Plant Talk

Everyday Bouquets - Summer Simplicity

If it's just too hot or hectic to compose a bouquet, take it easy by picking just one flower and plunking it in a cup, glass or little jar. Such simple arrangements showcase the perfection of a single summer flower.

A tuberous begonia blossom in a ceramic souffle cup contrasts richly colored layers with smooth blue of the cup. I was surprised the flower stayed fresh for 4-5 days. Picture a row of begonia blossoms in various colored cups parading down the center of your dining room table.

 

Or mix it up with a variety of containers and flowers interspersed with candles. A long tray gathers the disparate colors and textures together, the candles light the table, and the whole look is festive yet low enough to work running down the center of your dining room table. Refresh the water in these small vases frequently, change out flowers as they wilt, and you can keep this centerpiece going for weeks:

Left to right is a lily blossom, hydrangea bloom, clematis and begonia, and a lacecap hydrangea

 

 

Or if you have a spot where you need a taller arrangement, few flowers are as elegant massed in a vase as 'Annabelle' hydrangeas - here in a raku vase made by Whidbey artist Al Tennant. Picked early in the morning and conditioned by plunging their stems directly into cool water, these white and chartreuse flowers will hold up for at least ten days....

 

Everyday Bouquets - Summer Bounty

It was the scarlet spikes of Crocosmia 'Lucifer' and the thought of how blue-toned hydrangeas would look in the yellow pitcher that inspired this wild bouquet. On a recent morning I went out to cut flowers and found the garden overflowing with possibilities.

 I started with the yellow pitcher and mop-head hydrangeas (H. macrophylla) in blue and purple.  I love the play of blue against yellow and the contrast of the shiny pitcher and matte hydrangeas. My son gave me the sunny Le Creuset pitcher for my birthday, and I'd been waiting impatiently for the hydrangeas to bloom so I could pair them up.

I added a few lilies in flower and in bud, and tucked a couple of purple 'Roguchi' clematis in at the bottom where the purple bell-shaped flowers could drape down the sides of the pitcher and balance out the melodrama of the flaming crocosmia.

I don't usually make such aggressive arrangements, and when I stood back it seemed to me that every element was trying to dominate. So I went back out to the garden, searching for more subtle flowers. I snipped a half dozen Rudbeckia 'Green Wizard', and added them as supporting players to tone it all down a bit. Still, the vigor of the bouquet surprised me - even with the rudbeckia, the overall effect is one of bursting motion....

 

 

Q&A: Practical and Pretty

Question:
Can you please tell me where I could purchase or view the wire garden cages by Carl Ulmschneider - saw a picture in Pacific NW Magazine this morning and fell in love with them!!

Thank-you,

Kristine Hill

Answer: The artistic wire cages you're admiring are in Alf and Shirley Collins' Whidbey Island garden, profiled in last Sunday's Pacific Northwest magazine. Retired engineer and Whidbey resident Carl Ulmschneider makes a variety of styles and sizes of these practical, beautiful cages - you can use them as scaffolds for climbing plants, to protect plants from deer and rabbits, and/or as garden art. In the summer, I stick mine in a raised bed and grow sweet peas up it, then in late autumn I move it around to the front door and cover it with little white lights - a perfect winter-long Christmas tree.  You can find the cages shown below at Museo Gallery on First Street in Langley;  Cultus Bay Nursery on the island also carries Carl's cages. Well worth a trip to Whidbey Island to check out Carl's work.....

"Brita"
120"x36"

"Trellis Concave, Trellis Convex"
108"x40" each

"Vessels"
various sizes

 

Jour du Lis - this Thursday

My garden here in Langley is so tiny I never hold it open - but this Thursday night (July 29) is the exception.  Come join us for a lily viewing to benefit the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, with wine, anise cookies, good company, and an explosion of lily bloom. All my Oriental lilies are peaking this week, which in a garden this small means you're pretty much submerged in flowers and fragrance...hope to see you there.

Details on the WICA web page or by calling 360-221-8262.

Here's a preview of Thursday night's event - hope to see you there:

 

 

Now In Bloom - Opuntia

The sun finally came out and my little prickly pear cactus (Opuntia compressa) opened its first flower. A gift from my brother-in-law who bought it near Mossyrock as an unlabeled bit of green stuck in a pot, it's the only cactus in my garden.

Supposedly not hardy here, my opuntia made it through the winter mingling with other succulents in a large trough for good drainage. The trough is up against the house for shelter, and under the eaves to keep these drought-lovers out of the rain.

The tissue-paper-like, fluffy layers of clear yellow flower are so incongruous with the prickly pads of the cactus. Such delicate bravado reminds us that flowers are the sexual parts of the plant - it's a flower's job to beguile. I'm not falling for the spiny allure of these desert plants, but the flowers are so unexpected and exciting I might need to seek out a few more hardy kinds to tuck under the eaves...

 

Out & About - Planted Piers

I'm sure I'm not the only driver on East Harbor Road (south Whidbey Island) who has pulled over to check out the succulents and self-seeding flowers growing atop a series of old stone piers. For several hundred feet along this scenic road, passersby are treated to the site of these handsome old piers sprouting weird and wonderful plantings, obviously thriving on their own out there, without supplemental water. There's something self-sufficiently modern yet curiously hobbit-like about the display... have you ever seen lustier hens-and-chicks (Sempervivum tectorum)? 

A snapdragon managed to seed itself amid the hens-and-chicks colonizing top and sides of the pier.

A single willowy foxglove gives a Dr. Seuss-like feel to the scene

I love how the plants creep down the sides of the pier and cluster around the wood railing

Out & About - Woolly Pockets

Containers are going soft, like these Woolly Pockets made of mostly recycled plastic. They're hanging along a sidewalk railing outside of the restaurant  Anchovies and Olives on 15th Avenue just north of Madison. This style is called "islands", they also come in wall systems, and can be used indoors and out (there's more rubber lining inside the pockets to be used indoors).

 

I appreciate that these are convenient, light weight, drain well and we probably wouldn't have any plants along this very urban sidewalk if it wasn't for the ease of Woolly Pockets. Still, don't they look a little slug-like? Here's a close up...Sedum, hebes, strawberries and heather all seem to be thriving...

 

I guess they open all kinds of possibilities for vertical walls and living screens....check out the video on Woolly Pockets website. Or you can see for yourself, for they're sold right next door at a very cool little urban plant store called Envy - 1546 15th Ave., 588-2498.

Masses of Flowers

Even spindly near-weeds like rose campion have great impact when massed. I came across this sparkling parking strip display of hundreds of rose campion on Queen Anne hill near the library -

I've been pulling this persistent self-seeding biennial out of my garden for years. Lychnis coronaria, a.k.a. rose campion is an old-fashioned cottage garden flower with a bright pink bloom, silver foliage, a tall, lax habit and an unfortunate way of growing where it's not wanted. These garden owners were smart enough to let it colonize their parking strip for a vivid, even riotous, and wholly satisfying effect - if multiples of rose campion have such impact, just think how glorious a mass planting of your favorite allium, lily or coneflower would look.......

 

Now In Bloom - Nonstop Begonias

 ‘Non-Stop Pin Up Flame’ begonias are blooming like crazy despite the indignity of being squeezed into a rubber tote with a few holes poked in the bottom (can you tell I ran out of containers this spring?).

These flaming beauties, produced by wholesaler Log House Plants and sold in local nurseries, are a rich butter yellow edged in orange-red, the flowers are two to four inches across, and seriously frilly. I suspect with a little shade, fish fertilizer and regular watering, they'll keep on blooming happily until frost. This is the kind of display that is seducing me away from perennials towards summer annuals...

 

Serendipity

Nature has a way of creating patterns and combinations we wish we'd thought of ourselves - the trick is slowing down and looking closely enough to notice the incidents staged for our delight. 

The other morning I looked up to see that the 'Roguchi' clematis has traveled over to my new solar lantern and dangled a little flower just below it that exactly matches the violet-purple of the lantern. The contrast of bell-shape and globe-shape, the matching silkiness of petal and fabric are so lovely...the flower looks almost like a pull or stopper attached to the lantern. Luckily, blossom and lantern are on the way to the garden gate so I couldn't help but notice the sweet little design lesson nature handed to me...