In the Limelight: Hydrangea paniculata

No other plant native to South Carolina has such fragrant and beautiful spring blooms and stunning fall color as the witch-alders. Fothergilla was named after Dr. John Fothergill, an English physician and gardener who funded the travels of John Bartram through the Carolinas in the 1700’s. These beautiful shrubs have been planted in both American and English gardens for over 200 years, including gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Q: The holidays have come and gone, but some of us still have leftover food lingering around, and others are stocking up on post-season grocery sales. We got an HGIC call this week from a gentleman who was wondering how long a fruit cake can be stored. His local supermarket had a great sale on fruit cakes, and he wanted to stock up.

Virginia copperleaf is a tall, branched summer annual that can grow three feet tall. It takes its name from the copper colored leaves of its late summer color. This weed is a North American native that is found from Maine to Georgia and as far west as Texas and north to South Dakota. It is a member of the spurge family and is poisonous, but it does not have the milky sap that is typical of other family members. The simple leaves are oppositely arranged on the stems when the plant is a young seedling, but they change to an alternate arrangement as the weed matures.

Are you frustrated because there are dandelions and other weeds in your lawn? Did you know that dandelion flowers provide one of the first springtime sources of pollen for bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects?

After 17 long years, billions of cicadas are ready to emerge from the ground, and we’re going to hear about it! Cicadas are harmless insects with big, bulging eyes and see-through wings held like a roof over their large bodies. Some cicadas appear every year, some every few years, and some, like the “Brood X” cicadas, are about to emerge throughout the mid-Atlantic, appear periodically every 17 years.

I HAVE SAID IT BEFORE (BUT AM INCLINED TO REPEAT MYSELF): I prefer white Hydrangea to blue ones. And in this hottest, driest summer I know another reason why: The clean white blooms of my various Hydrangea paniculata freshen the place up a bit.

MY GARDENING LIFE STARTED with a hedge—cutting one back hard, specifically. It was the threadbare, tall old privet surrounding my childhood home, and I was determined to “rejuvenate” it, after reading about the process in a book. No artful hedge has ever been created by my hands, though—a fact that feels all the more lamentable after watching Sean Conway’s video tour (above) of designer and nurseryman Piet Oudolf’s garden in the Netherlands. What magic.

THE LATEST BOOK GIVEAWAY–which was a smashing success–ended at midnight Sunday, but there’s a “win” for everyone, it turns out. Collaborator and author Katrina Kenison and I asked commenters to tell us about books they’d relied on in times of transition…and wow, did they ever.

When it first came into mass production less than 10 years ago, I was working at Martha Stewart Living, and the folks at Ball Horticultural who were touting the plant to wholesalers and the press send me some babies to try. Baby they did not remain for very long, since ‘Dragon Wing’ is a lusty creature: One plant will easily fill a 10-inch pot all by itself, and gets to about 2 feet tall. It grows in semi-shade or even pretty substantial sun in my experience, and wants regular watering (but never to be sodden) and a dose of fish-emulsion and seaweed solution pretty regularly. A hungry thing.‘Dragon Wing,’ which also comes in a pink-flowered form, blooms and blooms all season, with pendulous trusses of hot-red blossoms. When it came on the market, cooperative extension agents from many of the Southern states raved about it for its heat tolera

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

I CAN’T WAIT FOR THEM to announce themselves noisily, though readers have been writing in, expressing varying degrees of cicada anxiety. Brood II of the periodical 17-year cicadas—the brood that returns on that uncanny schedule specifically to parts of the East, from Georgia to Connecticut, are already being sighted where soil temperatures have warmed to the preferred 64 degrees.

These may remind you of my popular vegetarian baked heirloom beans, but lentils cook much more quickly, and I don’t use molasses or the same spices in these as I do in the beans. That said, you could alternate either flavor with either “pulse,” and simply vary the cooking time.barbecue lentils, minus the grillingredients:1¾ cups lentils, rinsed (I use the basic greenish kind; black “caviar” ones are fine, too) Water to cover the lentils to twice their depth (about 4 cups) 1 medium onion, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 Tablespoon oliv