Jodi's Gotta-Have Plants, Part 4: Nuts for Ninebarks

Regular readers know that I’m just as crazy about interesting foliage as I am about flowers when it comes to my garden. So it will likely come as no surprise to find that I’m enamoured of ninebarks, partly for their whimsical name, partly for their reputation as awesomely handsome and tough, four-season shrubs.

The ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) is native to parts of Canada and the United States: the good people who maintain the plant database at University of Connecticut indicate that its native range is from Quebec through to Tennessee, and I did see it in Missouri when I was there last August.

A member of the rose family, it’s a deciduous shrub, with multiple stems in its native form.
What makes the ninebark so desirable in the garden? There are several characteristics, one being its cultural requirements. It’s decidedly easy to grow, handing full sun to partial shade, and is very hardy. Most literature give the hardiness zones as ranging from 2-8, although for some cultivars the coldest zone recommendation is 3. Since I’m in 5b, I can grow any of them, although I’ve had mixed experience with the gold-foliage varieties. More on that in a bit. Ninebarks tolerate moist soils although they do appreciate good drainage. That being said, several of mine are in areas that don’t have ideal drainage, and they are doing just fine.

Some ninebarks can get rather gangly and benefit from pruning, but hold off taking the secateurs to yours if you like the flowers; prune once flowering is complete in late spring or early summer. You’ll lose some of the fruit clusters that show up later in the summer and hang on through fall, but you’ll have a more compact and attractive plant if you’re a tidy nut. Confession here: I have yet to prune our ninebarks at all, but will be trimming down Coppertina very soon.

Plant breeders have done wonderful things to the species, breeding for awesome foliage colour. You can find ninebarks with purple, copper, lime green and gold foliage, and most of these turn beautiful colours in the autumn before leaf drop. AFTER leaf drop, however, is when one of the ninebark’s most appealing traits is on good display: the peeling bark, which shows itself in reddish brown or tan strips on mature branches.

Popular and favourite varieties


Diabolo: Perhaps the most well-known ninebark cultivar is ‘Diabolo,’ also sometimes called ‘Diablo;’ its it has striking, deep purple foliage, against which the clusters of creamy white flowers show up particularly well. Ours is heading for ten feet tall and looks especially fine when the bright orange Asiatic lilies are in bloom beside it.


Nugget: I’m curious to hear other gardeners’ experience with ‘Nugget.’ Maybe the specimen I got a few years ago just wasn’t a particularly good one, (given where I got it from, that wouldn’t surprise me, but enough about that), but I found it to be very spleeny, languishing for several years before shuffling off its mortal coil to become a dead Nugget.


Dart’s Gold. This is a compact variety and is one of the parent plants of the newer variety ‘Center Glow’, another ninebark I haven’t yet tried. My Dart’s Gold is still quite small and has an annoying habit of getting leaf spots, whether because of disease or because it’s too wet where I planted it originally. I’m watching it closely this summer and if it needs to be moved, I’ll do that. (Photo from Kingsbrae Gardens)



Coppertina: I first read about this variety a few years ago, and then saw it growing in Ottawa. It was love at first sight, much like it was for Echinacea ‘Green Envy’; and interestingly, I have them growing together in the front garden, and find they complement each other beautifully. It’s a gorgeous plant, well named, with coppery foliage that deepens to wine in the autumn. Some have reported mildew problems on their ‘Coppertina’, but it’s not been a problem here as of yet. Or if it has been, I haven’t noticed, because I tend to ignore powdery mildew when it shows up on phlox or pulmonaria.



Summer Wine: Anna Flowergardengirl did an awesome post on Proven Winners’ Color Choice shrub Summer Wine, so I’d suggest you check out her comments. I don’t have this one yet, mostly because I simply haven’t gotten around to purchasing it. I’m thinking, however, that I have the right spot for it outside one of my office windows, so don’t be surprised if it shows up here in the not too distant future.

Bloomin' weather, bloomin' weeds, bloomin' ickies and blooming writer

Today is Sunday, 5 July. Belated but heartfelt Happy Canada Day to my compatriots; hope everyone had an awesome Canada Day with lots of "true patriot love..." and lots of red and white!



and belated but equally heartfelt Happy Fourth of July to my American neighbours. (My Red, White and Blue tribute follows...)



Assorted bouquets, hugs and apologies to regular readers and to my fellow bloggers who I usually visit faithfully. I've been amongst the blogging/gardening missing again.



I'll blame it on the weather, shall I? We've had something like seventeen days in a row of wet, dreary weather, with fog, rain, drizzle, etc etc making an appearance for at least part of every day, according to my longsuffering spouse, who notices these things. But frankly, I haven't been noticing a whole lot of anything, since I've been fighting illness again.



Regardless of what's going on with health and weather and other matters of the universe, of course the gardens sail on without me, and are approaching jungle-like qualities again. The sun has been out intermittently today, and the humidity has been broken, though I haven't been outside the house yet to test this for myself. Watching from my bedroom window, I've seen the sun gleefully illuminate the overgrown grass, the far too exuberant growth of plants both welcome and otherwise (goutweed, I'm looking at YOU...). I keep reminding myself that things happen for a reason, and that invariably they also work themselves out. So I'm gonna focus on the flowers and the foliage, and not so much the weeds, other than to laugh at them.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. I'll catch up with everyone when I can, and hopefully feel up to finishing some posts that have been partly done for several weeks but never been completed and posted because I've felt too icky to get A Round Tuit. Fortunately, posts don't get couchgrass or goutweed in them when neglected...

Letters Across the Pond: Sylvia's spring vacation

As so often happens, life got in the way in recent weeks and I neglected to put up the most recent letter from Sylvia in our Letters Across the Pond series. My apologies to all those who are following our conversation and of course to Sylvia, to whom I think I now owe 2 letters. But she's in good company with other friends I owe correspondence to. Something like the shoemaker's children going barefoot, the writer sometimes runs out of words...Anyway, enjoy!


 Dear Jodi,

Thank you for your last letter. I enjoyed the first picture of a trillium, I have ordered two, T. erectum. Thank you for all the comments that they are not difficult to grow. All I know is they are not easy to buy in the UK and expensive. I try not to acquired plants in the summer but I couldn’t resist, I will keep them really well watered for the summer and fingers crossed.

I am glad your garden is now growing but I can believe after a long sleep it ‘gallops’ away. May is always the month that I get panicky because I can’t keep up with everything that I want to do in the garden. I tell myself next year I will do more before May or I will make my beds and borders so they take less work and I will grow and plant less plants for containers. But the next year… by the end of May I give up and just do what I can!



Our soil is neutral so I don’t grow any rhododendrons but there are a few growing in my neighbours gardens as so I am thinking of giving one a try. I do like shrubs to give the garden some bulk, height and width it helps to divide the garden up and hides some of the views (good and bad).

I love your pictures, your garden is really beautiful – I am quite happy to overlook weeds, especially as some of them are so pretty if only they didn’t try to take over. I planted an amelanchier once but it died on me, I really must try again. Talking of dying our Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’ – is definitely gone, I read in the RHS magazine that this variety is dying around the country but they don’t know why. I think the main reason mine gave up is we had a mains water leak very close to its roots, they don’t like being wet!


I grew some yellow violets from seed last year, I wonder if it is the same species, I will try to find a photo or the seed packet. My first rose flowered this weekend, Rhapsody in Blue and I have lots of others just coming out. We do need some dry weather, we are still getting a mixture late April showers I think! Most of my roses are David Austin English roses and they big flowers don’t like the rain, it makes them very heavy and hand down. The photos of my garden were taken on 23 May and give you an idea of what is flowering now.


Your humming bird picture is amazing, I can only wonder at these tiny birds and hope that one day I will be lucky enough to see a sight like this. For now I am grateful for all the photos that you and our friends are showing.

I did promise to tell you about our holiday in North Wales and I started a letter just about that but decided to answer your letter first! We went to 5 different gardens and I took hundreds of photos but thought I would share with you the first two gardens we went to and find room for the others in future letters. That is if you would like to hear more?

We went to Snowdonia, National Park in North Wales which is approx a 5 hour (250 miles) journey from where I live. To give you some idea about 170 miles North and 80 miles north west from home. Wales is another country (I saw VP vegplotting.blogspot.com also referred to Wales as abroad) it really does feel like a different country, because a lot of the welsh people speak Welsh from birth. All the road signs are in Welsh and English and you hear Welsh spoken a lot. Of course it is part of the UK and the scenery is similar (lots of bluebells and ferns) until you get to the mountains. It is really for the mountain scenery that we go to Wales (it is nearer than Scotland) but it is the gardens that I would like write to you about.


The first garden we visited was Plas Newydd on Anglesey, Anglesey is an island at the northern tip of Wales joined to the main land by several bridges. We didn’t explore the woodland or the rhododendron gardens this time as we wanted to look around the house and it was beginning to rain. I did get time to look around the terrace garden, I think this was originally a summer garden when the Marquess and his family built it but the National Trust have planted it for spring, summer and autumn. I think this has improved since I was last here.


The top has a grotto terrace with a spring in and the water trickles down through a feature on each level to a pool. The NT has recently extended this to rill and fall down to the sea. This is the first of the three terraces, not counting the entrance in the first photo. I really liked this planting of Euphorbia and dark red polyanthus with Ajuga and other plants. The third photo shows this planting by the steps and you can see some of the summer flowering perennials at the back.


The views from this garden over the Menai Strait (the strip of sea between Anglesey and the main land), Wales and Snowdonia were beautiful. Having enjoyed our visit we went back across the bridge because we had one more visit planed for the day.

Our next visit was Crug Farm, home to the plant hunter Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones who regularly go plant hunting around the world with Dan Hinkley. This is a treasure trove of shade loving plants and they have a small garden attached. It is amazing what they have managed to get into this small garden, a lot of the plants have large leaves. I only bought one plant this time, Aruncos aethusifolius ‘Little Gem’, I have to restrict myself and there is almost too much choice, most of which I have never heard of.

Now this is only a brief glimpse of these garden and it is my view. I will try to share some of the other another time, the others were very different. The forecast, as I write this, is for a sunny weekend so I hope to get some (all!) of containers planted. I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Best wishes Sylvia

Inside Memory: Timothy Findley, My Father, and the Memory Garden

"People can only be found in what they do."  Timothy Findley, October 30, 1930-June 21, 2002.

As we roam toward solstice/midsummer, I'm flashed with a bit of elegaic, bittersweet memory. Last week, June 11, was the 4th anniversary of my father's death from Alzheimer's, one of the most hideous of diseases. Tomorrow, June 21, is the 7th anniversary of my favourite author's death: Canadian novelist and playwright Timothy Findley. 

I was very sad when Findley died. I'd written my masters' thesis on his fiction, and had correspondence and several meetings with him over the years. It says a great deal about his work that I continue to love it even after having studied it somewhat exhaustively for several years at Acadia University. In fact...I think it might be time for a Findley read-a-thon here. 

What's this got to do with gardening? A lot, actually. For Timothy Findley, I planted the first shrub in honour of someone who had passed: at the time, a rosebush, and then one for his partner to keep his company. However, I don't trust rosebushes to be longlived (except for rugosas), so I decided to plant a tree instead. So for Findley and Bill Whitehead, his partner of nearly 50 years, I put in a Japanese Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum). 

Findley wrote a great deal about memory in his various works of fiction and nonfiction. The first of two memoirs is called Inside Memory, and remains one of my favourite of his writings. We all use memory daily for a thousand myriad things, of course. Until we can't. Like an Alzheimer patient. So for them, we plant forget-me-nots. Not surprisingly, there are literally thousands of Myosotis around our place, and they're still festooning the yard with a sea of blue lace reminders as we head towards summer. 

It's funny how some plants instantly remind us of other people. In my case, they remind me and I plant their plants in their memory and honour. For my mother's twin sister, I have lots of portulaca every summer. She loved their brilliant colours, their silky petals and fleshy leaves. I just have to see the word portulaca and I see my aunt. 

People can influence us in subtle ways we don't realize until years later. Both my grandmothers were gardeners; my father's mother a pragmatic kitchen-gardener, with beans and strawberries, sugar maple and apple trees all to help feed her family of five children. My mother's mother was more of an ornamental gardener, and there are plants from her garden that carry forth into mine (indirectly, because she died when I was a teenager and not yet a compulsive gardener). Nannie would have been fascinated by the new colours of Johnny-Jump-Ups that are available today, and she might have had some. But for me it's the traditional colours that freely seed around my garden that remind me most of her.  

Perhaps my huge love for poppies comes also from her, because I remember silky-petalled poppies, nestled in among exuberant plantings of lupins, in her Berwick, NS, garden. So it's small wonder that all kinds of poppies find their homes here in our garden. 

I began planting shrubs in memory of people, of cats we'd loved and lost, of people I never met but who were dear to people who are dear to me. Then my former mother-in-law, a woman I loved and admired, died, her body riddled with cancers. Marilyn loved butterflies, yellow roses, sunflowers, all kinds of flowers. So I drew these loves together and amalgamated them into an entire memory garden, well populated by butterflies and bees and birds and other living things. 

One of the plants in that garden is a pink-flowered potentilla shrub, for those who have been claimed by breast cancer. 


For my friend Ladny, who had befriended and rescued many cats and humans alike, a linden tree is growing in the back yard.


Brain cancer has become a noticeable blip on my radar in recent months. A colleague's best friend succumbed to it. A friend's young nephew is fighting it. A former professor and friend died of the disease in February. My favourite musician, David Cook, lost his brother on May 2; and ran a 5 km race to raise funds for ABC2, Accellerate Brain Cancer Cure, the very next day.

I can't run marathons, but can donate to them. And can plant trees in honour of heroes of all kinds. So for Hilary, and Janet, and Adam, and all the others...a flowering apple tree.


The June my dad passed away was a harrowing one, and I turned time and again to the garden for comfort and peace and a kind of support. I always feel like Dad is right there when I'm puttering, cracking jokes about me and the mint plantation I inadvertently created years ago; commenting on my lack of talent in growing tomatoes, where he excelled. And the June he died, my blue poppy bloomed for the first time: on Father's Day.


This year, the weather or fates or something conspired to have it bloom on the anniversary of Dad's death. And I was home, fighting that virus I had last week, so I got to see it both preparing to open and in its pure jubilant glory. It's still flowering, as the secondary buds are opening, and it makes my heart lighter to watch it.

The whole yard is now a memory garden, I realize in walking around it. And I'm all right with that. It brings me solace. I hope it brings solace to those who visit, by blog or in person.

Feeling the love for Orange...a horti-political commentary

Orange is such a bright, cheerful colour, isn't it? Don't you just love to see it everywhere? (Geum 'Cooky')


It's a funny thing about orange. I don't wear it or have it in the house anywhere (except on flowers that are blooming) but in the garden, it makes me instantly happy. (Callibrachoa 'Terracotta')


There are so many awesome shades of orange, aren't there? (Fireball Azalea)


I especially love orange blossoms punching up their brilliance in the spring garden, as an anodyne to the more tepid pastel colours (no diss meant to those who like pastels, but as I've said before...here in the fog, we need bright colours in our gardens) (Lantana Landmark Citrus)


Okay, maybe this is more PORANGE than true orange...but it's a great hummingbird magnet, and smells divine to boot (Agastache Acapulco)

I love how orange can go from being a nearly-salmon colour (Diascia Orange something or other, suffering from lost label syndrome)

Or a more cheddary colour (Trollius Orange Queen)

It can be jaw-droppingly awesome and vibrant in colour (Euphorbia 'Fireglow')

Or more subtle, although paired with Chameleon Euphorbia brightens it even more. (One of the Lights series of azaleas)


There's a particular reason for my glee about orange today. (yes, I'm slowly feeling better, thank you for all your get well wishes). Orange happens to represent my provincial political party of choice...and the New Democratic Party made history here in Nova Scotia last night by electing its first majority government. Whoooo hooooo! They can't fix everything overnight, of course, but I have long been impressed by the integrity of premier-designate Darrell Dexter, and was thrilled to do my small bit to help elect an NDP Member of the Legislature in my riding for the first time ever, too. 

I hadn't been out of the house much in the past couple of days except to go to the doctor...and so I almost missed the beginning of the highlight of my gardening season. What colour is the perfect counterpoint/complement to orange? 

Blue, of course. Blooming a week earlier than usual. I'll have more to say on that in my next blog post, though.