Plants From My Garden

[parvi_17]

I love the tree peony!
Do you give it winter protection even though it is a mature plant?

I just bought two tree peonies for container planting. I will be putting it into my garage for dormancy. I can't get the one I put into the ground to grow well.

What tree peony? I only posted two lactiflora (herbaceous) peonies. I tried a tree peony a few years ago and it died. I've been meaning to try again but haven't got to it. I have a few Itoh peonies (herbaceous x tree) and find that they are much hardier, but just as beautiful.

 

[smartie2000]

oh!! i c

I got a Paeonia suffruticosa 'Houki' and a 'Koukamon'
'Houki' I bought because I got lucky and found a small blooming size one, there was a bud but it blasted. But a bud hints that it is ready.

I put it into a huge plastic tree pot and then put that into a Chinese ceramic container.

Your white peony 'Moon of Nippon' resembles that of a japanese tree peony, haha easier to keep those than a tree peony.

I believe the Japanese started breeding for lower flower petals at some point, after the imported plants from China. The Chinese ones are larger with many petals. Tree peonies are hard to come by and I have never seen one in bloom. Maybe eventually I will find a Chinese cultivar and not Japanese ones.

I also have a old and big herbaceous peony, but it is a noid. It is a deep pink.
Next year I will have some labelled young peonies bloom. I made the mistake of planting a herbaceous one too deep.

 

[Kevin]

Hole's.

I hadn't heard of that one before, so I thought it was quite rare or new. I thought maybe you ordered it from a specialty place.

 

[parvi_17]

I hadn't heard of that one before, so I thought it was quite rare or new. I thought maybe you ordered it from a specialty place.

Hole's is the only place I know of where you can get it. It came out about 4 years ago I think, but I couldn't get one until last year as they sold out very quickly each year. This is its second year in my garden.

 

[smartie2000]

I need to find a yellow peony eventually. I don't think there are very many, and I bet they would be valuable. Your Paeonia x 'Kopper Kettle' has some warmer, part yellow tones. I am jealous

 

[parvi_17]

I need to find a yellow peony eventually. I don't think there are very many, and I bet they would be valuable. Your Paeonia x 'Kopper Kettle' has some warmer, part yellow tones. I am jealous

They are definitely uncommon. If my Kopper Kettle would have been a Bartzella like it was supposed to be, it would have been a double/semi-double yellow. Bartzella is probably the best yellow peony you can get. I have an Itoh called 'Going Bananas' that is a semi-double yellow. I bought it in flower earlier this season, but didn't take a photo. Another one you can get is P. mlokosewitchsii, often called "molly the witch". It is a single yellow species. Quite rare, but you can get it if you know where . It's not the hardiest or easiest peony to grow, though. I haven't bought one of them yet, but I will soon enough!

The flowers on that Kopper Kettle, btw, are now showing much more yellow. I'll try to remember to take another photo tomorrow.

 

[parvi_17]

Alright, for today's update:

Opuntia polyacantha, plains prickly pear cactus. Native to southern Alberta. This plant is a no-brainer must-have for anyone who lives in a drier climate. It needs no care whatsoever and looks really cool! The flowers are followed by edible berries which I have never tasted.



More martagon lilies:

'Mrs. R.O. Backhouse'



The species L. martagon



L. martagon f. album



'Attiwaw'



As these are all planted together in a large mass planting, when you walk by them their perfume is delightful.

 

[KyushuCalanthe]

Great set of lilies Joe. I love 'Mrs. R.O. Backhouse' - what an odd name!

 

[smartie2000]

Aweet collection! I love them all, esp. 'Mrs. R.O. Backhouse'. I have a good collection of lilies, but none like the ones with downward facing blooms.
All mine are asianic lilies. These are more north american?

 

[parvi_17]

Aweet collection! I love them all, esp. 'Mrs. R.O. Backhouse'. I have a good collection of lilies, but none like the ones with downward facing blooms.
All mine are asianic lilies. These are more north american?

The martagon lilies are derived from European and Asian species, including Ll. martagon, hansonii, tsingtauense, medeoloides, and distichum. They are very hardy plants that do better in part shade than in sun, and prefer a moderately moist soil. They form large clumps eventually with little special care/maintenance. They just don't like to be disturbed. As they start blooming in late June usually, by planting them with other lilies (Asiatics, Orientals, etc.) you can have lilies blooming almost the whole summer! My Asiatics, at least, will not start blooming for another week or so (by which time the martagons will be nearing the end of their season), and the Orientals and trumpets will start in about 3 weeks, lasting well into August.

 

[parvi_17]

Some more pics, taken this morning (it is overcast, so some photos didn't turn out that great):

Lilium 'Landini' is the first of my Asiatic lilies to bloom this year. It is one of the darkest reds available. Asiatics are the most reliable lilies for garden cultivation in my area. They are very hardy, and tolerate a wide variety of soil conditions, as well as brief periods of drought.



One of several specimens of Allium cernuum, nodding onion, growing in my garden. It's not the showiest Allium, but as a native species it is very easy to grow, and I like it.



Some unknown cultivar of Delphinium I got at a plant exchange. I think it might be a variety from the New Millennium series. This is the first year I haven't had problems with Delphinium worm, which usually ruins my plants before they start blooming. I was considering removing all the Delphiniums from my garden because of it.



Hemerocallis 'Siloam Double Classic'. This is currently my favorite daylily. The flowers are sweetly fragrant. It's also a Trophytaker Daylily (marketed by Valleybrook Gardens/Heritage Perennials here). Enough said!



This is a rose my Grandma planted when I was a little guy. I don't know what variety it is. It blooms very profusely though! However, I'm just not a big fan of semi-double roses.



Corydalis 'Berry Exciting' is what I call a "perfect" plant - it creates its own color contrast between flowers and foliage.



A crappy photo of Corydalis sempervirens, or pink corydalis, a native species of my area. If this is a perennial, it's a very short-lived one. I bought a big one last year, and it seeded, but did not come back this year. Now these little seedlings are popping up and starting to flower. As they are much smaller than the mother plant was, I'm thinking they must be at least biennial. Certainly very pretty though!



Corydalis aurea, golden corydalis, is another native species, and like C. sempervirens it is an annual or biennial. The original mother plant was rescued from the same place and on the same "mission" as my Amerorchis rotundifolia, and it did not come back the following year but self seeded prolifically, and the seedlings then seeded as well. I now have these plants growing across my garden, and I really like them. None of them have ever reached the huge size of the original plant though...



I will post more photos later on, when I have more time.

 

[KyushuCalanthe]

The Corydalis are some of my favorites - long since past flowering here though. That dephinium is a beauty too!

 

[SlipperFan]

I have the last one -- I was told it's common name is yellow bleeding heart. It spreads like mad!

 

[parvi_17]

I have the last one -- I was told it's common name is yellow bleeding heart. It spreads like mad!

The Corydalis are very closely related to bleeding hearts, but true bleeding hearts are of the genus Dicentra. These certainly do spread if you let them seed! As of yet they haven't become a huge problem for me - I have far worse weed problems to worry about...

 

[parvi_17]

More photos from yesterday...

The first flower on my Incarvillea olgae:



Aster conspicuus, showy aster. This is a native species, one of several native Aster species in my garden. It flowers very profusely from midsummer until frost, and so far has proven not to be a spreader. I love it!



Penstemon hirsutus var. pygmaeus is a trailing species with very pretty flowers. I thought this one had died (it emerged late), so I bought a huge new one this year. I hope to have them trailing over rocks in my rock garden.



Hemerocallis fulva, orange daylily, is a plant that everyone and their dog has around here. It is an introduced species from Europe, and can prove to be a bit of a nuissance spreader. It's also inferior to today's commercially available daylily cultivars. I have removed many of these plants from my garden, but have retained a few. They are among the very few plants that existed here when we moved in 18 years ago.



The flowers of a hens and chicks (Sempervivum sp.). Many people actually remove the flowers, but I like them.



And now for some foliage pics.

First is my Korean maple (Acer pseudosieboldianum), which I just planted this June. It has similar foliage and growth habit to Japanese maple (A. palmatum), but is hardier, though still only borderline hardy in my region. The leaves turn red and burnt orange in fall.



Here's a contrast created by the foliage of silver mound sage (Artemisia schmidtiana, left) and Goldilocks elder (Sambucus racemosa 'Goldilocks', right). The sage has to be sheared back in the summer to retain its neat, rounded shape, or else it goes bare in the center. The elder is a really neat little shrub that can be pruned for a bonsai effect. The leaves look like dissected/cutleaf Japanese maple (Acer palmatum f. dissectum), but this shrub is actually hardy in my region.



Another hardy shrub with a Japanese maple effect is Black Lace elder (Sambucus nigra 'Eva'). I say "hardy", but it actually almost dies back to the ground here most winters, if it's not in a really protected location. However, it comes back from the ground, and usually gets about 4-5 feet tall by the end of the season. It's one of my favorite shrubs.

 

[SlipperFan]

Nice foliage contrasts. You must have a beautiful garden!

I'm glad the Corydalis spreads like mad -- the foliage is pretty, and the plant is quite small, so it make a lovely filler plant.

 

[parvi_17]

Nice foliage contrasts. You must have a beautiful garden!

I'm glad the Corydalis spreads like mad -- the foliage is pretty, and the plant is quite small, so it make a lovely filler plant.

Well the majority of the garden was not planned but is rather a collection of individual plants placed wherever they would grow (like an English garden). Some of the newer plantings were done with some purpose, giving them deliberate contrasts in colors and textures, and also some flow. Only one bed (the one with the sage and elders) do I consider acceptable. I'll show a picture of it when the Ligularia start blooming. The rest of the garden I'm still working on. As I only live on a little city lot, with 200 varieties of perennials crammed into the space, you can imagine the garden is quite busy, as most of those varieties are represented by only a single plant. It's not a big, wide open space with plants spread out tastefully, it's a small space with a ton of plants crammed in close together. I also have an ongoing war with weeds, which I am having a difficult time winning because much of the ground is recently dug and the neighbors (and nearby construction sites) do not control their weeds.

So... the garden looks great when I show pictures of individual plants maybe, but if I were to post pics of the whole garden, it would be horrifying.

I agree with you on the Corydalis. If they were the only "weeds" I had to control, I'd be a happy man.

 

[biothanasis]

Great pictures!

 

[parvi_17]

Some Asiatic lilies in bloom this week...

L. 'Orange Electric'



'Latvia'



'Orange Pixie'



'Cappuccino'



'Red Classic'



'Cancun'



'Mount Duckling'

 

[Kevin]

Nice. My Lativa just finished.