The Endless Summer that Isn't

This is truly being the summer of my gardening discontent. The weather is enough to drive a person to drink. While others around the province have been enduring dry yet cloudy and humid conditions, we've been getting wet , cloudy and humid conditions. Fog doesn't bother me, normally--it's here, it's gone. Not this year. So much southwest wind and therefore fog. When everything is soggy wet, it's just not conducive to wanting to be out playing in the garden. So I stay inside, work and glower out the window on occasion, waiting for those dry days to arrive. Harrumph!

Despite the lack of real tender attention from me, things continue to grow and flower, as they do. Above is Endless Summer hydrangea, which seems to be having a better year this than last, when I threatened it with being moved to the compost pile if it didn't pull up its socks, so to speak. It's not having huge numbers of flowers, but what it has are definitely pretty.


Flat sea holly (Eryngium planum) is one of the stars of our garden from early August onwards. Other sea hollies have flowered already and are drying into pleasing seedheads, but this one just goes on and on, covering itself in rich lavender blue flowers. It's very beloved by the pollinating bees, butterflies and other creatures that visit here.


There aren't a lot of yellow rugosa roses, but one that I'm fond of is Topaz Jewel, well named with its glowing yellow flowers. They aren't as fragrant as their red or white counterparts, and they do shatter easily, so I just leave them on the shrub to flower merrily along.


A sign that summer is past its peak; the helenium have begun blooming. Several of these more compact varieties tend to come on earlier than my exuberant tall yellow ones in the back garden, but I love each and every one of them.

And now it's time for a bit of an ode to coneflowers. I know many of you who are regular readers share my absorption in coneflowers--they're just such splendid, undemanding, high performing plants, and with the diligence of plant breeders in recent years, we have so many more colours than just the white and purple we were long accustomed to.

White Swan IS one of my favourites, just because it's a tidy, handsome plant and its flowers are so pristine.


And this would be your standard purple coneflower. I have a lot of these, because as with other plants that we have many of, they're pollinator magnets. And we are very gratified to see a LOT of bees this summer, I think more than usual, or maybe I"m just spending more time watching out for them.


'Green Envy' is definitely a star in my books, and I'm awestruck at how well it settled in and multiplied itself from last year's planting. It's doing very, very well, wouldn't you say?


As a nice counterpart to all that green, 'Harvest Moon', one of the Itsaul Big Sky series of coneflowers, is richly gold and another favourite.


This is 'Jade', one of the first of the so-called green coneflowers. Compared to Green Envy, it's not so green, but I love it anyway. IN the blurred background, you can see 'Coconut Lime', which has also settled in well and is flowering happily. Double coneflowers aren't to everyone's tastes, but that's the pleasure of gardening--we can all plant what gives us joy. I never met a coneflower that I didn't love, though some have been cranky growers for me.

But they always behave better than hollyhocks.

A followup to all your lovely comments on the hollyhocks. I DID plant yellow ones out there, because a few people sent or gave me seed. But there are apparently garden gnomes at work that, because they've never been freed, insist on exercising their mischief in my garden by roguing out the yellow ones.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The Ongoing Tragic Tale of My Hollyhocks

I've whined before about my ongoing problem with hollyhocks. The Reader's Digest condensed version of the story is that I have hollyhock challenges, particularly when it comes to one particular colour. Yellow. I've been trying for years to get yellow hollyhocks.

They refuse to bloom that colour for me.

It's become a point of some horticultural hilarity in my world. People have kindly sent me seed, left me seed on my doorstep along with flowers to prove that the seeds came from yellow plants. I've sown them. I've tossed them around the garden.

This year, I thought I'd finally had success. I have quite a few hollyhocks growing, mostly in some rather unlikely places. I DON'T remember throwing seeds there, but whatever. There are different leaf shapes. I was sure among them would be at least one yellow one. Of course there would.

Wouldn't there?


Well, let's see....there's the black ones, of course. I AM very fond of these, deep wine as they are, and they make a nice colour echo near the Actaea 'Black Negligee'. So they're just fine.

Hmmm. I don't know WHERE this one came from. It is, most definitely a pretty thing, but I'm quite sure I haven't had these before. Nor planted them. Hmmmph. One of life's little mysteries, I guess.


This, I think, is legacy of the huge giant pink monster hollyhock I had two years ago. I figured it would produce enough seed to populate the world in pink hollyhocks. It did indeed yield a few plants in this colour. Not my favourite colour, by a long shot. Definitely not yellow.


I don't want my hopes dashed the way they were two years ago when I thought I finally had a yellow hollyhock. When the buds showed beautifully yellow as they prepared to open...and this is what I got.
This is the one I argued about with my long-suffering spouse. Told him it was orange. It certainly wasn't yellow--and I had bought this plant as a yellow-frakkin' hollyhock.
Maybe it's my soil. Or my karma. At least my hydrangeas are all blue rather than pink.
Well, there is one other option. Last year at the Saltscapes Expo, there was a very talented metalworker who did sculptures of plants and other items using recycled oil tanks from people's homes. When I saw this, I had to have it.


Okay, they aren't bright yellow. Sort of a cream colour. He said he'd paint them for me, but I like them as they are. They aren't botanically correct, but I can live with that. They DO suffer from hollyhock rust, but it's a noncontagious kind...And they won't get winter rot, fall over in windstorms, or be pink.

And I'm all right with that.

And now the dark garden

Once again life got in the way this week, but mostly in a good way. Except for the weather, that is. More fog, more heat, but now today it's actually raining. Rain is good. Despite the fog, things are dry, and we need a day of long, contemplative, soaking rain. Although since I'm putting in my request, let it clear off for the performances of my friend Ami McKay's play "Jerome-The Historical Spectacle" up at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. We went to last night's opening performance and it was, in a word, joyously wonderful!



Okay, back to the garden. Last time, we focused on the whites in the garden. This time, we'll rejoice in the darker plants--both flowers and foliage. And in fact, we'll kick off with Ami's black hollyhocks. This plant appeared and grew like a mad maniac this spring--I remember throwing the seeds around with little expectation that they'd cooperate. I'll have a hollyhock tantrum post in a day or too, though.


My young purple/copper beech has just the best colour of foliage ever. I probably shouldn't have planted Actaea 'Pink Spike' quite so close because there's nothing between them for contrast, but as the beech grows that will correct itself. Perhaps a gold hosta or two nearby to set things off will do the trick.


Chocolate Joe Pye weed grows here but doesn't get any significant size, not like its native relatives, which I actually prefer because they are such butterfly magnets. However, it's a pretty plant and looks nice with the gold sambucus beside it.


I have mentioned in the past that clematis do really, really well here. I think it's the fog, which keeps roots cool, and when the sun is out, it's lovely here. The clematis perform like maniacs every year, but this is definitely the star of the show.


Japanese Parsley, or cryptotanea, is a neat plant with handsome foliage. However, you do need to watch its self seeding ability as it does get quite exuberant with seeding. It's easy to rogue out, though. I'm thinking of letting it go crazy up under the birches where the grass keeps getting ahead of me.


I have quite a few sedum, including a few with dark foliage. This is 'Voodoo', a particularly neat one. Others include 'Purple Emporer' and 'Vera Jameson'.


A little segue now to dark flower colours. I have numerous deep-wine daylilies, including 'Wayside King Royale', 'Ed Murray', and a host of others that are...ummmm...currently unnamed because I've lost their labels. But this beauty is 'Malaysian Monarch', a real star in my books.

And because I never get tired of them...my favourite annual poppies, the deep wine ones that rejoice throughout the front garden.

There's a really good sized 'Diabolo' ninebark in this lower garden, and not far from it is 'Black Lace' sambucus, which is doing very nicely despite the tendancy of that garden to run slightly amok. There are numerous giant perennials in it, including Macleaya (plume poppy), aconitum, 'Herbstsonne' rudbeckia, and a host of globe thistles that reach for the sky. So things sometimes feel a wee bit overwhelmed.

In the left background you can see Ami's giant hollyhock going for the sky. The foreground has another of my actaeas, this one 'Black Negligee'. The 'Raspberry Wine' monarda has deeper red-wine flowers than my camera would have you believe, and handsome dark bracts too.



I really like lychnis, although some of these are much shorter than I'd like. This goes by the delightful name of 'Molten Lava.' I've decided I'll have to relocate it and plant it beside the two plants in the following photos. Why is that?


Well...'Molten Lava' triggers a memory in my head of "molten hot lava bomb." And so it belongs with this phlox....


...and this geum. Those of you who know me and my sense of humour will get this perfectly. For the rest...I'll explain at the end of August.

The White Garden...sort of!

Just about the time I was beginning to think we were trapped in Brigadoon, we emerged from the fog today into hot sunlight and to a wild yard and garden. I was afraid my longsuffering spouse would have to mow and bale the lawn for hay for the horse and donkeyfrommars, but he managed to get through it all--it had been three weeks since he'd been able to mow, and all that moisture...well, let's just say I have a nice supply of mulch for the garden now. When it gets raked up, of course.


While I was doing some badly needed weeding, deadheading and even planting, I was struck by how lovely the white-flowered plants look in brilliant sunlight. The asiatic lilies shine like stars. The hydrangeas look like puffy clouds or snowflakes. (Ooops, shouldn't say that yet!) White can be a cool, soothing colour. While I don't have a white bed or border a la Vita Sackville-West and Sissinghurst, I like to use white throughout the garden. At dusk, it glows with a light of its own. Of course, in fog it tends to disappear, or flowers turn to soggy tissues (especially some roses) but that's just one of the vagaries of gardening.


Take a stroll with me around our yard. Make sure you don't mind cut grass getting in your sandals, though. Here's an 'Annabelle'-type of hydrangea; not as big flower heads as that cultivar or of the mopheads, but it flowers very well. I have two of these, and the other one I cut way back this year as it's spreading and has delusions of grandeur, so it has few flowers. This one, however, looks wonderful.


I like astrantia so much, that even though we used it in the previous post on pink, we can pull it into this discussion of white flowers, too. And when I do the next post (on black in the garden)...I have a deep wine coloured one to use there too!


This is just a white annual poppy, one of the Shirleys that selfseeds around here. But the morning dew obviously caught pollen from the plant's stamens and made this fascinating pattern on the petals.


Yuccas are just such terrific architectural plants, aren't they? Surprisingly, they do fine for me here, though they take a while to flower. I planted several given to me a few years ago by a woman from Shelburne in the lower garden where the drainage is good, and they've been very cooperative for me.


A beloved viburnum, the doublefile 'Maresii'...some call this Summer Snowflake, and it's truly a handsome, graceful plant. Ours is still quite small, but that's not stopping it from flowering like crazy this year. It sometimes throws a few flowers later in the season too.


A gold-foliaged elder, but not Sutherland's Gold, which spitefully died after living here for a year. This sambucus, however, has done very well; it's not a huge plant, but I also keep it quite trimmed so as to enjoy its gold colour and keep it in bounds, too.


A white rose campion splashes its flowers all over its gangly branches, which are an attractive silver colour. The daylily in the centre of the conversation is currently unnamed (I can't find the label, and need to go visit Wayne and Wayne to find out what it is again, and has lovely large flowers, if a somewhat odd colour. But I like it!


This perennial mullein is one I bought from a now-defunct nursery out in British Columbia about 8 years ago. It self seeds a bit so I never know where it will pop up, and it's not the most handsome of flowers. But again, it's a terrific bee and hummingbird magnet and does well with no interference from me, so I just let it pop up where it will.


This is Hydrangea paniculata 'QuickFire', one of the Proven Winners Colorchoice shrubs that I'm trialing from last year. The literature said that it blooms earlier than most of the PG type hydrangeas. The literature is correct, because here it is, starting to flower nicely already, whereas Limelight is only starting to think about forming flower heads. I planted this shrub last summer and it settled in brilliantly. I'm hoping that the others planted here will do as well. Hydrangeas tend to do well for me probably because I know what will work here--lacecaps, paniculata, arborescens and even the climbing one, though mine is overwhelmed by our giant clematis. Mopheads, not so much.


This is a dandy shasta daisy called 'Ice Star'. Now there's another one out called Goldrush that is also doubled, but with golden centre rather than the snowy white seen here. I have THAT one too...shastas are delightful plants and great butterfly magnets.
Which reminds me...we saw the first monarch butterfly of the season up here today. They've been reported elsewhere around the province, of course, but I suspect they got lost in the fog trying to find us earlier than this.

In the pink of summer heat

Wandering around the garden today despite the stinkin' hot weather--we didn't get Cristobal's rainy fury here, just more tropical temps and humidity--I was struck yet again that for someone who claims to not care for pink, I have a lot of it in the garden. Beginning with the profusion of poppies that are scattered all around the yard--my freerange flowers, I call them, popping up everywhere. They look fine entwined with these huge Asiatic lilies (again, name unknown).


They weave themselves sweetly in amongst the branches of the Nishiki willow, and make a perfect match to the rosy tint in some of the foliage.


A little richer than true pink, this hot fuchsia rose campion always glows in the garden, as do the foxgloves, astilbe and cranesbills in their various shades of rose to pink nearby,




This is 'Sunningdale Variegated' astrantia, a terrific masterwort I discovered last year. Masterworts delight me because of their beautiful, subtly complex flowers. They also flower for a long time and come in different colours; I have two with darker wine-rose flowers, but this one with just hints of rose and green really makes me happy. Butterflies and other pollinators also love it, and that just adds to its charms.


We still haven't identified this Asiatic lily, but to be honest I haven't gone looking for its identity either. It's almost done, and a slow-growing variety--it also is dwarf, growing about 15 inches tall in my garden. It's planted beside a deep purple Japanese Barberry and shows up marvelously against that foliage, too.
Edited to add: Yea for smart bloggers/nursery operators! The erudite George Africa of Vermont Flower Farm and The Vermont Gardener identified my mystery lily as 'Lorelei'.


You'd think it was pastel heaven at our place depending on where you stood. Actually, this photo is from a few days ago, because the delphinium are all standing up. They've since been hit by the delphinium wind/rainstorm so they're a bit bedraggled. But the main pointer here is the big clusters of pink clustered bellflower, a lovely plant and a departure for me from my usual purple or violet or white bellflowers. I love bellflowers of all kinds, though.


This Grootendoorst rose looked pretty sad earlier in the spring, with a lot of tip die-back after some real cold weather. I went at it with the pruners and it responded happily by putting up lots of buds.


I've written of my love for annual ice plants before, with their neon-hot colours. They just make me grin whenever I look at them. Here, the best thing to do with them is plant them in containers where they'll bake hot, or else in the rock garden I'm slowly developing. They catch everyone's eye with their brilliant, starry flowers.


One reason I do love rose, pink or fuchsia is as a foil or flowery counterpoint to orange, blue and chartreuse. It just makes other colours pop so much. In the background of this photo of 'Orange Meadowbrite' echinacea, you can see some Geranium sanguineum. This isn't a colour combination I'd wear, but in the garden, it makes me shout hurray!

Do you have colours you love in the garden that you don't want anywhere else?