Search Results for: mutabilis

Coming Along

How I enjoyed my fourth of July holiday.  The weather was perfect-partly cloudy, and not too hot.  With only one annual planting left to go, I had time to catch my breath, and tinker in my own yard.  My container plantings are coming on just fine.  As usual, I planted caladiums in my planters on the north wall-they thrive in that bright shade.  This small leaved variety whose name I do not know looks a little like fireworks-does it not?   

I suppose the fireworks designation really belongs to the Janet Craig dracaenas.  The large strappy lime colored leaved make a big statement in shade.  It will grow readily in very low light; direct sun will burn the leaves.  I trimmed off the lower leaves, to make room for the caladiums.     

I have planted one color or another of solenia begonias in the terra cotta boxes for years.  Non-stop begonias are not that easy for me to keep-but here they are, in the most intense shade of orange.  They succumb to rot so easily.  My plantes are staked up for better air circulation, and I remove any deteriorating foliage at the first sign of trouble. The green and white caladium with terra cotta blotches face down some lime irisine that needs more time and heat to get tall.  I like the change of texture provided by the liriope in front; lots of perennials are great looking in containers. 

My potunia verbena pot has finally stabilized; the heavy and just about daily rains have abated.  I keep this pot on the dry side.  The container is placed between two chairs, so I plant for a top view, rather than a side view.

This pot always gets planted green in some form or another.  The nicotiana alata lime is in its usual spot.  Nicotiana is probably my most favorite annual flower.  The cooly lime green, simple star shaped single flowers are my idea of a really great looking flower.  Two varieties of coleus some lime licorice and selaginella complete the planting.  I have had a tough time with licorice this year-I suspect the early cold rain is to blame.  

Though I planted an embarrassment of riches in Orange Punch cannas at the shop, I had to bring one home; my olive jar is the perfect place for a tall growing plant.  A shrubby growing orange lantana, and a couple of purple wave petunias complete the ensemble.  The companion planter is planted with the same scheme orange and carmine color scheme.  The heat of July will bring on the flowering of the dahlia. 

The University series of dahlias is new to me; this purple variety is a great color.  My coleus needs a little pinching, and my tricolor geranium needs to grow up, for all of the volumes to balance out. Annuals in my zone shine in July and August.   

The lime irisine in this box has yet to make much of an appearance, but the solenia begonias are thriving.  Like the non-stop begonias, I stake them with bamboo.  The solenias will fall over with the weight of the flowers-this habit makes them great for hanging baskets. The vinca maculatum has grown so long, I swept it up on the ledge.  I will be interested to see if it continues to grow, in this horizontal position. 

 There are 5 containers on the drive, and 2 in ground plantings at different levels.  I have tried a lot of color schemes here; warm colors seem to look the best with the yellow and orange stone. 


I have never planted any yellow flowers here before, but I am liking how it looks.  Yellow butterfly marguerites are a nuisance in the deadheading department, but when they are good, they are very good.  It seems like they are happy; they should double in size before the end of the season.  As much as I love yellow petunias, they are not particularly vigorous.  We’ll see if I can manage to keep them happy. 

In the rose garden, a different color scheme all together. In deference to my pink and white roses, I have pink mandevillea, nicotiana mutabilis and alata lime, white angelonia pink and white petunias, and Persian Queen geraniums.  Faintly visible is my steel plant tower; the vine and nicotiana get a lot of help staying upright from it.  By summer’s end, it will vanish from view.  This Tuscan style square is a very large pot; it asks for a planting that will grow large.  Watching plants grow is my favorite channel.

2009 Garden Moments

DSC_0006The year’s end always invites reflection on what worked and didn’t work, what I liked and didn’t like-what I might want to do differently next year. There’s time for that, over the winter.  But other things come more immediately to mind, at year’s end.  As I rarely see a plant or a garden that I don’t like, what sticks out in my mind are those great garden moments. I have had years when my March crocus are so blasted by below freezing temperatures they barely bloom.  This year, they were glorious-and glorious for quite a while.  The night temperatures were perfect; every day for 2 weeks they were an event well worth the price of the ticket.

DSC_0029My hellebores were similarly spectacular this year.  The evenly cool temperatures they liked.  I was even so inspired to send away for more from Knott Hill Farms.  The sweet woodriff coming on is a good companion for them.  I have both of these planted in full sun, not far from the road. They not only perform better in this location than my shadier places, they take fewer years to make dreamboat sized clumps.   

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Spring flowers are like no others.  Their fresh color I will not see again until the following spring. The oakleaf lettuce in this box-just as fresh and juicy looking as any spring flower. This is my idea of planting vegetables, by the way. This season was very cool for Michigan; the spring plantings flourished until fairly late in July.  I do plant ornamental cabbage in the spring, though it will bolt at the first sign of hot weather.  I got lucky this year.  This is partly why I favor mixed plantings-you never know what nature might have in store.  My roses this year-nothing to talk about. 

DSC_0010The blooming of the Venus dogwoods however was spectacular.  They were in full bloom, loaded with these giant 7 inch diameter flowers, for over a month.  I could not recommend this tree too highly.  It is happy in full sun, and very hardy. It grows fast, but stays small.  It is the first tree I have planted in my yard in a good many years.  If I had the space, I would plant great drifts of them, and let the grass grow rough underneath them. 

July19 001The morning of  July 19 dawned cool and sunny, perfect weather for the garden tour we sponsored to benefit the Greening of Detroit. We had 325 people attend the tour, and 125 for bites and cocktails afterwards at the shop.  In addition to all that fun, we raised a good amount for the Greening. It was a perfect garden day.

DGW  26My favorite time at the farmer’s market begins with sunflower season. Everything is big about them-big size, big color, big heart-big delicious seeds, so loved by the goldfinches. Sunflowers-the name says it all. The summer harvest is well underway.

Aug 28 017My summer annuals provide much pleasure to me.  I like the planning, the planting, the caring for, the looking at, the deadheading, the watering-I like every aspect of this part of my garden.  I do not have the luxury of lots of time to spend in my garden; I work a lot elsewhere. This part I have the time, energy and heart for, every day.  Other parts of my landscape have their moments, but the annual flowers provide every day good moments. 

Aug 13 022I always have one container that’s all green-I particularly enjoy matching and contrasting shapes, textures and volumes of green.  Green-who could live without it?  

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Nicotiana mutabilis is probably my favorite annual flower. Once staked, it flowers its heart out way long into the fall. They are known to send out giant new spikes-in October. Those fluttering flowers-white, pink and rose on the same plant-are a meadow unto themselves- perfect for a small space.  This pot is my favorite of 2009. 

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Like my striped crocus this spring, my white Japanese anemone “Honorine Jobert” had a stellar year. Standing every bit of five feet tall, they were loaded with flowers for weeks. This is a very carefree perennial for me.  I do nothing to them, except look, and on occasion, water.  I weed the offshoots out of the Carefree roses in the spring-that’s about it.  Why they were so robust and heavy flowering this year-I could not say.  I can say this was one of my favorite things in my garden this year.

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We do not have that many foggy days in Michigan; perhaps this is why I enjoy them so much.  This late September morning had just a hint of fall about it. All the vibrant summer color begins to fade. It’s a favorite of mine-living where the seasons change.  All in all, it was a very good garden season, 2009.

The Garden Urn

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Sir Cecil Beaton took this photograph of Queen Elizabeth posed in front of the Waterloo Urn at Buckingham Palace in 1938.  As lovely as she is, I could not take my eyes off that urn.  Carved from a single piece of Carrara marble weighing 20 tons, this garden urn is 15 feet tall. Napoleon himself lay claim to the block of stone; he was travelling through Tuscany on his way to make war in Russia.  This piece had a long and chequered history before it was finally installed in the landscape at Buckingham Palace.  It is an impressive and dignified piece deserving of a formal name.  I sometimes wonder what I would plant in it, should I ever be asked.  Do you have an idea? 

15a1[1]When I first got interested in dealing in garden antiques, it was tough going- educating myself about them.  Outside of a few well known reference books, garden auction catalogues proved helpful.   A garden urn, I learned, is a container with a foot, or pedestal.  The small urn pictured above was manufactured by the Coalbrookdale Ironworks in England in the 19th century, and is a handsomely proportioned piece. 

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This old French cast iron urn sports a classic campagna, or bell shape. The rim flares such that there is plenty of room to plant.  The paint has completely worn off the rim, and the paint on the foot is deteriorated.  You can see exactly where any water would accumulate on the outside.  The three I had all went to the same garden; that I like, keeping an ornament family together.
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This elaborately decorated urn features grandly arcing handles.  Such beautiful curves!  It has been painted so many times, the iron flower and rope detail has lost definition.  But as with any antique, the original finish is an important part of the value of a piece.  Only once have I had a client take an antique urn with great color and patina and media blast and paint it.  This pained me, as an antique garden urn robbed of of its visual history lacks a sense of stewardship.   831[1]These American concrete urns on associated pedestals came from the Philadelphia area.  They are among the most favorite garden urns that have ever come my way.  The bell shape is decorated with what seems like thistles to me.  I know little else about them.  They are in very fragile condition; I bring them in for the winter.  Their rims have been so worn by rain and exposure to the elements that I can see the aggregate in the concrete mix clearly.   Stately and frail, they are.

C1311[1]These diminuitive concrete urns have a highly textured surface, just like my thistle urns. They are old-vintage-pieces, not antiques.  The faded red color is unusual, and the shape is beautiful.  I could easily see them indoors.  Old garden urns are fine unplanted.  They have an aura and a presence that needs nothing else, should the sculpture alone please you.

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This bronze urn and pedestal have belonged to a client for a good many years;  I know not its provenance.  I routinely debate with myself, choosing a planting for a beautiful urn.  In this case, a planting spilling over the edge softens the hard lines of the urn. The emsemble is plain, but for the wreath on the pedestal-this detail is not obscured by the planting.   

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This very fine antique urn has its foot buried in a block of boxwood.  I would have designed a space for this that revealed the entire piece-but the placement was not my call.  I plant this urn as lushly as I can, to provide some balance to the volume of boxwood.   Nicotiana mutabilis and dwarf pink cleome-a beautiful cloud.

Aug 22 060My own Italian terra cotta garden urns on plinths from Mital-I so love them.  I trim what ever obscures their decoration.  In the winter, I move them to my front porch, and plant them for the holidays.  The rest of the winter they are empty, awaiting spring. 

DSC_0060Antique urns take to a winter planting with ease.  This client landscaped her yard to celebrate her fine antique footed pots. I completely understand this gesture. 

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I am very fortunate to have those clients who have no fear of taking a beautiful urn indoors.  I have decorated them for the winter in a way that obscures nothing of the beauty and graceful shape of the sculpture. What this picture does not show is a gorgeous mosaic,  framed and on the wall in the background-the subject of which is a beautiful urn filled with flowers.  Beautifully footed, like any ballerina, is a garden urn.

Coping With The Heat

We have had quite a streak of 90 plus degree days in the past 3 weeks. It has been enough to make even the most passionate gardener wilt.  Even the corgis want no part of it. Getting in my fountain at the end of the day has been a regular thing lately.  Intense heat can play special havoc with gardens in containers, as technically speaking, their roots are above ground.  They also are completely dependent upon you for water.  But there are some things you can do to help your containers cope with the heat. 

The obvious solution is to pick plants that like to be dry. Succulents, echeverias, agaves and other desert type plants can survive long periods without water.  I am told that agaves have lived on the roof of the Vatican for 300 years-I am quite sure no one waters them.  Plants native to desert like environments have adapted to do well with little water.  Being from the Midwest, I am not such a fan of these plants.  I would starve, only having succulents to look at in my pots, so I look for other solutions.  Diamond Frost euphorbia and variegated licorice will not suffer the gardener that waters them too often.  Once established, I only water when they are really dry.  

You can buy a little time if you grow annuals in window boxes.  The big idea here-a giant soil mass dries out slowly, rather than twice a day. When soil heats up, the rate of evaporation of water from that soil gets to be speedy indeed.  I have seen clients splash water on their pots from a watering can-this is not watering.  I fill this window box to the top with water, let the water soak in, and fill the box again.  I repeat this until I see water raining out the bottom.  Water your pots thoroughly, not lightly.  This box sometimes goes three days before I need to water again.

Automatic irrigation for annual plants can save you hours of time, but you have to be sensible with it.  Water automatically when there is a need, not automatically.  Patty at Bogie Lake has been watering annual crops for so long she can tell if something needs water by looking at the leaves.  She says the green color will change when a plant is dry.  Barring this type of watering skill, put your finger in the soil to see if it is dry. So many people plant impatiens in ground, as it is so tolerant of water from an irrigation system. The cosmos in this bed I let go to the dry side before I water.  Most annual plants love the heat.  90 degrees they handle with aplomb; it is 90 degrees without water that is a problem.

Small containers in full sun locations are not for everyone.  Not everyone can water twice a day if the temperatures are over 90.  If the time you have available to water is short, use fewer, and bigger containers.   If you must have smaller containers, choose plants that don’t mind drying out, or plants of easy culture.  The only thing that ever seems to bother petunias much is too much water.  These mini cascade geraniums are amazingly tolerant of hot and dry conditions. They also bloom long into the fall.  I wonder why I do not see them used more often.   

A grape vine and some angelina is a dry and hot tolerant combination, and much more verdant looking than hens and chicks.  Plants liking a long root run, as do tomatoes and grapes, benefit from deep soil more than wide soil. 

Topiaries grown from shrubby material such as these eugenias are not fussy either.  They never seen to be bothered by heat, and they tolerate imperfect watering.  Choosing plants that are native to hot and dry environments are perfect for your full sun terrace.

When plants grow together, they shade the soil.  This slows the rate of evaporation from the soil much like mulch does.  I may groom old leaves out in order to keep good air circulation, but I let the plants provide a shade barrier to the soil.  A hanging basket that has gone bald on top and is showing soil will dry out very fast.  Most plants do not like to be watered every day, but when the temperature soars, you may need to do just that, to keep them alive.


Be thoughtful about where you place your containers.  A little shade from trees or shrubs can help your post stay good looking.  This pot has enough exposure to the sun to stay good looking, but not so much exposure that they fry. Group pots together; one large pot planted with a topiary lantana can handle any amount of heat and sun.  Other pots grouped with it will benefit from the umbrella.   Other plants that make great umbrellas are datura, irisine, nicotiana mutabilis (pictured above) and grasses. 


Seeing these rain clouds gather overhead was a gardening religious experience; we had 1.5 inches of rain last night.  And relief from the heat. Some days you just get lucky.