Love is Blue...Flowers

Of all the colours of flowers out there, the ones that make me the happiest are always some shade of true blue. I say true blue because so many flowers that are described as being blue have actually some tint of purple to them. But there are all kinds of plants with flowers in shades of blue from pale to deep cobalt blue. This week's Fleurs du Jour celebrate those true blue delights. To lead off, one of the many members of the Borage family that boasts blue flowers, in this case, the actual herb borage itself. (With some sort of pollinating fly/bee mimic hanging from one flower.)

Of course, one of the showiest of perennials, regardless of colour, is the delphinium. I love its tall, elegant spikes of flowers, even if their bloom tends to correspond with the annual peony and delphinium wind and rainstorms! I like to plant my delphinium near something like a sturdy shrub to help prop them up without a lot of stakes...

Another answer to stake-avoidance is to plant the dwarf Chinese delphinium cultivars, which aren't as stately but tend to flower quite profusely. My biggest problem with these is that they don't live as long for me as do the standard varieties, but I love them anyway.

 Some years ago, I got an agapanthus, aka lily of the Nile, from a now-closed nursery. I have two different varieties now--this one, with its delft blue and white flowers, reminiscent of the lovely striped squill (Puschkinia) that blooms in spring. I've divided and shared this agapanthus with a number of friends--it rests in my basement all winter, and in spring comes up to spend the summer outside, charming pollinators and people alike.

 You can see the purple creeping into the blue florets of this 'Twist and Shout' lace cap hydrangea, but the predominant colour stays blue in my garden. I love the elegant look of lace cap hydrangeas, more so than mop head forms, and the fertile, less showy flowers attract pollinators, too.

Everyone has their top-ten perennial species that they can't be without, don't they? Sea holly (Eryngium) is one of mine: long blooming, pollinator-attracting, and many different species and cultivars to choose from. This is 'Big Blue' which has large cone-shaped flowers surrounded by metallic blue, ruffled bracts. It adds great texture to any perennial planting. 

While I still grow a few blue poppies (Meconopsis), they drive many gardeners to distraction with their diva-like behaviour. For a truly blue, and less troublesome, perennial, try Gentiana (gentians) instead. Their flowers are gorgeous, many with striped buds that open to cobalt or gentian-blue flowers, and with a little planning, you can have species that bloom in mid to late spring, summer, and well into autumn. I think I have...ten or so different species now. My fondness for collection cultivars and species of a particular genus never changes!

 Pulmonaria is another of my top-ten perennials, and warrants an entire post a little later this year. Whether you call them lungwort, Bethlehem sage, lords and ladies, William and Mary, or by some other name, these borage relatives are fabulous. They bloom early in the spring--some of them are hardly out of the ground before they're in bloom--they have silver-splashed or spangled markings on their foliage, and their pink buds open to blue flowers. Some few varieties have white or red or rosy pink flowers, but the blue ones are my favourites.

To wind up this ode to blues, let's have one of the annual salvias. 'Black and Blue' is well named for its black stems and buds and its cool blue flowers. It also has fresh bright green foliage. I've been growing it for years, and while it pouts in the spring if the temperatures are too cool, once it settles in it blooms all summer and well into autumn. I especially love blue flowers in late summer when so many others flowers are int he red, gold, copper and orange colour palette. 

Hopefully you're inspired to add some blue to your garden colour scheme, if you haven't already! Tell me about your favourite 'true blues' in the comments below. 

Fleur photos du Jour: Yellow Time!

Yellow is a fascinating colour in the spectrum. It can be soothing, cheery, brassy, over the top or just simply lovely. I remember the yellow kitchens of my childhood, where the paint was a lemon-pie yellow--ugh. Where I live now is painted all through in a soft yellow not unlike the colour of the sunflowers of this image, and it's calm but cheery. On sunny days, my place is warm and bright; on dull days like today (recuperating after the snowstorm of yesterday), it's still bright and cheering. 

This rudbeckia is a little harsher yellow, (I believe it's 'Prairie Sun') but it pops magnificently against the tangle of roses behind it. 

There has yet to be a yellow agastache developed that is hardy for my garden. Despite this, I faithfully buy them as annuals every year because I love all agastaches, their flowers and lemony scent, the way the pollinators flock to them. This is 'Summer Glow'. 

Nemesia is an annual that is growing in popularity every year, and I'm pleased to see that. Some cultivars are fragrant, like 'Opal Innocence', but this one is 'Sunsatia Mango' and I don't remember any fragrance, just floriferous enthusiasm. 

Some of the evening primroses (Oenothera) are quite brilliantly yellow, including this Missouri sundrop (O. missouriensis). It has large flowers that were a favourite of my beloved and much-missed mother. So they will always be in my garden. 

Of course there are a bajillion yellow daylilies, and they all have their charms. My personal favourite, however, comes from Canning Daylily Gardens, bred by the late Wayne Storrie. I know I've mentioned this plant before, called 'Pride of Canning'. It is vigourous and prolific, producing buds well into the fall; somewhere, I have a photo of it pushing buds with frost on them, taken in November of that year. I'll be able to split and share mine this year, the way it grew last year! 

Yellow is an important colour in wildflowers, too, and no less beloved because it's commonly seen in buttercups, dandelions and wild mustards. This plant is a cinquefoil, (potentilla) blooming in the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens, one of my favourite places in Wolfville. I am not certain which species it is (I only took a closeup of the flower and not the whole plant) but it could be P. canadensis, the dwarf cinquefoil.
 

I love the blackberry lily (Belamcanda, which has apparently been reclassified as Iris domestica, which I don't much like). Normally, it's a cheery orange with red markings on it, but last year I got my hands on a new one 'Hello Yellow', which boasts cheery yellow flowers. IF it survives (I didn't plant it in the ideal location), I will move it to be with its common relative this spring, which has been vigourous and hardy.

It was a surprise some years ago to find out that we can grow Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia) here in Nova Scotia without any problem. The display at the NSAC Rock Garden (which is now Dalhousie Agricultural Campus but I went to NSAC, dammit!) of various opuntia species is fantastic--with flowers in shades of yellow, pink, red, and probably more to come. I have only one--so far. My friend Rob of Baldwin's Nurseries in Falmouth is propagating a number and has them for sale. 

When we think of toad lilies (Tricyrtis) we generally think of flowers in shades of purple, white, pink, with spangles and speckles and splotches. Meet 'Golden Festival', which has yellow/purple flowers. It blooms earlier (in my garden) than do the cultivars like 'Taipei Silk' and 'Empress', by about a month. I find they want good drainage for overwinter, but give them that and they do well. 

To wrap up this week's yellow love-fest, one of the tree peonies in brilliant yellow. I have a yellow tree peony, but I moved it twice before landing here at my current abode, so it's been growing but not flowering. I'm hoping this will be the year for it to bloom, and join the other riot of peonies in my garden. 

That's it for this week. Tell me what some of your favourite yellow flowers are! 

A new year...but no new resolutions!

Welcome to 2016! I realize it's over a week old already but life is busy for all of us and this is the first chance I had to collect up some thoughts and prepare to wake up the blog again. Life has changed and gotten even more busy in the past 18 months or so, and something had to give; so my free time shifted from writing posts about gardening to studying the art of photography a little more intensely. 

You will see some of the results of my explorations with photography in coming posts, and hopefully those posts will please you. They won't all be about gardening, although that will continue to be a vital part of this blog. One of the things I discovered last year was that learning to use my camera better meant learning to see differently; not just when studying plants, but when looking at the world around me--be it an old barn, a piece of rusting machinery, a waterfall, a beloved landmark. But there will still be plenty of plant photos, and plant talk. As time permits, of course.

Although I don't make resolutions, last year I decided that one of the ways I would help myself and others get through the winter--which as many of you know was the worst winter in much of Atlantic Canada, especially here in NS, in many, many years--was to post a daily meme of my own on my personal Facebook page, and (when I remembered) on my open Page as well. I call it my Fleur Photo du Jour, and of course it entails posting photos of various plants, especially flowering ones, every day through the winter and spring. I don't think I missed very many days, and some days I did multiples so it evened out. 

What was delightful was the number of messages and notes and comments I received from others, telling me how much those photos brightened their days. Which was, of course, the reason for posting them. It inspired some folks to try new or new-to-them plants in their gardens or in their homes, as we often had conversations about growing the particular plant. And others often shared their stories about a particular plant. Which is part of the bliss of gardening--sharing stories as much as we share plants and seeds. 

One thing I do plan to do more often this year is post reviews of books here on the blog. There are still a plethora of very fine gardening books coming out on a regular basis, and I've seen some of the new releases scheduled for this year and am excited about them--including at least one about pollinators. Regular readers know I was going on about pollinators long before it became trendy. And will continue to go on about them, too. 

While I'm not much of a traveller outside my own province, I did get out and about several times last summer--once to my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and once to Prince Edward Island and the Iles de la Madeleine, Quebec. While those weren't for gardening activities, they were both for Saltscapes-related projects, as so much of what I do is for Saltscapes, but there were glimpses of gardening in the trips, so they'll likely pop up here now and again. I visited some great gardens IN Nova Scotia last year, including the wonderful Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens (right when the rose garden was at its peak), and took part in the Rare and Unusual Plant Sale, too. 

I wish you all the very happiest of New Years, and here's to lots of great gardening adventures this year. I'll let e.e. cummings wrap this up for me with one of my favourite lines from his work:

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Touring our local gardens...

 The only thing I like better than playing in my own garden? Visiting other people's gardens! The annual Chester Garden Tour is happening next weekend in beautiful seaside Chester, NS, and I'm going to be there!

It's going to be a full day of activities, starting with a talk about mid-season plants and planting at Oceanview Garden Centre & Landscaping first thing in the morning, then going from garden to garden, then a Q & A back at Oceanview after the tour wraps up. I can hardly wait! 

If you haven't been to Chester or even if you have and are wanting to see some fabulous gardens around the community, you really ought to check it out. It's going to be a great day!

The BEST season for gardeners

Life is never boring in my world. It's suddenly nearly the middle of June, almost summer, and I haven't posted here at all of late. There are good reasons for this, none of them alarming--I'm simply so busy with work projects that I haven't had time to do the stuff that doesn't pay me. Plus it is the season for playing in the dirt, so when I'm finished my writing, photo and editing work for the day, I head for the garden; sometimes with camera in hand, of course, so I can catch delights like 'Francesca' primula in bloom! 

 Tomorrow I'm doing a talk at Louisiana Pacific's East River Plant during their Composting Facility's open house, and I'm looking forward to that. Afterwards I'll be heading to Oceanview Garden Centre in Chester (in case I need more plants) before returning to my own garden.

 At the moment, the chief scent in my yard is alfalfa hay from the field behind me and lilacs from beside the house, but the lavenders are also starting to bloom, and that makes me very happy. Isn't it just the best time of year?

Those rare blue flowers

For those of you wondering where I've gotten to...I'm here, and I'm fine, just really, really busy as we get ready for our 10th anniversary Saltscapes Expo. Lots to tell you about while we're also still waiting for the 87 feet of snow that fell in the past two months to melt, but for now, a blast from the past....


We all know that in flowers, blue is the rarest colour. Which means some of us go koo koo for cocapuffs over it. Quite a few of us, actually. That number would include me, of course. From the glorious of the difficult, divaesque, but oh-so-beautiful blue poppy...


To the stately cobalt splendor of blue delphinium...

And even the dainty, delicate, spring chorus of scilla drive mere mortals to frenzies of bountiful blue blossom blissdom.

Well, you know how plant breeders are. They're never content to rest on their laurels, and they've been at work developing some more blue flowers for us to enjoy. The following stealthy, shaky, grainy photos are of a few cultivars that your intrepid correspondent risked life and limb to get photos of for your viewing enjoyment.

For those who are thwarted by growing blue poppies, perhaps you'd like to try this dandy geum, 'Til I'm Blue Cooky'. I think it would work particularly well, like most geums, in full sun with well-drained soil. 

We're always taught that hemerocallis come in every conceivable shade except black and true blue. Well, we can cross the latter off the list with 'Crazy Iovanni', which to the best of my understanding was created by genetical manipulation, introducing the DNA from the blue April Fish into one of the showier of yellow daylilies, 'Fools' Gold.' I wasn't able to ascertain, from my lofty perch in a truffula tree, whether the foliage of this new hemerocallis was evergreen or not.

Ah yes, the blue rose. We've all heard about how some things are as 'rare as blue roses.' Well, once again, the GMO wizards have been at it, splicing some DNA from that blue delphinium with multiple excited protons from the Large Hadron Collider, and zapping them into a pimpernelifolia rose. Meet 'Harison's Blue.'

And apparently pollen from the bluebanded bee, when stolen from a blue Eryngium planum and dipped onto a double white coneflower, yields this blue eyed beauty, 'April BlueNose.' Because I was in deep ninjacover while clambering around in trees, I couldn't hear the breeder say when any of these blue beauties would be released, but I suspect it will be probably around June 31st of next year. 

Whew. It's sooooo good to be out of March, isn't it? 

End of year roundup--favourites and more

Slightly belated Christmas greetings to all--we had not a drop of snow in Nova Scotia, and in fact had record breaking mild temperatures and torrential rains this year. It made travel easy, and we spent a very happy Christmas day with family. Since then I've been on an actual time-off from work, allowing myself a few days of just doing whatever I want, which has mostly been playing with photography, sorting through my image libraries, reading, and catching up with people I care about. 

We often have end-of-year retrospectives on many topics, including, of course, on gardening. I decided to do one primarily because most of my favourite plants this year, with one or two exceptions, have been around for a while and still remain some of my favourites. 

Let's start with the photo above, which is mostly of Echinacea 'Cheyenne Spirit'. There is a double flowered form in the background so that's why I say mostly. Otherwise, all those blossoms in the foreground, the orange, the yellow, the deep red-pink, are all from Cheyenne Spirit plants. These were planted in 2013, sailed through the winter, and bloomed their faces off this season, in these and other hues. I like them so much I bought several more, and now have no less than 8 different hues from the one cultivar. The only drawback, of course, is that you have to wait until they flower if you have a specific colour in mind. Hardy and vigourous and highly recommended. 

Gold foliage for brighter gardens

Hello, fellow gardeners! Where have I been, you ask? Well, it's been a busy, busy few months, with lots of projects on the go. Now, with only 10 days til Christmas, the main deadlines are under control so I can do some catchup tasks, including updating my neglected blog. It's like that for gardeners, though, so often: during the main gardening months we're outside in our gardens, planting, weeding, harvesting, puttering, designing. Now that frost has come and things have stopped growing and we've gotten our bulbs planted (yes! I did! Before December, even!) we turn to the season of indoor gardening, which includes, of course, planning for next year.

When I was a plant science student at the Agricultural College, to see yellow in foliage often suggested a nutrient deficiency or other problem. It took me a long time to embrace the colour gold, or cream, or yellow, in ornamental plants, but here's what turned the tide for me:

Hostas. Of course it would be hostas, with their splendid foliage that utilizes only a few colours--cream, green, yellow, blue--in such dramatic ways. I love the flowers of hostas, too, but the fresh, perfect foliage is what really does it for me. They are calming plants with their tidy clumps of leaves (especially if they're slug-resistant or you've done battle to keep slugs at bay), and if you have a shady spot, they really brighten it up. It's true that deer adore hostas so if you live in an area where deer are a problem, you may have to opt for hostas only in containers out of reach of hungry bambis. 

Pretty much any plant with gold foliage is best suited for a partially shaded site; from a practical point of view, many need some protection from full sun sites because their foliage will otherwise burn. The golden colour just glows in a shaded garden, as demonstrated with this 'Dickson's Gold' campanula. 

Many gold-foliaged plants include the name 'aurea' in their botanical or cultivar names. This is a golden form of meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria 'Aurea'), which does well in dappled shade in my garden.

Because I went to the Agricultural College where the school colours were blue and gold, I do have a particular fondness for that colour combination (even when the blue is more lavender, but you get the point). This is creeping speedwell Veronica prostata 'Aztec Gold', which has been a good performer for me.

 This is the spiderwort Tradescantia 'Blue and Gold', also sometimes also called 'Sweet Kate'. It was one of the first replacement plants I purchased to put in my new garden because I so love it.

And this is Brunnera 'Diane's Gold'. I had it for several years but didn't take it with me when I left my former home, and haven't sourced it again. I miss it, as it did very well under the azalea where it was planted.

Plants that are bombastic or invasive in one area of the country (and beyond) are not necessarily so in other areas. This is Tansy 'Isla Gold', a golden leafed form of the common wildflower tansy. It is a vigourous grower but easy to control, and it's deer resistant to boot. Some like to dry the flowers to use in arrangements and wreaths. 

Sometimes, new cultivars of a perennial or shrub fail to perform up to a gardener's standards, and disappear quietly from catalogues after a couple of years. I was initially suspicious of 'Eos' geum, but it has done very well for me--I had it in my previous garden and planted it again last year in my new yard, and it grew beautifully. The bright orange flowers contrast fantastically with the gold-green foliage.

I really like weigelas, although I have yet to add any here in my new garden. When I do add one next year, it will be this golden-leafed form, 'Rubidor', which I had in the past and absolutely loved. You'll also find several other cultivars available, including 'Jean's Gold' and 'Ghost', depending on where you live, and where your nurseries source their plants.

To wrap up this post on gold foliage, I leave you with one of my favourite trees: Metasequoia 'Ogon', aka 'Gold Rush', the golden dawn redwood. The dawn redwood is a star in my books in its normal, green foliaged form, but this one leaves me breathless at its beauty. It absolutely glows, and it can take full sun, to boot.

Where do you fall on the spectrum with golden leafed plants? Love or not?

Falling into autumn...

 Suddenly, it's September 22 and I haven't posted for a month. Why is that, you ask? Well, for sure I'm always busy and never bored, but there was a lot going on in August, some of it personal in support of a friend, and given that my friends have always been there for me when I need them, I pay it forward gladly. And the days are getting shorter, and suddenly, autumn is but hours away. (Top photo is of blue leadwort, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, a terrific groundcover with gorgeous fall colour).

Autumn is not without its beauty, to be sure--some would say that the coming month or so is the most radiant in the natural world, for the explosion of foliage colour, the brilliant last blooms of the season. I agree with all that--and love the cooler night temperatures now that the worst of summer heat and humidity is gone. The shorter days, longer nights, and the knowledge of what is coming in a couple of months? Not so much.