Growing (real) mandrakes!

If you are a Harry Potter fan, or just interested in folklore, you may know the mythical mandrake, a plant with roots that are supposed to scream when you pull them up, a scream that will kill anyone who hears it. Another myth has it that mandrakes only grow where the semen of a hanged man hits the ground.

Eww.

Luckily for us, cultivation of the actual factual mandrake is a great deal less difficult and dangerous. In fact it is fairly easy to grow, and they are looking lush and lovely at the nursery right now.

 It is only hardy to zone 6, so needs a sheltered spot to survive here in mid-Michigan, but otherwise the only trick is understanding how it grows. Mandrake is a winter grower -- plants are just putting up lush and beautiful leaves now, leaves which will stay up all winter, followed by rather pretty flowers and fruit in the spring, and then it goes totally dormant in the summer. This makes it pretty much impossible to sell at a regular nursery, because any time people are shopping, it looks like it is dead. But come fall, up it pops again, without fail.

Frustrating as this backwards growth cycle is for us a nursery, it makes it a terrific garden plant. Because it grows in the winter, it does beautifully under deciduous trees, soaking up the sun while the leaves are down, and it is terrific interplanted with normal perennials like hostas, because right when the hostas are going down for the fall, leaving the garden barren, up pops the mandrake to look beautiful all winter. Pretty magical.
And, of course, you can show it to all your Harry Potter obsessed friends and make them horribly jealous, which is pretty magical as well.
We've got a few for sale: http://www.arrowheadalpines.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65_182&products_id=7026

Delosperma update: The field narrows

Back in May, I posted about my experiments with trying to kill delospermas. I planted out entire collection out during the summer of 2012, in our native sandy soil, but no special conditions like raised beds or anything else. My goal was to see what THRIVES here in Michigan with no extra effort, so I just plopped two plant of each variety in the ground and waited to see what happened.

In May, I reported that 11 species had come through the winter just fine -- over half of what I had planted out to begin with. Which was more than I expected. I was surprised to find that over the summer many more bit the dust. We're now down to just 5. We had a summer that was slightly on the rainy and cool side, but nothing extreme. I never would have guessed it would kill so many delospermas. But it has, leaving me with a narrowing field of the very best delospermas for the Michigan garden. Here are the survivors, with pictures of what they look like today, with my comments:

Delosperma 'Firespinner'

This CLEARLY wins the vigor contest. This was a little, MAYBE 2 inch across plant just one year ago, and now the patch has spread to nearly two feet across. Way to large and aggressive for a rock garden or other small garden, but if you want a vigorous tough ground covering delosperma, this is the one I'd recommend. The flowers are stunning red-orange bicolor. (Sorry, we don't have this listed in the catalog yet, but should have some ready for sale by spring. If not, you shouldn't have trouble finding it for sale... everyone is growing this beauty.)

Delosperma ecklonis v. latifolia

Coming in a close second on the vigor department, this one has gone from two inches to a foot and half in just one year. Typical bright magenta flowers, heavy blooming in the early summer, with quite decent rebloom. As you can see, it hasn't quite given up flowering now, in NOVEMBER, despite quite a dose of freezing weather.

Delosperma deleeuwiae (possibly actually D. neill)

Delosperma 'Broncoensis'

Delosperma 'Lesotho Pink'

Not much practical difference between these three... all spread from their original ~2 inches to 6 or 8 inches, intense magenta flowers. Most of the plants in the garden suffered some die back in the centers of the clump, which gives them a bit of a patchy look. 'Broncoensis' is probably the best looking plant of the bunch (Note: we don't have this in the catalog at the moment. Stand by, we should have some ready to list soon.) and better for a small space than 'Firespinner' or D. ecklonis.

Delosperma nubigenum (this name may be incorrect...)

This is one of my favorites. The plant stayed quite small and tight, barely getting to 4 inches from the original 2 inch plant, which means this would be terrific in a rock garden or container garden. Yellow flowers, which is always a nice change from the typical delosperma magenta, and the foliage is taking on this lovely red flush as we're getting into fall. Apparently turning red in the fall is normal for most delospermas in sunnier climes like Denver, but here, where fall is cloudy and rainy, it is the only one really worth looking at.

Report from the trial beds: Delosperma overwintering

Last summer, I took an unused section of the nursery and turned it into what we're calling the trial beds. The idea is to set out big sections of our collection side-by-side so visitors to the nursery can easily see what they look like in the ground, compare different species and cultivars, and get an instant education on groups of cool plants they might not have ever heard of.

Here is what they looked like just getting started last summer. The first bed has our entire collections of dracocephalum, scutellaria, teucrium (about a dozen species of each), along with some dwarf gypsophila and onosmas. The second bed is our entire collection of Penstemon (clocking in at no fewer than 45 different species and varieties... Yeah. That is a lot.) and the third, not finished in this photo, has asperula, erodiums, and delospermas. Three more beds will hopefully get planted up this summer. (Got a genus or group of plants you'd be curious to see grown out this way? Let me know in the comments and I might be persuaded to put them in for you.)

If you are local, I hope you'll come by and check them out over the course of the summer -- I think they're going to be pretty darn cool. But, since most of you AREN'T local, I'm going to try and give regular reports on what I'm seeing in the trial beds here on the blog.
First up, Delosperma overwintering. Most of the varieties of delosperma we grow are supposed to be hardy. And most of them ARE, provided they are kept nice and dry. Cold doesn't usually kill them, but winter wet certainly does. So I was interested to see what could actually make it through our wet Michigan winter. We do have very sandy soil at Arrowhead, which helps enormously (don't expect this sort of overwintering success if you have heavy clay) but as you can see, these aren't raised beds or rock gardens to give extra good drainage.

So, here are the survivors:

Delosperma eckolonis v. latifolia
D. cooperi 'Dwarf' (Note that the normal D. cooperi did NOT survive)
D. 'Firespinner' (so excited about this one... gorgeous in flower. I'll share later once they start blooming)
D. sphalmanthoides
D. basuticum
D. aff. nubigeanum (If you are unfamiliar with "aff." if basically means that is the name the plant came with, but we're not sure that is really what it is. Honestly we could probably put that on almost ALL the delospermas... Notoriously mixed up in the trade, and hard to figure out if you are not an expert in the genus. Which I'm not.)
D. aff. congestum
D. 'Broncoensis'
D. congestum 'Gold Nugget'
D. deleeuwiae
D. 'Lesoto Pink'

This is, honestly, a much longer list than I was expecting, over half of the plants I put in the ground! It is only data from one winter, of course, but it was a fairly cold winter. Temperatures dropped to -10 F and STAYED there for a few days, with almost no snow cover, in the process killing more than a few plants that had been hardy in the garden for years. Arrowhead sits just on the edge of zone 5 and zone 6 on the new USDA hardiness map, which means that around -10F has been our average winter low for the past 30 years, so this was a fairly representative winter, though of course we can get much colder... there was the year of -26 F, but hopefully we won't see that again for a long time.

I took pictures of all the surviving plants, but honestly they all pretty much look like this one of 'Gold Nugget'

Not much to see at the moment. But I'll follow up with pictures of each of the survivors once they start flowering, and hopefully keep tabs on them on and off through the summer so you can see how they spread, and which ones rebloom.

Spring Preview

We've had a cold, slow start to spring here in Michigan, which honestly, I'm trying not to complain, it is better than last year when we hit 80 in March and then everything froze and got destroyed. But, I still get impatient. Luckily, we have greenhouses. We keep the cool, but warm enough to get a few weeks jump start on spring, and OH is that ever nice! I love all the things flowering right now... sadly, because we're not open for retail this time of year, customers rarely get to see them. So, I'll share them with you now.

I'm currently NUTS about the allionii primrose group. They're gorgeous, TINY little primroses that bloom super early. Like their close kin (and another of my favorites), the xpubescens group, they like good drainage and full sun. The allioniis aren't quite as bullet proof as the xpubescens, but they're still very growable and insanely gorgeous.

Primula minima... frilled, lavender flowers, and a slight sweet scent. Adore.

Primula allionii 'Viscountess Byng' Does it GET any cuter?

Primula 'Lismore Yellow' Great color and a vigorous grower, eventually forming big clumps

Helleborus are, of course, a wonderful early-spring bloomer. I love the massive flowers and bright colors of the newest hybrids, but I'm also really enjoying the more delicate, refined beauty of the wild species helleborus. 

Helleborus odorus Green, almost yellow flowers. To me they are quite fragrant, but about half the people I've told that too don't detect a scent at all.

Helleborus purpurascens Perfectly refined, elegant flowers,  and a lovely shade of bright green on the inside.

 Corydalis solida is another favorite... It is a little bulb that should be as common as crocuses. It seeds around like wild, but who CARES when it gives you jaunty, delicate bright blooms about the same time as crocuses, and then goes dormant so fast it never competes with other plants?

The hoop petticoat group of daffodils is usually represented in catalogs by Narcissus bulbocodium. Which is a shame since it is just about the least beautiful of the group. Here, Narcissus romieuxii shows us how it is REALLY done. Stunning plant, and very vigorous for us, though it needs a sheltered spot to overwinter reliably in zone 5.

Hepatica is one of my favorite wildflowers... So early, so delicate looking and yet so tough! This is our selection of H. nobilis we just call 'Dark Magenta' For obvious reasons. Usually I'm not a fan of this color, but this one REALLY does it for me. Just gorgeous.

Finally what would spring be without the anticipation of more? SEEDLINGS!!! Pure happiness.

Still looking good

Here in Michigan, we spend a lot of time with it being winter. I'm not opposed to that -- it is a quiet, restful time, and I like the break. But I still want the garden to look good. So the other day I took the camera out and walked around the Arrowhead Gardens to see what was still gorgeous despite the dark, gray time of year.

First up, Daphnes!

The wonderful 'Audrey Vochins' is STILL flowering. Which is a bit crazy.We've had weather, but still, dropped well into the low 20s. But still flowering. Daphnes are amazing.

Even without flowers, 'Lawrence Crocker' looks great

As does this collection of Daphne xhendersonii varieties, combines with a Thymus 'Lemon Variegated' and the spectacular bark of Pinus bungeana.

In the rock garden, all the dianthus look wonderful

Globularia nana is a green carpet creeping between rocks... can't wait for the lavender flowers come spring. Also can't wait for the cuttings I stuck to get big enough that we can list this gem in the catalog again...

I can't get enough of the spreading silver gorgeousness that is Teucrium 'Mrs. Milstead'

Moving into the shade gardens, Paxistima is a wonderful, underused evergreen ground cover. It takes heat, dry, and cold without complaint and always looks precisely perfect.

Helleborus foetidus is my very favorite of the genus... Admittedly, the flowers aren't that showy, but that FOLIAGE! This is 'Wester Flisk' which has a lovely reddish flush to the leaves in the winter that contrasts to perfection with the chartreuse of the emerging flower spike. We're busy propagating it, people... stand by.

You know by now that I'm obsessed with Cyclamen hederifolium... Can't get enough of them!

Acorus gramineus 'Minima Aurea' is a new obsession of mine. A tiny little grass-like plant with bright gold foliage that can take partial shade... This is a little one I just put in the gardens by the parking lot, hasn't filled in yet, so it looks a bit ratty, but I LOVE the color. And love that it is still that color now.

Finally, a promise of spring... knobby little flower buds on the witch hazel!

Psycho for cyclamen

I'm nuts about hardy cyclamen. How nuts? Well... Here is a picture of a shirt my oldest brother made for me one Christmas when I was 16 or so.

Yeah... I was so obsessed with cyclamen and wouldn't stop talking about them so he made me this shirt... It is rather faded with age, but I still love it -- and cyclamen!

C. coum was my first love, because it flowers so incredibly early (the same time as snowdrops for me). Like most gardeners, my love of flowers was soon overtaken by an obsession with foliage. Which C. coum also does pretty darn well.

But C. coum, as lovely as it is, now decidedly takes second place to C. hederifolium

Now THAT is pretty epic foliage diversity!

Not only does the amount and pattern of silver vary wildly, leaf shape is crazy too. I love the long leaf forms we've got at Arrowhead. Stock is low at the moment, but I've sown a massive amount of seed, and we should have more before too long.

C. hederifolium wins for me also for its performance in the garden. C. coum is hardy, but never seems to really thrive for me, while C. hederifolium gets beefy and happy and even seeds around a little.

The flowers are pretty epic as well, coming up in huge numbers in the early fall just before the leaves.

White is even better than the normal pink, to my taste anyway.

Most excitingly, to me anyway, we've for some really cool new cyclamen forms coming along here at Arrowhead... Looking through a seedling batch of C. hederifolium, I spotted a few individuals that show a distinct PINK flush to their leaf surfaces!

Admittedly, the pink color isn't that extreme yet, but if this is what is just popping up from open pollinated seed from our stock plants, I'm very hopefully that a little focused breeding and selection will be able to produce a whole new class of brilliant pink flushed C. hederifolium. Stand by! They're going to be all kinds of awesome.

Also cool this year is this C. coum seedling with MASSIVE leaves! Normal sized leaves are at the top for comparison... I'm hoping the flowers are similarly jumbo, and that it comes true from seed. We shall see.

Finally, there is the one that got away...

How incredibly kick ass is this VARIEGATED C. coum? Sadly, it is also incredibly dead. :( That is the depressing bit about variegated plants... they can be easy to kill, hard to propagate, and once gone, there's no way to bring them back. I'm look through every seedling batch of C. coum carefully, hoping against hope that this gorgeous thing will rear its head again, but chances are it won't... Ah well. We can always dream.

Exploring Erodium

I'm getting all geeked about the genus Erodium. Previously, I'd never really thought much about them, I'd sort of mentally classified them as being basically like Pelargonium, and assumed they wouldn't survive the winter.

How much I had to learn.

 First I noticed this incredible flower on E. cheilanthifolium and fell a little bit in love.

Then I saw this massive patch of Erodium chrysanthum's gorgeous silver, ferny foliage in one of the rock gardens here at Arrowhead and realized, wait... at least some of these things are hardy!

And with that, a new love affair had begun. I'm still a novice Erodio-phile, so please chime in if you know more about any of these, or know other species that I should be growing!

Firstly, since you just saw the foliage, these are the flowers of E. chrysanthum. Yum. The palest, palest possible yellow. It gives a sprinkling of flowers in the spring, and follows it up with another one now-and-again throughout the summer. Though frankly, with that foliage, who needs flowers? Totally hardy at Arrowhead.

Almost all the erodiums, like this wee little baby E. glandulosum I just planted in the Arrowhead trial garden, have a distinctive growth habit, with a tidy little mass of leaves at the base, and then then flowers dancing gracefully at the end of long stems well above the leaves. I absolutely love the look, especially since the flowers move gracefully with the slightest breeze. It is, however, devilishly hard to photograph. So I resorted to pulling bits off the plants and laying them on the ground.

Here's E. glandulosum (left) and E. cheilanthifolium (right) I love both of them very very much. Chelianthifolium's coloring is a bit more dramatic, but is reportedly only hardy to zone 6, while E. glandulosum is supposed to be hardy all the way to zone 4. I'm really hoping that zone 6 is an underestimate. I've planted some outside, and we'll see if I can prove them to be hardy here in zone 5. Both of these are good bloomers, with a heavy flush in the spring, and periodic flowering throughout the summer.

This is the hot pink trio I am having trouble telling apart. From left to right, E. maniscovii, E. circutarium, and E. carvifolium. Though each species has slightly different flowers and foliage, the over-all effect is the same. Ferny leaves topped with a constant supply of vivid magenta flowers. E. maniscovii and E. carvifolium are both reported as only hardy to zone 6, though the big plants of E. maniscovii in the garden here at Arrowhead tells another at-least-zone-5-hardy story. E. circutarium is supposed to be an annual... which makes me think that what we have as that at Arrowhead must be something else altogether, because out plants are certainly several years old. I appreciate the steady flowering of these species, but I don't love them... a bit coarse and ill-bred. And magenta. Not my favorite color.

So how about a big dose of cuteness? E. chamaedryoides 'Charm' is perhaps the more adorable little plant in the history of the universe. 

Little teeny-tiny baby pink flowers dancing just above a perfect tight little mound of dense green foliage. 

The double form, 'Flora Plena' is nice too, but nice quite as graceful. The plants in these photos are from the production greenhouses at Arrowhead, and you could literally walk in any day since March and see plants looking exactly like that. Hot, dry, cold, wet, nothing seems to phase them, they just keep on blooming.The bad news? They're not quite as hardy as the rest. Not reliable here in zone 5 Michigan, though they'll come through a mild winter or in a nice sheltered, well-drained spot. I think I'm going to try to overwinter some inside on the windowsill this year as well. They are so tiny and easy going it shouldn't be hard, and it is hard to imagine a houseplant that could lift the winter doldrums more than these little nuggets.

So. That's everything I know about my latest plant crush. What do you think? Any favorites you love that I'm missing?