Jodi's Gotta-have plants, Part 5: Dazzling Designer Daylilies

As I mentioned in my previous note, daylilies are a plant propagator's delight, which is why there are more than 60,000 named varieties out there. There are some very famous breeders, including the late Steve Moldovan, whose partner carries on his work; Frank Smith, whose plants are simply awesome in the extreme; James Marsh, who created the 'Chicago' named series of hybrids (and others) such as Chicago Sunrise and Chicago Scintillation; Pauline Henry, who was responsible for the 'Siloam' series, including Siloam Frisbee and Siloam Plum Tree; and many, many others.

I stopped by Canning Daylily Gardens last night on my way home from somewhere else, because I liked the light and because Wayne and Wayne were still at the field. I wandered around with my camera, snapping photos of some of the cultivars I just gotta have one of these days, although some of them are a bit expensive for me yet. This beauty above is called 'Smile Again', and is one of Frank Smith's new releases from 2006.
The Waynes bought a whole series of Frank Smith daylilies new releases in 2006 and I've been slobbering over them ever since, watching them as they (slowly!) multiply. This is the strikingly gorgeous 'Voodoo Magic' which is not yet for sale in Canning. But gazing on it is free...

I actually have this one but didn't have a good photo of it for my previous post: this is called 'Russian Easter' and is a David Kirchhoff release. (There's also a daylily, hybridized by Henry, called 'Siloam David Kirchhoff', and I THINK I have it somewhere in my garden....)

Sometimes I just adore daylilies for their names, which can be hilarious, touching, or just plain whimsical. This one is called 'Lies and Lipstick'.

And this is Green Flutter, which I know I have somewhere in the garden too. Big Wayne told me to bring down flowers of the ones suffering from Lost Label syndrome, and he'd identify them.


Of course, if you have lies n lipstick, it's inevitable, perhaps, that there'd be a daylily called 'Beloved Deceiver'.

And if you're very, very good, perhaps you'll become 'Forever Redeemed'. (I did roll my eyes at some of the names, but this is such a gorgeous daylily I had to include it. )

This is another of those "I'm pretty sure I have this one, but I'll wait til they all flower or else I'll buy this and find it already in the garden". 'It's called Etched in Gold.'

Since it was late in the day when I took my photos, some of the blooms were just starting to lose their splendor, while others had faded to mush, and still others were yet to open. I like the softly yellow ones, such as this, which is called Dianne Lee Longson.

This is my most must-have daylily. My father's name was Ivan, so it goes without saying that I'd need this Frank Smith introduction, which is called 'Crazy Ivan'. But it's still very expensive, and I can get a dozen other daylilies for the cost of one fan of this. I'm patient. I'll wait.

This is called 'Circle of Fire', and I'm not sure why, but it's 'right some beautiful', as the saying goes. I like the cultivars with frilled or ruffled edges, especially in contrasting colours.

I've been admiring 'Artiste's Favourite' for a few years and I don't think I've bought it yet. Of course, it's possible that I'll go to get it and find it's sold out. The Waynes do a huge business and now with so many varieties in bloom, people come in to look at the display beds and snap up plants as fast as they can. So I'd best check it out today!

Rounding out today's rainbow of "I want that!" daylilies is the very striking 'Art Imperial.' I stress that's today's group of those I want. It's raining so I won't go to the garden today, but I know full well that when I do, I'll come home with another batch of photos of my must have daylilies. Hopefully this is enticing you even more, too.

Dazzled by Daylilies

I met a lovely woman the other day while I was out poking around a couple of nurseries. She confessed that she didn't particularly care for daylilies. I suggested that she take some time in the next week or so and get to Canning Daylily Gardens during their official open garden week (though visitors are welcome anytime, it's just that they're heading into peak bloom shortly) and see if she didn't change her mind about that. I think she'll find that there's more to daylilies than the ol' ditchlily that we all know and (mostly don't) love. Take 'Pride of Canning,' above, which was bred by Wayne and Wayne of Canning Daylily Gardens. What's not to love about this happy lovely flower?


There are somewhere in the vicinity of 60,000 named daylily cultivars. Gardeners love to collect them, breed them, crossbreed them, swap them with others. They've come a huge way in the past thirty or forty years, and now you can get daylilies in every colour but blue, pure black and pure white. Some come close to black and white, though. And most have fascinating watermarks, contrasting edges or throats. How about 'Roses in Snow'?


I have dozens of daylilies, and some of them have no names. I was given them by friends, or bought them from someone's garden, or (ahem), managed to lose the labels, in some cases. I'm sure someone recognizes this beauty, but I cannot find its label, remember where I got it, and haven't a hope in hades of figuring out which one it is by myself.

Although I have a number of solid-colour daylilies, I tend towards those with contrasting centres, like this 'El Desperado,' which is one of my favourites.

And this 'Destined to See' was destined to come home with me from the moment I saw it in a catalogue or a magazine. It's a bit of a slowgrower, but worth it when it blooms.

There are a few daylilies with double-names that are quite similar, and I get them hopelessly mixed up. I know I have 'Always Afternoon', 'Daring Dilemma', 'Classic Caper' and 'Daring Deception'... but which is which? This is 'Always Afternoon'-- I think!

And this is 'Night Beacon', which shows up really, really well as the daylight fades. You can see why.

'Smugglers Gold' is one I particularly like, although it sometimes gets blotchy when we have a lot of rain. My daylilies are just starting to open, however, so I'm hoping that the weather will settle down a bit before they get blooming in earnest.

This striking beauty is called 'South Seas' and I really like its unique colour. It's also fragrant, if I remember correctly. This time of year finds me walking around with yellow staining on my nose, as I MUST smell all the daylilies to see which are fragrant.

Remember I said breeders were getting closer to getting a real white daylily? Wayne and Wayne gave me 'Swiss Mint' a few years ago, and it's not only nearly white, it's wonderfully fragrant.

Designer Jeans lives in my butterfly garden, and something about it reminds me of butterflies.


And to wrap up this ode to daylilies (the first of probably several I'll do this summer), here's the wonderfully striking 'Malaysian Monarch.' Isn't it wonderful? I'm waiting patiently (or not) for ours to all pop into bloom. And then i'm going to photograph each of them exactly where they are and then see if Wayne and Wayne can identify them all. Then I'll label them all. Maybe.

Everything's poppin' up poppies!

Yesterday dawned a little foggy but also sunny, and since I was feeling pretty good, we decided to go to Liverpool, collect the rest of my stuff, and put that chapter of my life (happily) far, far behind me. As we got ready, I looked outside, told longsuffering spouse I'd be a few minutes, and took off outside with my camera.


Some mornings we have what I call 'breathing fog.' It's very odd, and seems to come in and go back out again like inhalations and exhalations of breath. One moment the sun is obscured, the next it's breaking through the mist, and the next everything is bathed in sunlight. It makes for a lot of moisture, but also some interesting light and great photography moments.

Those who are regular readers of bloomingwriter know that I adore poppies of all kinds, be they annual, perennial, biennial, or blue. Right now, right on schedule, the big annual breadseed poppies have begun blooming in earnest.

I collect seed every year from the ones I like the best and then cast it around the garden here and there, and let the poppies do their thing. They also selfseed, of course, and they seem to cross pollinate, coming up with some extraordinary shades.

Our absolute favourites in the annual poppies are these deep wine double beauties. Aren't they great? Maybe not to everyone's tastes, but I love dark-wine flowers, and have a number of different plants with rich dark flowers or foliage.

Poppies catch the light as beautifully as do tulips, as they have equally transluscent, silken petals. They don't last as long as individual flowers, but they're profuse and for a few weeks we get to enjoy quite a happy show of colours.

As one poppy finishes and drops its blooms, others are opening up to show off their beauty, while still others are preparing to open or getting in the queue for a performance in a few days time.

One particular bed is host to mostly bright pink, single poppies. I love their foliage too, until the flowers are spent. Then I only leave in the ones that we'll use to collect seed; the rest get hauled out because their foliage gets quite ratty looking.

I spend a good deal of time looking into the centre of our poppies, with or without my camera. Everything about their flowers pleases me, from their showy petals to their complex hearts with the many stamens clustered around the central carpal.

In case you're feeling a bit bludgeoned by all those deep, rich colours, here's a little contribution from the Icelandic poppies, which are never shy about showing off THEIR beauty. These biennial or perennial poppies will bloom themselves almost to death, especially if you're faithful about deadheading. I've had them flower until hard frost before. And they pop up in odd places, so I never know where we'll see them, but we welcome them always.

Rock-Garden Eye-Candy

Over the past couple of months I've had several opportunities to drop in to the Rock Garden at my alma mater, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro. While the weather hasn't always been ideal in this soggy spring/summer, I can't resist taking photos and sharing them with readers. If you're ever in Truro: GO to the AC and visit the Rock Garden. I'm serious. It's fabulous. These gentians bloomed in May.


There are other plants besides alpines in the Rock Garden. Some areas are more woodland like, a transition between one part of the garden and another. There are several fine plantings of one of my favourite of perennials, masterwort or Astrantia.


The Star of Persia Alliums were blooming in Truro several weeks back. Mine are just NOW reaching their peak. Even Truro is ahead of Scotts Bay!


I happen to love conifers, and there are some beautiful examples at the Rock Garden, with more to come. I know there are plans to put in more dwarf conifers, which I think is a fabulous idea. More people need to embrace conifers.


One of the cool features of the Rock Garden is the dry stream bed, and the marvelous collection of cacti (opuntia, or prickly pear) that are planted above it. I caught them in bloom last time I was there, to my huge delight.


I spent quite a bit of time enjoying the silken beauty of the prickly pear blooms, and still can't decide if I liked the yellow ones best...


...Or these fabulous hot pink ones. I think these carried the day, the more I look at them. They're sort of like portulaca blooms with their lush, jewellike colours.


The rock is called Salmon River pink granite, and comes from a local quarry. The Friends of the Garden and the NSAC grounds maintenance people used over 700 tons of rock to create the rock garden. Less than a decade ago, this was nothing but a grassy slope with some mature trees around the edges.


There's always something new being added/enhanced. Two summers ago, when I visited, this bed was being built. Now it's planted and getting well established.


Some purist-types prefer limestone as their ONLY rock of choice for alpine plantings. The limestone chunks in the terrace area were donated to NSAC by Landscape Nova Scotia.


I love the terrace area, with its limestone plantings and sandstone troughs. The troughs were made from stone from a building that was demolished in Truro a few years ago.


It's fun to visit the garden over a period of weeks or even months and see how things are changing, as some plants flower and go to seed, and others grow up and put on a new show. I probably won't get back there for a few more weeks, but time and weather permitting, I'll be happily wandering around the Rock Garden at AC. And I'm serious, folks: it's well worth a trip to Truro just to see this garden. It's becoming world-class, a beautiful star on the grounds of what is a beautiful campus.

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...