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!

My own tropical paradise

For less than $1000, I get to take a vacation from winter just by walking out the back door and into my greenhouse. I only keep it heated to just above freezing, but one days when we have any sun at all, it quickly soars up to 70 or 80 degrees, and I go out, strip down to t-shirt and shorts, and enjoy the warmth and growing things. Even in rainy days like today, it is a soul-soothing respite from all the grey and brown outside.

It is full of a random mix of plants,  bunches of not-quite-hardy things I'm over wintering, lots of good things to eat, and just random things to make me happy.

Lettuce couldn't be happier. I've never grown great lettuce in the garden, it always bolts and gets bitter, but the cool temperatures and short days are making this the most beautiful, delicious lettuce I've ever grown, by far.

 I'm loving having loads of fresh herbs, including rosemary, parsley, thyme, and this yummy cilantro

And of course, some flowers. Pansies, I think, were meant to be grown in greenhouses. I've got pansies outdoors too, but their flowers are all beaten down into the mud by the rain, while these are pristine, fragrant, and wonderful.

Now I'm wondering why I waited so long to build one... seriously, for less than the cost of a vacation to Florida, you could have this too. Why doesn't everyone have a greenhouse?

It worked! Effortless bulb forcing!

A little over a year ago, I read that Iris reticulata doesn't require a cold period to flower. I got all excited, and planned to try growing them indoors for effortless winter color, but it was too late and I couldn't find them for sale anywhere.
So this fall, I bought a couple bags. I kept forgetting to pot them up, but in early January I stuck them in a pot, and put them in a sunny windowsill.

This afternoon, I came home and saw a few bits of purple blue:

I instantly ran in closer to soak up the pure joy...

And then started trying to take artsy backlit pictures

In short: It works! I have glorious fragrant irises blooming while there is a good six inches of snow outside, and they were no work whatsoever. As easy as paper whites or amaryllis, but without the need to stake or douse with alcohol to keep them from falling over. I think these are my new favorite bulb for winter flowers! Next year I'm going to buy oodles of them and start planting them up earlier so I can have them all winter.

Winter Interest

I've become completely converted to the idea that the best winter interest in my climate is house plants. And at the moment perhaps my favorite houseplant is the bromelias Bilbergia pyramidalis 'Striata' I grew it outside last summer, where it was perfectly happy. Brought it inside to cool temperatures and pretty low light (an east window, with lots of other plants blocking the sun) and it has kept on growing -- seemingly unfazed by me forgetting to water it. I'd grow it for the bold, vase-shaped, yellow-striped foliage alone, but come mid-winter, it thrilled me with a flower spike covered with bright pink bracts:

Which opens to reveal delicate purpley blue flowers

Easy, lovely, winter flowering... what more could you want? Now I want to collect the whole genus...

Winter flowers

Most of the plants in my house every winter are things I've trying to overwinter for the garden next year. I don't generally expect them to do much or look pretty -- just stay alive. It was with that in mind that I brought in a pot of Solanum seaforthianum. With the common name of Brazilian Nightshade, I didn't really expect it to be too happy with my cool (56F/13 C at night , 64F/18C during the day) house. But sitting close to a east-facing window, and getting watered when I remember it, it seems to be quite happy, vining all around everything else clustered at the window and producing rather charming little clusters of purple flowers

Here are some rather happily posed in front of my favorite begonia, 'Little Brother Montgomery'

And another cluster getting some back-lit action by my variegated agave.


Who wouldathunk? I think I like it better as a winter flowering houseplant than I did in the garden last summer!

Friday cartoon: Snow is pretty but...

Snow is pretty but...

Friday Cartoon: Color Contrast

I love winter. I love snow. A lot. This is one of the reasons why.

My Top 5 Gardening Books

Genevieve is asking garden bloggers to list their top 5 gardening books -- just in time for winter book season!


Here is my list: 


The Explorer's Garden by Dan Hinkley
There are actually two of these -- one on perennials, one on shrubs and vines. Both are amazing, but I have a personal love for the first one, on perennials, because that was the book I stumbled upon as a beginning gardener who grew nothing but roses (for SOME insane reason) and that book opened up for me this whole other universe of growing, loving and collecting plants. To me, this book contains the magical essence of gardening as a passion, as a way of life. 


Gardening on Pavement, Tables, and Hard Surfaces by George Schenk
Okay. Just read that title. What? Gardening on tables? Hard surfaces? What does it mean? Don't get this book from the library, but buy your own copy, because it will blow your mind right out of your nose and all over the page, and librarians frown on this. Container gardening without the container. Floating table top gardens. Lawn you can roll up like a carpet. 


My Garden (Book) by Jamaica Kincaid
This book takes you right inside Jamaica Kincaid's mind while she gardens, and what you find there is a wild, exhilarating, poetic, funny, moving, swirl of images, stories, ideas, plants, and places. Which is a terrible description, but this book is indescribable. And wonderful.


A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein
The subtitle to this book is "Towns Buildings Construction." So... why is it in my list of top gardening books? Because good design is good design, and these principles are universal. An example: I just flipped my copy open at random, and this is what I read: "Do not be tricked into believing that modern decor must be slick or psychedelic or 'natural' or 'modern art' or 'plants' or anything else that current taste-makers claim. It is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life -- the things you care for, the things that tell your story." There are over a thousand pages of truths like that. Go dig in. You'll garden -- and live -- differently for it.


Merry Hall by Beverly Nichols
I've reviewed this book before so I won't say too much, except: This is a must for any gardener. It captures so perfectly the JOY of gardening, the sheer bliss of this most wonderful of passions. 


So that's my list! What are you five favorites?

Friday cartoon: Winter activities

We've had our first snowfall, and I'm settling in for the winter...

Winter Color Revisited

The snow is finally melting, and all of us Northern gardeners are giddy with joy, and we're all posting about the very same set of plants: Snowdrops, crocuses, witch hazel and helleborus.

Except me.

This post is about an entirely different set of plants.

Back in December I took a stroll through the gardens at Michigan State, and wrote about plants for winter color -- so I thought I would revisit those plants now, and see what I'm thinking.

Some things are decidedly out: The ornamental kale now looks like this:

And smells like rotten cabbage. Yuck. Yuck. Ugh. These might be good plants for a milder climate, but this is NOT what I want to see when the snow first melts.
Another looser are the deciduous hollies -- they looked stunning in December, but every berry is now long gone. They are nice for fall/early winter, but don't go the distance to early spring -- and the same is true of every other berry in the gardens. They simply don't last long enough to qualify for real winter interest.

The winners:

Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard'

This is amazing color anytime -- but for March in Michigan, it is unbelievable. Looks just as bright as it did in the fall.

Sedum rupestre 'Angelina'

The it a LOT of color for something that was under 6 inches of snow just a couple days ago! And wouldn't it be stunning with deep purple crocuses coming up through it?

I'm also still loving: This ornamental grass (whatever it is... I should know, but I'm terrible with my grasses. ID anyone?)

And Sedum 'Autumn Joy' (even though it IS over used, I'm impressed with how it stands up to the amount of snow we get here)

So I'm starting to put together a winter/early spring garden in my head: A backdrop of evergreen conifers, a swath of ornamental grass, and red-twig dogwood, lots of Yucca 'Color Guard' fronted with 'Autumn Joy' and 'Angelina' peppered with splashes of purple crocus and dwarf iris. Wouldn't that be marvelous? What would you add?

Bloom Day

Bloom day is destroying my life. I always force bulbs during the winter, so I had a pot of dwarf irises which just finished flowering a couple weeks ago, and I have a pot a hyacinths which are just about to bloom, as you can see in this picture:

Normally I would be perfectly happy with this: Flowering bulbs for most of the winter is a good thing, and a week or two between one finishing and another starting is perfect.

But NOW, thanks to Carol and bloom day, I'm just frustrated that neither of them decided to bloom for the 15th!

Luckily, this little african violet in my office comes to my rescue:

Which is hardly surprising -- it pretty much is ALWAYS flowering. It seems all they really need is warmth -- when I had it in my house, which I like to keep cold in the winter, it pouted all the time. Brought it into my overheated office at school/work, and it is as happy as can be -- even if I don't water it for weeks at a time (persisting lack of water does stop the flowering, but it picks up again as soon as I stop neglecting it.)

And with that: I've survived the last of the truely difficult bloom days -- next month, I should have crocuses, aconite, witch hazel, and snowdrops, and I'll be good until November -- and next winter, I'll be prepared. I'm going to force SO many bulbs next winter I won't have room in the fridge for anything else.

Window sill make-over, part 2

As I have been talking about, I have a goal of redesigning the inside of my house as a garden.

This past weekend, I tackled the long window in the living room:

It is a fairly narrow window sill, with a couch right in front of it -- so about my only option would be a row of little pots all along the windowsill. Which seemed... lame. A whole bunch of little pots would be silly looking, and the windowsill isn't wide enough to make them really stable. I'd have to end up buying nice looking ceramic ones, which the cats would end up knocking off and breaking.

I explained my quandry to my extremely handy partner. He's not a plant person, but he knows building things. We took a little trip to the local home improvement warehouse, and hey presto, he made me this:

 

A water-proof metal tray, to make watering mess-free, faced with a piece of trim, so when you put plants in there, you don't see the (cheap, plastic) pots, just the greenery -- and it cost a total of about $10. (Yes, I know how lucky I am to have him.)
The planted up result looks like this:

Which I am pretty happy about. I'm in love with the planter box -- makes even this fairly uninspired combination of random plants I had around (mostly Ficus pumila, plus the odd aeonium, kalanchoe and philodendron) look pretty nice. I'm also planning, next winter, to force a lot of small bulbs (dwarf iris, crocus, etc) in 4 inch pots, so I can slip them in between the trailing fig as they come into bloom. Some small cyclamen would look good too (and yes, I keep my house very cool, so they'll be happy) if I can find some that aren't magenta. Magenta, fuchsia, and all allied screaming purply-pink colors are absolutely NOT allowed in my garden, inside or out.

Anyone have other ideas of good plants for this spot? They need to be fine with an east-facing window, not too big, and ideally winter flowering -- and NOT magenta.Oh, and don't say african violets. Way too cold in the house for gesneriads. They live in my overheated office at work/school.

Gardening indoors: A much improved window

I'm all keen to get more house plants (even if, as my brother mentioned, this is more of a return to a former interest than anything entirely new) as you recall. So: I went to Van Atta's, our local good, basic (but not really inspired: They have nice, high quality plants but rarely any "I never knew that existed, but now I NEED it" plants) garden center, and looked at house plants. I came home with three: An unknown begonia, a Dracaena with freakishly awesome variegation ('Lemon Surprise' I am thinking, but possibly 'Lemon Lime') and Chlorophytum 'Fire Flash'

Here is the window before:

And After:

(I'm basing my before and after shots for this project on weight-loss advertisements. Before shots taken so as to maximize ugliness (at night, with the flash) and after shots taken to maximize prettiness (all back lit and glow-y).)

While I was trying to photograph it, Smudge decided to come "help"

He later knocked the chlorophytum over.  Hopefully it is tough enough to take it, because I am utterly enamored by it. What a great shade of orange. I think I'll remove a lower leaf or two to show it off better. The only thing I have doubts about is the begonia -- most begonias are fussy, though some are also virtually impossible to kill. We'll see what class this one falls into. I also wonder if it will get enough light there, in front of the other two. If it starts looking miserable I'll have to track down a better dark-leaved plant for that spot.

Ewww...

The snow is starting to melt a little, and walking through the gardens at MSU I noticed the ornamental kale I had admired back in December.

Not looking so admirable now...Still alive, I give them that, but the lower leaves looking like used toilet paper isn't exactly appealing.
We'll see. I already ordered seeds for the variety Redbor, so I might as well grow it. If it turns hideous in January too, I can always rip it out.

Gardening inside

Here is a time line of the events leading up to today's post. (photos are of most of the windows in my house. The reason for that will become apparent.)

1/15/2010: Carol, as always, hosts Bloom Day. Bloggers in cold areas everywhere complained they had no flowers because it was January and posted pictures of lampshades and chairs instead.

1/17/2010: Mr. Subjunctive posts a rant about the lack of winter blooms stating that: "Winter is not an excuse. It never was. Now go buy an African violet before February 15 or I will come to your blog and kick your ass."

1/20/2010, 8:16 am: I do my weekly "Wednesday Links" post, including a link to Mr. Subjunctive's rant, and make a sort of half-hearted promise to order a lazy cop-out collection of random winter flowering house plants.

1/20/2010, 9:17 am: Mr. Subjunctive comes to my blog and writes a comment. A very long comment. Actually, I think it is so long it technically qualifies as a guest post, in which he details some winter flowering house plants he does and does not recommend.

1/20/2010, 5:00 pm, heading home from work: Hit by a double dose of full strength Mr. Subjunctive, I finally start really thinking about his point and ask myself this question: Why DON'T I treat the inside of my house as just as much a garden as the outside?

1/20/2010, 7:00pm, after dinner: I start getting excited. Way too excited. I look at my pitiful windowsills (which basically are refugee camps for things from last years outdoor garden that I'm hoping will pull through until spring) and start having visions of lush, well-designed gardens of contrasting foliage textures and rich, fragrant displays of winter flowers.

1/20/2010, 9:00pm: I have filled several pages of my notebook with ideas for windowsill gardens. My list of plants to buy starts getting longer. I take "before" pictures of all the windows in the house. My long-suffering partner asks what on earth I am doing, and is subjected to a 20-minute exposition on my rapturous conversion to the cult of indoor gardening.

1/21/2010: I sit in my office at school supposedly writing a paper, but really googling things like: billbergia, trailing african violets and philodendron. I call my partner to tell him we're going to an orchid show this weekend.

So that is the story. I'm going nuts. I'm determined that next winter will be full of lovely and interesting things to post about and enjoy. We'll see how it turns out. By the way, Mr. S.: You need to make more lists. Specifically, I need a list of: House plants with frilly/ferny/fluffy foliage. Also: Plants with a viny, trailing, weepy growth habit. Not to mention: Plants with dark purple/red/maroon foliage. Oh! And things with fragrant flowers. Not to, like, tell you how to do your job or anything, but still. I'd like to see those lists.

January Bloom Day

 Once again, it is Bloom Day!

We have several inches of snow on the ground at the moment, so no chance of blooms outside (though the next few days are supposed to be warm, so I might see the ground this weekend!)

But inside I have paperwhites doing their pretty but stinky thing:

And at work I have a whole greenhouse full of petunias also doing a pretty but stinky thing

I'm working with wild petunias, some of which are incredibly smelly. Actually, they have a nice smell -- but this many of them in an enclosed space gets a little over powering!

And when I really need a break from winter, I wander over to the greenhouse next door, where my friend D is doing research on orchids:

Thank goodness for greenhouses! There are certainly good and bad things about being in grad school -- but the greenhouses are most decidedly one of the good ones!