant rhododendron alone in the middle of the yard behind the house, connected to nothing. I made the umbrella pine its companion, and hoped they would get along.There was no back porch then (and therefore no stepping stones leading to it); there was no nothing but unmown grass and wild raspberries tangled throughout it, and my youthful enthusiasm. The house was a wreck; the back foundation, in fact–perhaps 15 or 20 feet from where this most beautiful of conifers now stands about 20 feet tall–had collapsed, and a swath of plastic sheeting was all that formed the barrier between outside and in below ground level.Today, as spring gives way to summer begrudgingly, leaving spoiled flowers to clean up and not much at “pe

IAM PLAYING MAKE-BELIEVE AGAIN, pretending it didn’t ice over and then snow again last night for good measure. I’m dreaming of color (not a persistent white-on-white tundra), like the other-worldly blue foliage of my favorite rose, Rosa glauca (above).

WHAT CAN I SAY? I’m shacked up over here with a whole lot of plants, I admit it. Click the photos to get to the third (largest) view for best effects. Enjoy.

DIRCA PALUSTRIS, OR LEATHERWOOD (top photo), is one of my garden’s real oddities. This woodland native is shaped like a small rounded tree and grows to about 6 feet tall. It blooms in late April here, with tiny yellow brush-like flowers–a charming companion to the shade garden’s minor bulbs and little ephemerals. I got my first plant at the New England Wild Flower Society, and it has made more. Read NEWFS’s portrait of leatherwood.LILACS ARE FLEETING, YES, but I cannot imagine a garden without their moment. so they are one of the single-season plants I make room for here. Lots of room. My favorite lilacs.SPIRAEA THUNBERGII ‘OGON’ gives me eight and a half months of gleam in my cold Zone 5B garden, starting with flowers in early spring followed by gold foliage that never says die till December. Spiraea ‘Ogon’ profiled.YUCCA FILAMENTOSA ‘COLOR GUARD’ soldi

I HAVE ALREADY SPOUTED OFF ABOUT HOW I AM NO FLOWER GIRL. Foliage rules here. Month 3, and it still looks good. What flower can say that? Oh, really?

Apparently it will grow to be quite a large and spectacular creature, though I don’t have my own photo of that stage yet. Like most of the begonias I grow, ‘Bonfire’ has beautiful foliage, and even its stems are showy, with flushes of bronzy-pink to them. Also in true begonia fashion, it doesn’t want to be soggy but prefers well-drained conditions, and should be allowed to dry between waterings and will stand up to dry periods.The Australian company that developed it, Anthony Tesselaar (who also brought us showy ‘Tropicanna’ canna and ‘Flower Carpet’ roses), says it can take sun or part shade, but doesn’t offer any “bringing it indoors in winter” instructions. I guess I will be coming up with my own protocol on that score. Anybody grown it and have any advice?Categoriesannuals & perennials shade gardeningTagsbegonias

I’ve mentioned my penchant for growing vines up and over otherwise-dull shrubbery, and in doing so not long ago I guess I got to realizing I was barely making use of a fraction of the opportunities.An accidental favorite of mine is ‘Duchess of Albany’ (above, and detail, bottom) a Victorian era hybrid of C. texensis. I say accidental because I thought I was buying its cousin, another texensis type with much deeper-colored flowers called ‘Gravetye Beauty,’ named at the turn of the 20th Century for the home of William Robinson, the gre

Click on the first thumbnail to start the slideshow, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows beside the caption—or the arrow keys on your computer. Enjoy.And in case you want a little extra-credit reading:Lee Reich on blueberry growing. A good list of blueberry varieties A little Fothergilla history The story of Sassafras albidum Categoriesslideshows trees & shrubs

The Latin specific epithet, or species name, of the Stewartia I grow is pseudocamellia, which roughly means it disguises itself as a camellia when in bloom (a nod to the look of its lovely and plentiful white June-into-July flowers, and the fact they are very distant relatives in the Tea Family).But this Stewartia, from Japan, which gets to maybe 25 feet or so in a Northeast garden setting and is happy in part shade or sun, isn’t content to offer up just nice flowers for the privilege of living with you. It gives you peeling, lovely bark all season long (below), and hot fall color, too,

What it is, in the photo above? It is Angelica gigas, blooming in August for weeks. To succeed with Angelica gigas, you need to get it started in a spot that’s at least part shade, and where the soil isn’t too dry. And you need something more: You need t

Out of the leaf litter they ascend.When I purchased this native of woodsy streambanks in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon for my New York garden, it was still called Peltiphyllum peltatum. I have a thing for big-leaved plants (likeAstilboides, its cousinRodgersia, and even thuggishPetasites). I had to tryDarmera, whose leaves can reach 18 in

ONE OF US IS GETTING OLD, EITHER ME OR THE STEWARTIA. That realization struck this morning when I glimpsed its flowers from my bedroom window, something that wasn’t possible from that distant vantage point in all the years before.

For year-round gold in the garden, except when a covering of snow tries to hide it, lacy ‘Crippsii’ would be (and is) my choice. It has a graceful habit, particularly if grown in slightly more shade than sun, as my oldest plant among several here has been for a decade or so.If you read up on the Hinokis, many references will say to grow them in full sun, but here’s my issue: Out in the full sun, I can’t give this beauty the winter-wind protection it needs here in Zone 5 to prevent browning of some foliage.Winterburn is often not fatal, but if

Click the thumbnails to navigate the gallery, or hover your cursor over the left or right edge of the bigger photo then use the arrows that pop up to toggle between slides.And afterward, be sure to check the links to fuller stories on those that I have profiled, below. Enjoy!Categoriesbulbs slideshowsTagsdeerproof bulbs

I think they are easy to grow, and don’t feel as if I did much but plant them and keep them watered till they settled in.It’s not that simple, I suppose, but almost, since hellebores seem to be about as tough as any perennial. If you avoid an area that’s sodden, or too baking-hot in full summer sunshine (especially in more Southern gardens than mine), you’re in. At least that’s my observation after maybe 15 years of growing

I have read that in the Pacific Northwest, ‘Ogon’ (Zones 4-8, sun to part shade) may even keep its leaves, and color—the kind of golden that’s closer to orange than yellow–until Christmas. This form of Spiraea starts its season with an early show of tiny white flowers on its otherwise-bare, arching branches, which pop before the willowy-textured yellow foliage appears.By summer ‘Ogon’ is yellow-green here, so even in its dullest moment not so bad. This is a great plant for the end of an axial view; mine is due west of where I sit and ponder (my current job: fulltime rumination). At 5 by 5 feet, ‘Ogon’ makes quite an impact even in such a long view. The one here is beside a winterberry holly of equal size, and the two have intermingled, together

Neither one asks much of the gardener for nonstop April or May through December appeal, and the Hakonechloa even likes a semi-shaded spot.Profiles:Categories ..

CAN ANYBODY RECOMMEND A LAWNCARE EXPERT? That was my first thought after 650 sets of feet marched on the garden Saturday, in my final Garden Conservancy Open Day of the 2013 visiting season. I say “marched on the garden,” because from an hour before official opening time, that’s what it looked like: a march.

‘Angelina’ is basically bright yellow-green in summer, particularly in sun, with needlelike foliage rising to 3 or 4 inches high, and spreading about 18 to 24 inches in a season.I even have ‘Angelina’ growing in an old concrete birdbath, high on a pedestal, in perhaps an inch of nasty old soil, where you’d think it would die from exposure but doesn’t even miss a beat. It has been happy there for a few years.If I didn’t have ‘Angelina,’ I’d get it now (it’s widely available in local garden centers). It’s touted as a drought-tolerant groundcover for hot, dry areas, but I grow ‘Angelina’ in sun and in semi-shade, in pots, and just about anywhere that a broken-off bit I dropped in transit made contact with even a teaspoon of soil in some crevice somewhere. ‘Angelina’ (Zones 3-8) doesn’t seem to be aware that its patent has been

(First, a plug for the weekly email newsletter, though, a new A Way to Garden feature that’s delivered every Monday to your inbox if you subscribe. Be sure to get on the list if you want to see such goodies as the yellow Clivia first.)The plot resumes: The yellow Clivia came to me years ago as a gift when it was little, originally from the wholesaler San Marcos Growers in California, breeders and growers of several yellow varieties. Nurserymen friends of mine had visited San Marcos, and b

That unearthly thing below is another outcropping from the pancake-like ‘Bonfire’ tuber, an even-later riser waking up across the pot from the livelier eyes above. I think a key is not to overwater, and to let them show you when they want what, and when they want to get going. I never let them go so dry for prolonged periods that they shriveled, but I never really watered much, either, except then they were in active growth, so the tubers stayed firm and healthy. I just kept checking each month through the winter with my finger: Were the tubers still firm? Yes. And like I said, tada!I look forward to ‘Bonfire’ returning to its glory state (top) as the season heats up here. And one more thought: You have to love a plant that resurrects in a recession; so thrifty, such an

Adam and I talked about not just the Japanese types, but also other garden-sized maples for adding interest in every season and garden situation–in pots or the high shade of woodland gardens, to full-sun locations.my maple q&a with adam wheelerQ. When I was at Broken Arrow recently, there were many choice things to look at—but I kept noticing the maples you offer, particularly. How many do you grow?A. In the collection at the nursery, I suspect we have 150 or 200 different maples, and really that’s the tip of the iceberg with this genus.Q. There are a lot of native A

I AM ALWAYS RELIEVED TO SEE THE WINTER ACONITE, Eranthis hyemalis, welcome the honeybees in early spring; happy for both of these harbingers to be with me once again. The sunny-yellow Eranthis flowers (like the gradually opening hellebores nearby, with their even-larger nectaries) are real bee magnets.

In the way that groupings of crocus or the smallish species (botanical) tulips add to the earlier springtime show, A. moly is that kind of plant: a bit of punctuation, an exclamation here and there when a group is placed strategically at the feet of something else.Of course, there was nothing strategic about my clump of A. moly and where it is placed. I suspect what I am growing is the cultivar ‘Jeannine,’ left over from a magazine shoot a few years ago, tucked in the area I use for cutting things and spare vegetables, nearly forgotten. I’m going to keep this cluster of bulbs right where it is for future happy little June bouquets, and add some more elsewhere. More good news about A. moly: We’re not talking $1 or more a bulb, but more like 100 for $20, so I can splurge without to

Read its full plant portrait for more luscious details. You know I can’t get enough Sedum (I love the little guys, too). Read about groundcover types of Sedum in this slideshow.Others among my favorite perennials you might like: They’re all here (along with some good-looking annuals, admittedly). Enjoy.Categoriesannuals & perennialsTagssedum

I was fighting the cues: wanting to get on with cutting miles of clean edges between turf and beds despite sodden soil (answer: don’t!) or rake some grassy areas that are still plastered with leafy, twiggy winter detritus but likewise still soft. Again: no can do, without pulling up the lawn.As much as I want to make it all “just so” in time for Open Day next weekend—maybe I can’t.The orientalis hybrid hellebores (Helleborus x orientalis) know about