Poison Plants, Pollinators, Perennials: It's Time for Saltscapes Expo

One of the regular signs of spring in Nova Scotia is the annual Saltscapes East Coast Expo, a celebration of the best of Atlantic Canada. For those who have never been to this event, it's not your average trade or home show. If you know Saltscapes magazine, imagine that the magazine comes to life at Exhibition Park for three days each spring. There's awesome food, terrific entertainment from around the region, exquisite and unique retail, lots of presentations.

This year I will have my own gardening area, set up near the Honda Power Equipment Garden Booth. Look for the brilliant blue bench (painted by LSS) and the colourful plants and containers I'll have there. The great thing about having my own area for presentations is that there will be time and space in which to talk with gardeners after the presentations, without having to rush off the stage for the next presenter. There's nothing we gardeners like better than to talk about plants and planting.

Why I love grasses for fall colour

It's been a few years since my fascination with ornamental grasses began. I started out slowly, with a couple of Miscanthus varieties, then a Hakonechloa, then a Calamagrostis. It takes grasses at least three years to develop some size, and the warm-season grasses seem slow to establish and late to bloom here in my garden. But they are so worth it. The foliage, the flowerheads, the way the light glistens on leaf blades and flowers, the song of the grasses as the wind wafts through them...they're just all around delightful.

There are a few caveats when purchasing grasses.

You need to make sure to select the right grass for your conditions, as some are very drought tolerant but hate soggy soil, while others need regular moisture.

Most are happiest with full sun, but some are shade tolerant.

Some bloom early in summer, like the feather reed grasses (Calamagrostis), while others, such as the panic grasses (Panicum) and silver maiden grasses (Miscanthus) are later blooming.

Make sure to select varieties that are clump or sod-formers, rather than rowdies that spread by runners. There are a few grasses that can be thuggish, such as gardener's garters or variegated ribbon grass (Phalaris). In some areas, Japanese blood grass is invasive, but here in NS it tends to be quite well behaved, being marginally hardy.

And most importantly, watch out for zone hardiness. There are a few fountain grasses (Pennisetum) which are hardy here in Nova Scotia: 'Hameln', 'Karley Rose', possibly 'Red Head', but purple fountain grass cultivars (Pennisetum 'Fireworks', above, among others) are hardy only to zone 7 or 8 or warmer. There are a few places that sell those grasses here without telling you that they're not hardy, but a reputable garden centre such as Baldwin's or Ouestville Perennials or Briar Patch or Bunchberry Nurseries won't do that.

The feather reed grasses (Calamagrostis cultivars such as 'Karl Foerster', 'Overdam' and 'Avalanche') bloomed in July, but their tawny golden seedheads are still holding on nicely in my garden. I do find their stems are a little more apt to break down in the wind than are those of other grasses, but I love them anyway.

On Friday, I was in Truro at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, and my friend Carol took me down to the Haley Institute at the farm part of the campus, to show me the grass garden that she and her students planted a few years ago. It's at its best now, with sedums, pussytoes, asters and coneflowers mixed among the cascades and fountains of perennial grasses.

Some people like to do their grasses in display beds of grass only. While I like those, I get impatient earlier in the season when the grasses are just growing and not blooming, so I prefer to incorporate perennials and shrubs with my grasses, as the garden at NSAC is done.

Doesn't this look a lot better than just boring old lawn? Low care, drought tolerant, effective at holding the sloped area in place, and awash with life--birds, bees, other pollinators flitting around the flowers and seedheads.

I love panic grasses, also known as switchgrasses. Their flowerheads are delicate, with tiny individual flowers, and they're subtle--you need to slow down, stop and look at them to appreciate them. Many have gorgeous coloured foliage, some with red or burgundy tips such as 'Shenandoah' or 'Cheyenne Sky'; others are bluer in foliage, such as 'Dallas Blues' and 'Thunderhead'.


Definitely showier in nature, and eyecatchingly fabulous throughout fall and winter, are the miscanthus species and cultivars also known as silvergrasses and maidengrasses. These later blooming varieties stand tall in a garden, and sound like waves of water when the wind rustles them. Some of them have remarkable fall colour, including purple flame grass, M. 'Purpurascens'. Some have wonderful gold striations in their foliage, such as 'Strictus', 'Gold Bar', and 'Little Kitten.'. They're just great plants.

The best way to get to know and appreciate grasses is to look for display gardens featuring them, such as those at many nurseries. This garden is at Bunchberry in Upper Clements, and features a rich selection of grasses, from the low clumps of Carex 'Ice Dance' to the tall, elegant sprays of moor grass, Molinia 'Skyracer'. Many municipalities are using grasses in their public plantings, businesses are embracing them for their landscapes...what are YOU waiting for?

Don't ask me how many grasses I have. I keep bringing them home, even now in late September. And best of all, I've given my sister her first grass. She's on her way to being smitten with them. I hope you are too.

Skywatch Friday meets Belated Bloomday

With all the weather scudding around these days, my gaze isn't turned so often skyward as it is to the colourful flourishes in my gardens, so this Skywatch Friday is meeting up with Garden Blogger's Bloom day. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, because as visitors to my garden have remarked in the past several weeks, "Wow! You have lots of colour happening here!"

Yes, it's true, there's still plenty in bloom here. Part of that is planning on my part, by having selected a variety of perennials that come on later in the season. Part of it is because we normally have slow, cool springs but then we have wonderful late summers and autumns. Things are slower to bloom here, and they last longer, because they're not bludgeoned by too much heat. Mind you, the coming of September normally means the coming of much wind off the water, and this September is being no exception. However, although some things get a bit battered by the winds and rains, there's still a lot of happy colour happening.

It seems there are two predominant colour groups, flower-wise, at this time of year. The first is yellow, varying from the delicate primrose colour on the waxy bells, to the more robust golds of the fall chrysanthemums. Above, clockwise from left: fall mums; waxy bells (Kirengoshoma); a variety of rudbeckias, and echinaceas, along with golden agastache and Efanthia euphorbia; 'Sungold' buddleia; yellow patrinia (Patrinia scabiosifolia); 'Herbstsonne' shining coneflower, with only Miscanthus giganteus reaching higher in the garden. Centre, the gentle yellow of Solidago 'Little Lemon', a fabulous goldenrod if there ever was one!

The other predominant colour of this season is magenta-fuchsia-pink. These are the bright eyecatchers, bee magnets all. Clockwise from top left: Chelone, turtlehead; 'Jenny' aster; the Explorer rose 'Martin Frobisher'; 'Josephine' double clematis; NOID colchicum; One of the heathers (Calluna vulgaris) just finishing its bloom; 'Purple Bush' eupatorium; Tricyrtis 'Samourai'; centre, Vernonia crinita 'Purple Bowl'.

That's not to say these are the only colours in the garden, of course; while the gentians are mostly finished with their cool-blues, there are still eryngium, echinops, and agastache with blue blooms, and there are certainly other colours happening too. Clockwise, left top: 'Pastel Patchwork' wallflower; two double echinaceas, 'Secret Passion' and 'Pink Double Delight'; 'Cloudy' aconitum; 'Coconut Lime' double echinacea; despite already having berries on the female holly, it's flowering some more; a pink potentilla shrub, which I only grow because it was a breast-cancer shrub one year and I planted it in memory of my mother in law Marilyn; one of the tall sedums, 'Frosty Morn', with its cool pink and white flowers; and the pristine, sparkling star of a white Nigella.
Some of my grasses are just coming into their own, and since their foliage is as delightful as their flowerheads, I've combined the two charms to include in one post (for Foliage Followup); Centre, Japanese Bloodgrass; top, Japanese anemone in front of Panicum 'Dallas Blues'; right centre, Pennisetum 'Fireworks' varigated purple fountain grass, NOT perennial here; Miscanthus purpurescens, purple flame grass, bottom right; bottom left, 'Malepartus' miscanthus flowers; centre left, Panicum 'Shenandoah's' foliage glows burgundy. I'll have more to say about grasses in a few days.

Thanks to all who visit, and to those who host these fun memes!

Post Earl Beauty: All is well

As Saturday afternoon gave way to evening, I paraphrased an old expression from the 1970s "What if they gave a hurricane and nobody came?" Earl was pretty much a non-event for us; some wind, some rain, happily no damage to crops or properties around here. A few trees uprooted or broken in other areas, some power outages, but really, it could have been much worse. Thank you all for your good wishes and caring; I hope everyone got off as unscathed as we did.

Ironically, we had more wind on Sunday and Monday, of a more damaging kind because it came out of the west southwest, than during Earl's visit. I was pretty cranky when I walked around the garden on Monday and saw some of the perennials had been beaten around by the wind, by banging into other plants, but I soon got over it when I noticed some of the marvels that were happening.


Starting with the blooming of 'Sungold' buddleia, one of the most beautiful of flowering shrubs. Here in Nova Scotia, buddleias are not only NOT invasive, they are often marginally hardy. They will die down to the ground and come back fresh for some, but I tend to treat them as annuals, buying small plants each spring and tucking them into spots where they will hopefully be happy. Obviously, this one has been happy.

While I don't have drifts and drifts of Verbena bonariensis, I have half a dozen good plants from transplants this year, and I'm optimistic that we might get seedlings. If not, I'm sure a visit to my friend Terri next spring will yield some new seedlings. This is such a great plant, beloved of butterflies and other pollinators as well as by the gardener.

'Lemon Princess' spirea has decided to throw up a number of new blossoms along with some freshly gold foliage. I normally don't even pay much attention to the flowers on most of my spireas, as I chose them for their foliage colours rather than their blooms.

After years of battling with Russian sage, I decided to simply treat it as an annual, and buy it every year. I've placed it in the best-drained garden, where the echinaceas live, and if it survives the winter and comes back next year, great. If not, I still like it and will plant it again next season.

One of my favourite roses is the rugosa hybrid 'Polareis', which I bought at Cornhill Nursery about seven years ago and which is a spectacularly floriferous and well behaved shrub. It does get some aphids on its buds, but I just spray a blast of water from the hose on them or let their predators feast on them.

This is the season when perennial grasses are really coming into their own. Some of them have finished flowering, but others, such as the miscanthuses, panicums, molinias and schizachyriums are just coming on.


I have half a dozen or more miscanthus varieties around the property, not all of them clearly identified. Since this one came from Baldwin's Nurseries and is the earliest to flower, I'm fairly sure that it's 'Malepartus'. It was unperturbed by the wind, whoever it is.

While I am kicking and screaming about going into rapidly shorter days, I do like the light of September, especially when it plays on foliage such as in this garden. This is a garden in Wolfville that I discovered today; along with numerous low growing shrubs such as barberries, there are Japanese blood grasses (Imperata) and fountain grasses (Pennisetum) catching the light.

Although some of the echinaceas were battered and petal-bruised by the weekend weather, 'Secret Passion' decided to comfort me by producing several new blooms. It's not quite as awesome as 'Hot Papaya', but it's pretty close.

To go along with my lovely yellow buddleia, here's another late-blooming shrub: Caryopteris, or blue mist shrub, sometimes also called blue spirea. This is a small plant, bought this summer from a nursery that had brought it in thinking it was somehow a perennial (I think the nursery they ordered from screwed up their order). I love caryopteris, though it can be really slow to bloom here; its cooling blue flowers work beautifully among the hotter colours of many of September's blooms.

Busy as a Bee...or maybe three!

It's been busier than life as this bee the past couple of weeks. Figuring I have had only a couple of days off in the past four months, I decided it was time to take a little partly-me time. So with Lowell and the rest of the family guarding the family homestead from invasion by giant hogweed, I headed out this morning to visit a number of sites before ending at my good friend's place in Sandford, outside of Yarmouth.

Along the way, I called in on several friends gardens, garden centres. Photos were taken. Plants were dug up. Plants were purchased (for the friend I was going to visit, mostly. Honest.) Among the ports of call a garden in Greenwood that has a truly impressive collection of graceful grasses, from tiny baby grasses only a couple of inches tall to giant miscanthus. I want this grass, the Arundo donax (forget its cultivar. )Not invasive here, though I read that it gets rambunctious in other gardens.

At a friend of a friend's garden, we were dazzled by his selections of grasses, including the giant Miscanthus giganteus. Here it is attempted to eat him. We nicknamed it 'Audrey Too.'

Around lunchtime, I stopped in Annapolis Royal and after checking out my favourite store, 'Charade,' I went down to the farmer's market where I discovered a woman doing a wonderful art using painted paper tole reproductions of monarch butterflies. I was so totally delighted with them, I bought one for a gift and may have to go back and get a second one for me. This woman's brochure includes a little story about why she started creating jewelry and sculpted works of art using monarchs as her inspiration. It was a nice story.

Short post because I'm way tired, and tomorrow is another busy day. Opps. Make that, today is another busy day. You just never know where we might turn up, but I can guarantee there will be plants involved. And for those of you who are interested, I saw purple hydrangeas tonight. We'll see some tomorrow, for sure.

2008 in Review, Part 2: Plants of worth

The good news here is that the temperature has climbed out of the frigid depths to something a little more temperate and Nova-Scotia-winterlike.
The maybe not so good news is that it's snowing again.
I'm unphased by any of this, still remaining sequestered in the house for the most part, although I'm decidedly feeling better and more like my old self. So while we observe the flurries where winds blow onshore, which should shortly become significant heaps of 'flurries', it's time to look back a bit more on last year and the plants that performed well for me.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and not all these plants are the newest on the block. Some are several years old, or have been planted here for several years and are truly coming into their own. All but one in this post are perennials or shrubs; the one exception is the above osteospermum, 'Summertime Blueberry.' I hope to find it again next year, because I loved the interplay of copper, blue and purple colours blending together. It flowered well, like all the osteos, with occasional deadheading and feeding, and of course like the other African-type daisies we grow here, flowered until a hard hard killing frost (and some snow) finally took it to its compost heap reward.


Meet Astrantia 'Sunningdale Varigated' masterwort--I know you can't see the foliage, which is gaily splashed in gold and green, but this second-year plant makes my heart very very happy. I became smitten with masterworts a couple of years ago, and while they aren't my signature plant, I'm gradually adding to the varieties we grow here at Sunflower Hill, and recommend them to others with sunny or partly shaded conditions. This variegated foliage type seems to like partial shade quite well, and of course variegated foliage brightens a shaded spot nicely.


Another second year perennial, Geranium 'Red Admiral' is quite impressive. Its colour may not be to everyone's liking, but I love the sanguineum type cranesbills for their brilliant flower colour. And this one grows large; it was between 3-4 feet where I had it planted, and tangled itself nicely in among Clematis recta 'Purpurea'. I deadheaded it when I thought about it (on days that weren't foggy) and it flowered for a long, long time. I love cranesbills for their hardiness, non-fussiness and variety; we have somewhere around a dozen different species and cultivars, and they just do splendidly here. I must list them all out one of these days when there's nothing urgent going on.


I never met a monarda I didn't love, and I especially love 'Raspberry Wine.' However, a caveat to those with small gardens: this is probably the most vigourous monarda I've encountered and if you have it in a small space, it will rapidly crowd other plants. It's also quite the overachiever, growing more than 5 feet tall in one garden, but in most spaces I cut it back early in the summer and it bushed out more, produced huge numbers of flowers, and of course made the hummingbirds and bees and other pollinators very, very happy.


Peonies are a mixed blessing to some, because they flower for a couple of weeks and then just sit there, big heaps of foliage. In our garden thatny's not a problem; I love the glossy, handsome foliage, especially of those varieties that turn gorgeous colours in autumn, and we have so many other plants blooming here that the peonies being done doesn't cause a problem. Although I don't have a yellow flowered peony--I'm unconvinced that tree peonies will tolerate our conditions, and flatly refuse to pay 100 bucks or more for a species like P. mlokoseveitchii--this is pretty close; Peony 'Primavera', purchased several years ago at Briar Patch, one of my favourite nurseries, and coming into its own quite nicely.


Two summers ago, I received a shipment of plants to trial via Proven Winners, including Hydrangea 'Quick Fire.' I love love LOVE this hydrangea! It's the first PG type to flower in my garden, a good six weeks or more before 'LimeLight', and even before the lacecaps and Annabelle types. Its flowers turn dark very quickly, its foliage is handsome in fall....

And it even put up a second flush of blooms last year in late summer/early fall. A couple of shoots did this, not the entire plant, and I'm not sure if this is normal, but it was fun to watch. It seems to be as tough as nails, and I'm going to be recommending it wholeheartedly to others with a fondness for paniculata grandiflora-type hydrangeas. 

My love affair with perennial grasses continues. Several years ago, my friend Rob Baldwin handed me a pot of Miscanthus 'Huron Sunrise'. "Take this home and try it," he said. Who am I to argue? It has done brilliantly; and it looks particularly beautiful near 'Coppertina' ninebark and my echinacea collection. It doesn't appear to have the wandering tendencies of some Miscanthus cultivars, and it was bred in Canada by grass enthusiast Martin Quinn, who lives on the shores of Lake Huron in Ontario. I may divide it this spring; I never divide grasses in late summer or autumn because they need time to establish their root masses.  

Another grass I am very, very fond of is Hakonechloa, or Japanese Forest Grass. This is H. macra 'Aureola' which also happens to be perennial of the year according to the Perennial Plant Association. It's a great choice; it's a slow growing, cascading beauty, good in sun or partial shade, and works well at the front of borders, in rock gardens (this is not my garden; it MAY be the front border at Spencer's in Shelburne), and it just grows politely and minds its business.  

I bought this honeysuckle, 'Graham Thomas' several years ago, I think from Jill at Bunchberry Nurseries, because she had one blooming its head off and I fell in love instantly. It's been slow to get started because I planted it near The Bleeding Heart that Ate Scotts Bay, a vigourous Jackmanii clematis, and some other zealots, and they sort of daunted it for a bit. Honeysuckles of the vining variety take a few years to really come into their own; this year past both Graham Thomas and the Canadian-bred 'Mandarin' decided they'd been in the garden long enough, stopped sulking and started growing like 'Goldflame' does. I love the structure of honeysuckle flowers, and the hummingbirds adore them for other reasons. And I like my hummingbirds very happy!

Not the newest or flashiest Hemerocallis on the block, but I wanted 'Destined to See' the first time I saw it in someone else's garden. The first plant I got was mislabeled, (and I still don't know what it is!) so I muttered and sputtered and hunted until I found one in bloom at another nursery, and brought it home, muttering dire invocations against idiot customers who switch tags on plant pots or careless staff at propagating nurseries. Garden karma will get them!

I know that others have reported problems with mildew (either powdery or downy, I'm not sure which) on their 'Coppertina' ninebark. I've had absolutely NO problem, even when there's been powdery mildew on a few phlox, monarda and pulmonaria plants. I adore all ninebarks (and there's a new one I am slobbering over, but that will be another post); their foliage is great, their flowers lovely, their fruit very cool and their bark in winter just awesome to look at. Ninebarks are good for attracting and feeding birds, too, although I'm not sure whether this one will produce fruit; it's flowered for me but I haven't seen fruit the way I do on 'Diabolo'. Mostly it's just the foliage that infatuated me when I first saw this shrub in Ottawa, back in 2006, and I was very excited to get it in 2007.

It's no secret that I am as besotted with echinaceas as I am with poppies. We have the standard E. purpurea around here in good large clumps, but I've been adding the new coloured ones for several years too. In 2007, it was 'Green Envy' that I had to have; it continues to do spectacularly well, better than the Itsaul 'Big Sky' series of orange and yellow varieties. Last summer, I was excited to get my hands on 'Coconut Lime', a unique and fun double-centered cultivar from Terra Nova out in Oregon. It settled in like it had been growing in the garden for years, flowered its head off almost as profusely as 'Green Envy' did, and looked awesome near 'Coppertina' ninebark, 'Huron Sunrise' Miscanthus, and the rest of the echinacea collection. I hope it will overwinter as sturdily as Green Envy, as nothing got mulched here before the snows came, so it's a toughlove winter for everything. 

I love scented plants, so it's no surprise that I have lots of oriental lilies around the garden. This, however, is an Orienpet, a cross between trumpet and oriental lilies. It's called 'Caravan', and I adore it with the adoration of a thousand blazing suns. It grew brilliantly last year, its second season, the fragrance is gorgeous and powerful without being cloying, and its flowers shone even in the fog. I plan to add many more orienpets and orientals and trumpets this year, so as to add even more fragrance to the garden. 

So that's a look at some of the 'best of' plants from last summer. As I observed in an earlier post, I didn't find as many new plants at some nurseries as I had expected to find, and of course I didn't buy everything I saw last year that I DID want. Had to save some for this year, and I know one nursery-owning friend is bringing in a tree that I gotta gotta have. But we'll save that for another post.