MinxterBLOOM

Extreme gardening notes with expert input from DMD, ML, DR and Frosti.

DMD developed this version of a plant list.  This is a good place to contemplate native plants for your Canadian 2b zone.

Dry shade:  Not an easy row to hoe. Be sure to check with a reputable nursery about their choices. You could use as a ground cover something called Archangel or Lamium. Frosti grows other Lamium species in Northern Minnesota.  But you may have limited choices due to dry, windy, cold conditions.  Golden Archangel ( Lamium galeobdolon): This groundcover may choke out other plants, but you COULD try sinking a five gallon plastic flower pot into the ground and planting it with Monkshood or Wolfsbane (Aconitum). Some Aconite species will work in the cold but would need rich soil and some watering. Keeping this in a sunk pot, however, would limit your watering the plot more generally. Look for a plant that is species or species-like. You can start here at a USDA site, to see the "look" of Monkshood.  Alert! Monkshood IS EXTREMELY POISONOUS.

From DMD's list for 2b: Check out

Aconitum columbianum

Aconitum delphinium 

Why Monskhood?  Blue as you requested AND because the plant likes shade.  If a corner is sunny or the morning sun is adequate, you could consider Larkspur or even Blazing Star. For a hint at what Larkspur (Consolida species, generally) see this picture by DR.

How do bulbs fare?  Many bulbs will grow up through Lamium, giving you color in the spring with something like Blue Squill and daffodils. Aconite will bloom in fall or late summer.   I wonder if ML's Mountain Bluet (Centaura montanus) would work at all.  The collage of blue and yellow IF they bloom together might be charming. More on this later. 

USDA Photo:  Susan McDougall 

My ever-fragile hope for true blue in the garden is a bit dashed this morning. In late April, I sprinkled two sowings of “Love in a Mist” (Nigella damascene). The mix promised "Miss Jekyll Bend" Watching the Nigella patches all week, I knew that today would yield a bloom or two. In the wings behind the velvet curtains of Cardinal Richelieu, awaiting cues, should be: sky, water, and Oxford-cloth blue flowers.

Never mind that this Gallica rose bloomed several weeks ago: the dusky-mauve is printed in my mind’s eye. A gardener must tolerate sub par timing in the garden plot. I still see the contrast: several shades of blue kissing mauve-purple rose petals. Sigh. Pink "happened."  Nigella borrowed a wrapper from that crafty rose. What I picked this morning is a paper-white, tipped-pink puff. Dear little bloom, that would be perfect to mark day one of a baby girl.  But, alas, not blue.

Cornflower buttons nearby, adopted from a friend, are a deep French blue. Around the cornflower wands, bloom a first flush of Cosmos in carmine and red. Madder-pink butterfly weed is about to spread an umbel landing-pad for Monarchs and Swallowtails. I hope this saturated cornflower blue stays long enough to foil the magenta-mauve that these neighbor flowers sport. I would like to post a cornflower image from a Library of Congress glass negative that dates from the turn of the century but rights are unclear.  However, you can visit this Library of Congress Web Exhibit and search on “cornflower.” Taken along Russian Railways, these meadow shots feature wildflowers in Central Europe. Photographer and scientist, Prokudin-Gorskii's (1863-1944) work amazes still. Our love affair with blue, and the charming Batchelor Button endures.  Instead I post this image:  Why not a cornflower photgraph? The lovely cyan-blue does not "adhere" to film. For that you need this illustration from William Curtis (1746-1799) in his charming print series:  (More blues notes planned, in the bed and the blog.) I plan to sow flax and blue larkspur in the fall, and again in spring. These tasks support my blue quest. I await details from a gardening buddy who makes Jekyll-like beds in the harshest of Zone 3 subregions – the cold prairie steppe of Nothern Minnesota. She has a delphinium tale, with additional blue notes.

Images:  Seed Packet from Botanial Interests Seed Co. Print posted at Frechmann Herbanium website at the University of Wisconsin.

Clematis. The correct pronunciation is, unequivocally, CLEM a tis, with a short e and the accent on the first syllable. All the dictionaries are agreed on this, and even Fowlers Modern English Usage, in a (to me) impenetrable article on “False Quantity”, comes down in favour. ‘This climber’s common fate is to be pronounced cle MATE is,’ with the accent on the second syllable and a long a. In America clem MAT is common, rhyming with lattice. The continentals have a hard time of it. Magnus Johnson (a Swede) confided to Tom that he had to be careful while in the UK, lest he commit the heresy of saying ‘clemartis’ (the long as is the norm over there). What an intolerant lot we are – the poor man sounded quite intimidated (paragraph on the families that developed clematis strains including the Jackmans who gave us the immortal and best – my aesthetic – Jackmannii, which should be pronounced as jack MAN eye.) For the plural of clematis I (and many others) use the same words. I cannot say this is correct, but if enough of us go on doing so for long enough, it will become correct. The English language is overburdened with sibilants, especially in the final syllable of syllables. Crocuses and irises are tolerable, but clematises leaves the tongue congealed and torpid. Imagine ‘she possesses 66 clematises’. Most unpleasant.

Thus writes Christopher Lloyd in Clematis. Lloyd identifies the Latin and Greek origins of the word and crowns the etymology as would an English plantsman: the OED documents the clematis-word as meaning some climbing or trailing plant likely a periwinkle. Source: Clematis by Lloyd, Christopher (Revised with Tom Bennett) Out of print but go here and scroll down to 'Lloyd.'

Clicked by darling dot No.2, the entry photograph pairs Jackmanii with New Dawn rose. This classic pairing is not shown off to best advantage on red brick. But the perfect garden eludes us. We can love the flowers we have. And, we can love the family we have, too. May as well be kind, as Kurt Vonnegut says (said).  I love this image because it marks a day when said dot saw through the mom in me, seeing the gardener. Lovely to be acknowledged, gracefully and truthfully.

Ah yes, in case you did not click into the wiki-bio of CL, you may appreciate this image of a silverprint photograph hanging in the National Portrait Galler (London). Tessa Traeger took the photo. I like how the NPG request that I (we) NOT post the image without permission. The web is a wild and wooly place! And I do not mean Lambs Ears, Stachys lanata.

Some garden plants warrant careful forethought. Gunnera—aka the dinosaur food plant – might be such a backyard fancy. The sheer size of Gunnera manicata, hardy to USDA Zone 7 is a chief charm. Long ago when (my) children were little I wanted to plant this if only to say, “Go play under the dinosaur food plant, Phoebe.” Or “Percy, use a Gunnera leaf as an umbrella today.” Recently I posted this musing as a suggestion on a non-gardening blog. Stunned I was, in my best Yoda voice, at the immediate responses, many  from Canadian posters: DMD posted links of what she called “Giant Rhubarb” The first shot includes a leggy blue heron in the foreground, which serves as a nice yardstick. Her second image directed me to Buchart Gardens in Vancouver. Another poster tipped that Gunnera leaves would be visible from Google maps – if the local features the highest resolution image.  Gunnera mediations continued over two days of Achenblog threads. DoftC (botany-guy) wrote: "The genus Gunnera seems to form its own family (although it's been grouped with water milfoil)." He sent readers to a fascinating plant classification systems hosted at UC Berkeley called Deep Green  The Deep Green system places Gunnera kind-of off by itself." DofC mused on the eco-instances of Gunnera. “Remarkably, Hawaii has native Gunneras in the mountains. Their ancestors must have come from South America, presumably via bird-mail.” Bird-mail? I love that idea and can attest to several such plants in my yard: Blue Star (Amsonia) as a thumbs-up and pop- up poison ivy as a clear thumbs-down. But my favorite Gunnera tale comes by way of knitting maestra DR who loves liverworts and lichens and slime molds (oh my!). DR’s in-laws harbor a Gunnera in the backyard.” They refer to it as the plant that took over the backyard. They also call it the plant that ate the cat. It didn't really, but only a cat could hide in it.” From this crowdsource report, Gunnera adores the Canadian maritime climate, which mashes up nicely with the genus name. Named for a Norwegian botanist Johann Ernst Gunnerus, Gunnera is a plant that like its namesake, trotted far from home. Image: Answers.com: G. manicata and unknown man in Devon, England.