Friday, June 20, 2008

Geranium x. oxonianum "Hollywood"

It really is amazing what people will say on the internet. For instance: "I bought 13 of these at 8 bucks a piece!"

Yes, I did. I couldn't resist Dan Hinkley's description in the 2000 Heronswood catalog:

"Extremely floriferous flowing flowers of pale pink, perfectly formed with overlapping petals, and strikingly veined with magenta, we have used this to remarkable effect as a groundcover at the base of a newly planted hedge outside my office. It was stupendous this year."

Stupendous, by which Dan clearly meant definitions 1. and 2.: "marvelous" and "amazingly large." Obviously I didn't consult the A to Z Encyclopedia which very clearly says that Hollywood grows to 3-1/2 feet by 2-1/2 feet. Sure enough, it does. See first photo.

I started giving Hollywood away the day after it arrived, and I haven't stopped. I have maybe three of the original plants, but there are more in the yard. Have you ever met a geranium that didn't love to be divided?

These photos, which I took at 9:00 at night without flash, don't show the sweet, pale ballet pink of the flowers, though the veining shows nicely in the lower photo.

No pinching is required to keep the plants in full bloom from mid-June until August; that's about when I'll cut them back to the ground -- there'll be some new growth lurking there -- and in about 3 weeks I'll get a second flush of lush foliage and flowers before the November or December frosts. Then I'll cut them back again and wait until spring. The plant in this photo is next to the front walk; after I cut it back I'll tuck a pot of whatever strikes my fancy beside it until it grows again.

These geraniums, like the others, aren't picky about their requirements. They grow and flower equally well in sun and shade -- the pink is a little darker in the shade -- and tolerate drought well. Don't water them overhead just before you have company because the water knocks them back; they'll recover in a couple hours.

The foliage of the "true" geraniums doesn't have the wonderful smell of the more tropical zonal pelargoniums that we all call geraniums. There are many, many different varieties and colors, some of them quite deep and striking but none particularly tropical. Joy Creek Nursery has a wide selection; the now-Burpee-owned Heronswood has a few too, though I haven't ordered from them since the buy-out. Pick one or two -- or even three, but certainly not thirteen, unless you have a STUPENDOUS yard.



Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Viburnum plicatum f. plicatum





In other words: Japanese snowball bush tree. It's not so crazy to think about snowball trees in June this year, when it actually did snow in May. A farmer at the Sunday Market told me last weekend that he's lost a full growing season -- four or five weeks -- because of the cool weather and lack of sunshine this year. "You never get it back," he said. And, "That's farming!"

This is the very first tree that was planted in the Gaza Strip, on the far end from "Stellar Pink." My old gardening buddy John gave it to me; he dug up a chunk from his own massive specimen and brought it over in his pickup. Ten years ago I could easily put my arms around her and she wasn't much taller than I am. Now she's about 8 feet wide and 10 feet tall. She won't get much taller but I am her personal gastric bypass surgeon: me, my shovel & my loppers will keep her from getting wider.

My friend Lisa, who lives across the river on the Peninsula, said her snowball wasn't doing so well. I wonder if it's because the water table is so high over there and it got a bit overly damp this year. Like maybe a 100 inches damp.

Snowballs can look a little scruffy after they bloom, just a big ol' hulk of a shrub tree; and they're deciduous so they're a mass of empty branches for the winter. Not something you'd want in your front yard or as a privacy screen. (You're not going to mention how I managed to plant the entire Gaza Strip with DECIDUOUS trees, are you? So that in winter there's not much more between me and my neighbors than between Brooke Shields and her Calvin Kleins?)

I tried a couple times to grow a clematis through the Snowball. I'm pretty sure the first one died from thirst; the second one must have gotten lost in the crowd -- of roots or branches.

I hope you can find a good size for a cheap price, or you have a good neighbor-friend to give you a chunk. The blooming season is at least a month long and you can see the blooms go gangbusters. The blooms start out a very pale chartreuse and become pure, pure -- yep, snow white.

Then they just disappear. At least I think they do. At least I don't remember having a tree full of ugly brown balls. Just that one fact recommends Viburnum plicatum f. plicatum.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Cornus


I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan; Part I is about the hyper-adaptive relationship between man and corn. (Did you know that the silk is the female sex organ and the tassel is the male?) If we have dinner anytime soon, I'll be having the falafel, thanks.

So, here's Cornus kousa 'Stellar Pink.' There's nothing at all stellar about the pink; in fact, it hardly shows at all.

I'm surprised at how fast this tree has grown given the generally slow growth rate of the Chinese dogwoods. This one started about 7 years ago at the basic size you'd normally get at a nursery and now it's at least 10 feet tall (it's 6' to the top of the fence).

The Gaza Strip is maybe 4' wide by 50 feet long, is parallel and about 20 feet from the back of our house, and abuts our neighbors uphill. Their yard is about six feet higher than our own; it's retained by the first rock wall I built. (Hard to believe it hasn't caved in, it was really badly built.) It gets the most southern exposure of the garden, which isn't much.

Stellar Pink is planted there and so far has grown into a graceful vase-like shape without much care. I'm lazy about watering up there and I bet I don't throw a handful of organic 5-5-5 in that direction even once a year. If I remember it right, I've cut at least one low branch off each year for the past three years. If I can remember, I'll let you know if I do it again this year.

I bought it because I thought its name meant the pink color was stellar. (I really wanted a "Satomi" but couldn't find one because Ketzel Levine had been swooning about it and there had been a run on the nursery stock.) Like most second choices it was disappointing at first -- the flowers are charming and can look like stars (or like little handkerchiefs), but they bloom above my head. I usually don't even think about it except on days like this one, when the limbs are bowed low from a soaking rain. "Hey, look: the dogwood," I say to myself. Now that I've walked into my neighbors' backyard to take a good look at it, Stellar Pink is one of the most outstanding performers in the garden. The neighbors really enjoy her act.

If you're looking to plant a dogwood, be sure to get a kousa. The so-called "Flowering Dogwood", or Cornus florida, is succumbing to anthracnose, a fungal infection that is prevalent in moist, shaded areas; it causes dieback, which at best will be cause for some nasty-looking pruning and at worst (which is usual), kill enough of the tree so that you have to cut it down. The kousas are not only a smaller tree, good for our 50x100-feet town lots, but are very disease resistant. Some are . . . okay, Stellar, and slightly Pink.