MinxterBLOOM

gardening for the most excellent Pam Kueber at RetroRenovation  Here is the second article I wrote for her on mid century MODEST landscaping:  climbers.  First paras are here; then follow this link to full article on to her website.

Ted Cleary of  Cleary Design emailed me after the hybrid tea roses article. We are both glad that roses as a landscape “tool” are coming back.  Let’s look at one of the easiest ways to use a rose in your Mid-Century Modest landscape: climbers and ramblers.

But first, what canvas will you place a rose against? The canvas is composed of your home and the green “stuff” near the foundation and close-in yard.

Backdrop Canvas

First, two words on architecture:  tight and loose.  Look at the tight residues of line-inspired landcaping from the 50s and 60s in the photo above.  See also the loose instinct of the 90s – present here also in the “waving” perennial border.  The original foundation beds next to the house under the windows are rectangles.  Azaleas planted in the 50s remain. Gone are the hugely overgrown Forsythia bushes that dwarfed both front windows.  To the left of the house is a huge, horizontal holly bush, also from the 50s.

-------

In other news, heeled in 12 rose slips (I AM INSANE but a rose mania, like other plant obsessions, is surely forgivable).  Will be moving in spring and the plant prep and triage begins.

at Retrorenovation, the fab blog space by Pam Kueber.  My first post is a treatise on hybrid tea roses, one iconc fixture in mid-century "modest" years.Click to visit Pickering Nursery

Here is the intro:

1996, Somewhere in Suburban Maryland: During the home inspection before we settled on the old brick, center-hall colonial house on a street named for a tree, I stood before three raggedy roses: These sorry but earnest plants grew in the front bed under the right hand window.  “Will have to call gran-paw and ask about helping these sad roses.”  The roses were inter-planted between what I later determined were forsythia bushes.  So squared-off by an electric pruning sheers these forsythia were that they did not bloom until two years later after I let them grow.  The electric sheers were left in the garage, an oversight or parting gift?  I do not know.  I still sometimes mutter, Clue-style, “Professor M. In the front yard. With the electric sheers.”

The previous owners did take the three roses — roots and all — early in the morning before we moved in.  A new neighbor, with a perfectly coiffed yard, tasteful foundation plantings, and a perfectly placed climbing rose over her side porch said that the roses were sentimental to the family. Should I be miffed? I thought.  Nah.  The bushes looked straggly and squeezed at the front of the house.  Besides, the deep red and dark pink tones did not show up against the red brick.

A few weeks later, in the soil I found two metal tags: one read ‘Tropicana’ with the other tag sporting ‘Chrysler Imperial.’  I now knew the names of two of the rose bushes.  “Hybrid tea roses, from the fifties,” replied my grandfather when I asked him. “Nice enough blooms, but no scent.  Wouldn’t grow them again if I were you.  Fussy roses, need fumigation to fight black spot; both cultivars are from the 50s, I think.”  Black spot sounds icky; Fumigation, worse, I though.

Tasteful-foundation-plantings neighbor later told me that Professor M and his wife could not bear to leave the roses because they honored the births of their three children.  I still wonder what that third rose was named.  And, I watch for the missing metal tag more than ten years later. Roses are tagged at the grower, with the quarter-sized disc placed between the main stem and the roots.  Look for them at the base of existing roses.  Tags are increasingly made of plastic, though, sad to say.  But if you find a metal tag while puttering in the yard, you may have clues to the rose choices of previous owners.

 

 

Nice exposition on Nasturtiums here.

The "Alaska" variety is lovely even if this plant never blooms. Mid Atlantic summers are too hot for this cool-loving plant to put on the most full and festive blooms.  However, the leaves are so like frosted lily pads...that this foliage feast is quite enough.

I have one growing in a window box.  I would like the leaves to trail but they seem to prefer clustering themselves into a nice fat array.  The color is more blue-toned than this picture.

Click the thumbnail to see Hiruna's photo stream on flickr.

Nigella Lawson.  Nigella flowers.  Nigella seeds.

The flowers are in my garden but fading in our midsummer heat. Still, these flowers -- now in their fifth generation for me -- are lovely cool blues as they wane.

Nigella Lawson is the foodie queen of Britain but reigns in the hearts of cooks everywhere.  She is named mostly for her father, Nigel, but also for the flower.

Nigella seeds are black.  These seeds are folded into the strands of Armenian-style string cheese.

I like to think this enfolding is done lovingly. 

Double snapdragon, in apricot shades

I adopted this snap at the National Arboretum plant sale last month.

Snapdragons -- Antirrhinum species, with most garden varieties types or varieties or cultivars of Antirrhinum majus.  The name is derived from αντίρῥῑνόν "antirrhinon" which iwas derived from Greek anti (αντί), "like," and rhis (ῥίς, ινοϛ), "nose", inus (-ινοϛ), "of" or "pertaining to".  The seed capsule is like a nose.  Think Rhino!

Snaps are available in three classes of heights: dwarf (6-8 inches), medium (15-30 inches) and tall (30-48 inches). Plant them in a soil that drains well to prevent the roots from rotting.  Dwarf and medium are the typical seasonal offers in the Big Box of Plant Store. I covet the really tall ones.

This "double" pictured here is not typical of snaps.  Snaps are Zygomorphic ("yoke shaped" or "bilateral"). This means that the flowers can be divided by only a single plane into two mirror-image halves, much like a person's face. In geometry, the term is bilaterial symmetry.

Snaps respond well to deadheading or cutting.  This removal of flowers stimulates new flowers.  So, cut away and enjoy the snaps inside.

And, this:  a brief video that shows the bilaterial symmetry characteristic of a snap AND the snap motion. Let the dragon speak!