In My Friendly Little Garden Plot, Do My Plants Behave? No,They Do Not!

If there is one thing I've learned gardening over the years, it's that plants seldom do what you expect them to do, and almost never give you the kind of garden you have in your mind's eye. And they apparently can't read, either, because they simply seem to ignore what the catalogs say about them. Nor do they pay much attention to what the nurseryman or garden expert says they should do. They either grow well under conditions that they are supposed to hate, or die immediately if you treat them tenderly with the right soil and everything they are said to love. They bloom at the wrong times to be good companions to each other, in spite of the catalog pictures, or infiltrate and choke out their neighbors and then romp merrily under fences, walls and sidewalks to grow in neighbors' yards, completely abandoning your own nice sunny borders to live under a black walnut tree in the shade.

Not that there aren't perfectly well-behaved perennials that mind their manners perfectly, stay put where they are planted and bloom beautifully year after year with no issues. And we love them. But if there is even a hint of wild parentage in their lineage, they can't be trusted for a  minute.

Well-behaved hosta

Renegade stoloniferous hosta ("One Man's Treasure")

Sometimes they cause you to have to dig up patios to get them out.

Artemesia "Silver King"

You want them to grow in the nice bed you've made for them, they want to grow in the gravel path. I've threatened to dig up all the flower beds and mulch them with a 2" layer of gravel, and plant all the perennials in it!

New England Asters--let them out of the colonies and they are ready to settle the rest of America!

And never, ever, turn your back on a lysmachia!

Learning to decipher plant descriptions is helpful. "Reseeds well" can mean it's really just a pretty weed. Salvia lyrata "Purple Knockout"?--now there's one. I was excited when I first saw it. Now I would be excited if I could get it out of the garden!  I knew it was going to be trouble when I found it growing wild by the roadside, after I bought a pot of it. The birds and wind scatter the seed everywhere, and it can't be deadheaded fast enough. Garlic chives? I think it will be here long after I'm gone, and maybe the only thing left. Well, except for the Star of Bethlehem (ornithogalum), violets and autumn clematis.

Some of the many beautiful varieties of violets that grace my garden in the spring.

But reseeding isn't always bad, if you are a native plant lover and like black-eyed susans, echinaceas, and other wildflowers (weeds?) popping up in odd corners. They can always be transplanted, or there are always innocent new gardeners who would love to have all your extras that you dig out. Even with dire warnings. I once gave some perennial sweet pea plants to a friend who insisted, vociferously, that he wanted them, no matter what I told him about their wanton ways and their roots that get as big as your wrist and go 3' deep. About three years later, he told me that he finally understood what I was trying to tell him and was buying some Roundup.

 "Colonizes readily" usually means the same thing as "stonoliferous" and "spreads rapidly". This term can also include some bulbs and vines. Several years ago I planted a Dutchman's pipe vine (Aristolchia fimbriata)on a fence.  It runs underground and comes up everywhere, and I was going to pull it all out--but I found that it is a major food of the pipevine swallowtail caterpillar, and every year there are hundreds of the big beautiful black and orange caterpillars on my plant--so of course, I can't get rid of it now!

As for hardiness zones, unless it actually says "tropical" on the label, or "zone 9-10" I take them with a grain of salt, and sometimes let the plant make up its own mind. A jasmine nudiflorum, which was labeled zone 8 when I bought it, has flourished in a sunny, open spot here in my zone 6b garden for many years. 

Sure, some years a January freeze gets the blooms, but when it makes it through unscathed, it is a wonderful spot of sunshine in the deepest part of winter.

I recently read that agapanthus, which I grow in pots, is hardier than was previously thought, so when I repot it this spring I am going to plant some in the ground. We shall see about that. A tradescantia known to our grandmothers as the houseplant "Purple Heart" is being sold in garden centers as a ground cover. We shall also see about that.

The late Chrystopher Lloyd, undisputedly one of the great gardeners of the world, and noted writer once said that he never recognised a plant as not hardy until he'd killed it himself.

Exasperating, unruly, unreliable, and undisciplined  as they are, I still love them all. Their beautiful faces always seduce me and make putting up with their bad behavior worthwhile!

Campanula carpatica blue

Spring Images, Oddities and Odd Thoughts

Spring is blooming at an astounding rate! It is as if, having been denied by cold, snowy days, it is bursting out all at once!

Jacob's ladder (Polemonium reptans) actually a cousin of wild phlox

Weeping cherry

Spring beauties (claytonia virginiana) practically make a carpet everywhere

Peppermint stick tulips (tulipa clusiana) opened up today!

Violet "Freckles"

Red violet

White violet

Brunnera, perennial forget me nots

Grape hyacinth with tritellia

Sometimes you just find oddities! Not sure what kind of fungus this is, but it looks hungry! I love fungi in my garden, they are like a type of wildflower to me and there is such diversity among them!

Another of its family!

I looked for morels but I didn't find any. It's the right time of the year and we just had rain yesterday, but no sign of any so far!

Sometimes a rock will cause you a second look! 

Pretty sober looking fellow!

If I squint just right, there is a fanciful dragon!

We spent most of the day going to the recycling center and running errands, and when I finally got into the garden it was almost hot outside. I plunged right into filling some holes with top soil I purchased today but underestimated how much I needed by about two bags, so Monday it will be back to Home Depot for some more. I had planned on planting a few herbs that I picked up today but somehow, chickweed got in my way and I spent the rest of the day until dark rooting that out of perennial beds and paths, so it will be tomorrow morning before I get them into the ground.

There is so much anticipation of spring, anxiously awaiting the first spring blooms and the first green shoots that somehow our minds completely block out what comes next! Along with the lovelies of spring come.......WEEDS! Chickweed, henbit (tho I do leave some of that for the bees), dandelions, poa annua, the whole gammut of undesirables that come right along with the pretty things! Amazing that I forget that one chickweed plant can cover a good two square feet of ground, and sometimes so entwine itself with a perennial that you can't get it all out. I know if I wait long enough, that irritating weed will go away with summer heat, but I don't want to put up with it that long. Besides, when I think of all the seeds that one plant can make.....it nearly gives me nightmares!  So I pull them out, and believe me, they are reluctant to give up their hold on Mother Earth! Perhaps I would feel kindlier to chickweed if I tried making soup out of it. I do have a recipe from "The Countryside Cookbook" by Gail Duff, and it sounds good!

As a gardener that has the care of a very old garden and rarely uses any kind of chemicals, I do have lots of weeds, too! Some I consider wildflowers and leave a few, like mullein, or verbascum thapsis, which is not actually a North American native but comes to us from Europe. I love the architectural look of this plant, and I am always surprised where it comes up each year, in a different part of the garden. This year there is one by the pond. I always leave one to go to seed and surprise me next year! The yellow moth mullien also gets to stay. It is a shorter plant with wavy leaves and pretty yellow flowers, and welcome wherever it shows up.

As I'm cleaning up leaves, I notice where some of the early snow crocuses came up. The flowers are long gone, but the leaves that follow are nearly two feet long. If you plant these early spring dainties, don't expect them to stay small and dainty when the leaves start to grow! You must leave them until they ripen so they will make food for next year's bloom. Only certain varieties make such long leafy growth, others stay under a foot tall. Saffron crocus, which blooms in the September also has long, droopy leaves that stay green until May, before they ripen.  

No new news on the bluebird/woodpecker housing squabble. I didn't see any of them today. I did see a little brown creeper in the woods, and tried to get its picture, but those cute little birds are really fast! By the time I got one in the lens of the camera, it was on the other side of the tree and 5' up, and out of the shot! I don't think they are common here. It's the first time I've seen one in these woods.

The crows were harassing a hawk today, I think they managed to chase it off temporarily. I'm sure it will be back tomorrow, but there was a lot of screeching and cawing going on.

The toads have stopped singing. I guess that means I can look for long ropy strings of eggs in the pond, and tadpoles soon!

And then there are the traveling plants. How did that veronicastrum get clear over to a bed on the north side of the house, in the shade  (it's supposed to be a full sun plant) from the bed a good hundred feet away on the other side of the house? And where did that achillea come from that is growing in the hosta bed? The closest plant is about 500' away in the meadow behind us, and this one sprung up full blown last year. I must have somehow missed it weeding. This spring it is nearly 3 feet across, beauiful and ferny. I'll leave it because it bloomed beautifully last year, and in the shade, too!

Gardening is so full of wonderful surprises!

Ras Tafari loves to check out the wildflowers!

They're Baaack! Spring wildflowers Going Wild!

Tulip magnolia, in full glorious bloom

My garden is finally beginning to come back. Winter is gone, and I'm cleaning up the last of the detrius from the trees and dead stalks from last year's blooms. The toads have spent the last four days serenading non-stop, 24-7, with an occasional frog chiming in the chorous. The air is perfumed with tulip magnolia, hyacinths and daffodils and clear spring air. Every day there is a new wildflower blooming in the woods, and I'm so amazed at how they've spread! Yellow adder's tongue, an ephemeral which only stays for a few weeks and is gone, is blooming some 20' away from its original patch, and that colony has tripled in the past few years. This dainty (but not delicate!) little wildflower appeared in my woods on its own some 15 years ago, popping up baby leaves and completely covering a section of path. There were no blooms for three or four years, and then the whole patch seemed to burst into yellow stars at once! I always have to block the path so they don't get stepped on for a few weeks, and then just as suddenly as they appeared, they are gone.

When I first started planting spring wildflowers, mostly rescued from places that were doomed due to development, I kept them cosseted and protected, anxiously searching every spring for their return. One in particular, those dainty yellow violets, returned faithfully in the same spot every year for maybe 5 years, and then suddenly, one year, they disappeared! I was soo disapointed, as they are among my favorites--and then I discovered them, 20' away, and not just three or four plants but hundreds of them! Apparently the seeds had been carried, and they had been quietly gathering forces where I wasn't looking. Now they are everywhere in the woods and it is difficult to walk without stepping on them, much like their cousins, the common blue violets and all of THEIR kin, which include the Confederate violet, a red one that was given to me by a friend, and a couple varieties of white ones. Two years ago, I purchased (with my eyes wide open, mind you) a pot of Korean violets, with pretty long, speckled leaves. I read the tag, it DID say "will naturalize", and I do know what that means! But they are beautiful and I forgive their promiscous ways. I just keep transplanting them out of the paths as I hate stepping on them. I know they aren't North American natives, but I am not so much a purist that I won't plant anything else. (If I was, I wouldn't have any hostas, which are native to Japan!)  I also have several other varieties, some of them cultivars, like Freckles, which is white with purple "freckles" but none are quite as untamed. Bird's foot violets, their big and beautiful blooms appearing later in the spring, love the sun and spread slowly (not nearly fast enough for me) but I suppose one of these years I'll be looking at the colony of them and wondering, as I have about other varieties, how on earth did there get to be so many of them?!!

Pretty yellow violets

Common blue violet. To some, they are hated weeds in the garden as they reseed so vigorously!

Dutchman's breeches. They have, as they say, "spread nicely" throughout the woods.

Spring wildflowers like trilliums, anemones, Dutchman's breeches and Jack-in-the pulpits, transplant very easily in the spring, even while they are blooming. There is about a 3-week window; before that you can't find them, and after, it's too hot and you will have a hard time keeping them alive. Getting plenty of soil with them and keeping them moist seem to be the key. If they are put right back into the ground, they don't seem to even realize that they have been moved; keeping in mind that they need to go into the same kind of growing conditions you found them in. Soil and sun or shade are important issues.  If you are dealing with violets, just slap them into the ground and cover their roots and they don't seem to care, as I've discovered; especially the common blues, which actually seem to prefer sunny spots, as long as there is adequate moisture. Woodland phlox are very easily transplanted also. I have moved them at various times of the year, but kept them watered in the heat and when there hasn't been any rain for a week or so until they are established, and then, as with most of the spring denizens of the woods, they are on their own!

 In times of summer drought, many ofthese beautiful spring flowers retreat underground and go dormant, saving their energy, and sometimes that is a scary thing because you think you have lost them, but never fear, they will be back next spring!

The first of the wild phloxs to open up, yesterday. Soon the woods wil be full of them! There are cultivars available such as White Perfume, and they will hybridize and interbreed so there may be a variety of colors from white to pale lavender, pink, the common blue, and deep purple shades. They bloom quite a long time and are all very fragrant! Beautiful with hostas and in a shady garden bed.

Virgina Bluebells, spring 2008. They are not quite open yet this spring.

Some of the spring ephemerals don't stick around, even when there is a good year with plentiful rain, like the adder's tongue and Virginia bluebells. Now there is a plant that will colonize! I started with, I think, three plants, one in the woods and one in a wildflower garden by the pergola at the entrance of the "secret garden". After a few years living in quiet solitude, they began exploring, scattering seeds in all directions. The colonies are quite large, especially the one next to the pergola, which has a gravel path leading up to it and stone path thru and beyond to the woods. There, they reseed prolifically, and I have to keep digging up the babies and moving them out of harm's way into the woods. They do, incidentally, move without even noticing, but you have to get them when they are just showing a leaf or two because they have a long taproot like a carrot and if they have gotten big enough to bloom, well, you can forget that! They, also, have gotten to the point of crowding the stone path as to make walking without stepping on them difficult. (I missed a few babies!) But they too, are brief, blooming and gone in a few weeks time and they are so beautiful that I forgive them.

Jacob's ladder (Polemonium) is another pretty wildflower, usually available at a garden center or can be purchased from a catalog. Another beautiful blue, it can make a huge clump so don't underestimate the space to give it in your shady garden. It will also reseed vociferously if you forget to deadhead it. It is a mid spring bloomer, already with a lot of buds but not open for another week.

Another shady garden wildflower that you might find offered for sale is giant Solomon's seal. Often in a variegated form, it is rhizatomous and spreads vigorously so give this plenty of room. It doesn't play well with others, however, and likes to crowd out smaller neighbors. Other smaller Solomon's seals are equally as invasive but not as piggy about the ground they grow on, and interact well with trilliums (which can be just as agressive, I just let them fight it out) and others. It can be a good ground cover for a shady spot but is not evergreen, it does die back in the fall but with a wonderful golden color.

Wild ginger, just starting to unfold it's leaves. The deep maroon flowers will be hidden under the leaves, and are pollinated by snails!

Wild ginger is a shady woods ground cover that you will often find on hikes in the woods, also is offered frequently for the shade garden. And cover ground it will! But the rhizatomous roots of these leave plenty of room for other plants to come up among them, including Dutchman's breeches, bloodroot, ferns, bulbs, and other wild treasures.

The most important rule about transplanting wildflowers: NEVER DIG THEM FROM THE WILD! The only exception to this rule is if they are endangered and about to be bulldozed, and even then you should get permission as it is still someone else's property. If you are moving them around in your own woods, then they are yours and you can do with them what you like, but please be kind! They are a precious resource and should be protected. Sometimes you can gather seeds and propagate them that way.

A book that I like:"Growing and Propagating Wildflowers" by Harry R. Phillips

And keep singing! It's spring!