Gardens by Kelly Productions

I’ve said before that, while I love to travel, I hate leaving the garden.  But I relish the return.  The newness, weeds, and occasional surprise delight my senses and take my mind off the mountain of emails that need replies or the phone messages that need return calls.  My stroll with the camera tonight turned up nothing in the way of surprises, but did find me coddling the dangling stems of the long-awaited Gladiolus ‘Atom’.  My grandma shared corms with me this spring from a sampler collection she ordered.  They were marketed as “dwarf” and “hardy”. 

‘Atom’ is certainly not dwarf.  At nearly 3′ tall these towering spires have flopped under weight of their flowers into nearby sedums and irises.  I’m nonetheless enchanted with ‘Atom’, a vintage variety from the 1940s with vivid and emblazened scarlet flowers that sport a foxy white rim.  Another diva plant for sure.  You can order ‘Atom’ from our friends at Old House Gardens.

That’s right, it’s time for a new look. The old Kelly website (www.kellydnorris.com) was getting frail-looking and hardly hip enough for some smart-ass hortico-punk. So I’ve migrated the entire website into WordPress! Another big appearance change will come in a few weeks with an upgraded theme (much more garden-esque) and new pages of content. With any luck there will be a speaking request page where interested event organizers can email me directly with the details of an event they might like to have me speak at. Nifty, right?

So apologies for this non-gardening related post. Just wanted y’all to be up-to-date on the new looks and changes.

I have no idea what eryngo means, beyond just a vernacular permutation of the botanical Eryngium.  But I do know what they are–fantastic garden plants.

Who can’t help but love eryngos?  They boast bristly, pokey texture like nothing else can.  Despite the fact that in Zone 5 I’m on the short-end of the evolutionary stick (there are nearly 300 species in the genus with a diversity center in Central and South America), I keep trying, experimenting, and enjoying the survivors.

Today I wanted to share with you my feelings about a recent addition to the garden, Eryngium planum ‘Blue Hobbit’.  Smart-looking and adorably dwarf, this eryngo sends up 10″ bloom stalks from a basal rosette of blue-tinted, lettuce-like leaves.  Petaloid bracts subtend a conical cluster of many ranked, stemless flowers which last for several days to a week.  The staying power of all the eryngos comes from those colored bracts, which last for many weeks thanks to their leaf-like cellular structure (kind of like hellebores).  I’m in love with the plant’s overall steely blue cast and the exceptionally coarse texture it contributes to the vignette.  I’ve got them paired with several sedums (including the blue-gray Sedum telephium ssp. ruprechtii ‘Hab Gray’) and underplanted with a mat of Thymus serpyllum ‘Magic Carpet’. 

You can purchase ‘Blue Hobbit’ from Garden Crossings or ForestFarm.

As alluded to in June, I’m keenly interested in the little vignettes that in concert compose my garden.  I’ve long held that this approach, with a respect for the united work in toto, creates a greater tapestry of expression and interest while allowing the gardener to tastefully assemble a unique collection of assorted plants.  While some might label this as “plant collector design” (a term which others still would call an oxymoron, suggesting that when one collects plants, one cannot also have any design sense), I prefer to think of it as a way in which gardeners can immitate nature without seeming formulaic.  Themes in nature arise from patterns in ecology, geography, and the geology of sites where plants natively thrive.  While the garden, in any way, will never replicate the ecology of native environments around the world, it does possess its own ecology capable of fostering interactions between and among plants, insects, animals, and birds.

So manifesto aside, that’s how I like to pursue gardening; one vignette at a time with an overall appreciation for the total environment I’m creating.  Sure, some people think my garden is a plant zoo.  Others see the beauty resulting from well-considered combos marrying with one another in a unified space.  While all this is merry well and good, I couldn’t help critique myself today while puttering about the yard.  Let’s face it, with good intentions come occasional failure.  Without further adieu I present now a few combos for you to critique with me.

I call this combination groundcover mayhem.  It inspired this whole diatribe.  “Itsa no good!”  If you can even make sense of the photo, this little spot grows poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) and yellow archangel (Lamiastrum galeobdolon).  Lesson learned here: two groundcovers don’t necessarily play nicely together.  They’ve overrun each other, despite my best guess that they might layer within each other, highlighting their departing textures.  Instead this less-than-dynamic duo looks like a Phil Specter bad hair day, the likes of which I never hope to see again.  There’s even a little Thalictrum minus ‘Adiantifolium’ fighting for its life.  Votes for transplanting to somewhere more hospitable?

Here’s “run together” for you.  Lots of cool plants, but clearly overgrown and planted much too closely to be appreciated in the rock garden.  Arguably, the geraniums fouled it all up.  I collected seeds off of the petite cultivar ‘Dusky Crûg’ last fall and sowed among rocks.  You can’t even see the rocks now!  These kids outgrew their parents in one fell swoop!  Perky and petite no more!  They’re getting moved so I can evaluate them.  After this dreadfully damp season, not a single one of them has any powdery mildew.

This next one is comical, perhaps.  I love natives, and despite the fact that most would label my friend Oxalis corniculata (red form) a weed, I adore its serendipitous habit.  I’ve fiercely guarded this “combo” all season.  What do you think?  Great textures, right?

This last one may just be a judgment call, a work in progress, something.  I was cutting back my Solidago drummondii (the one I hacked back a few weeks back, remember?) this spring and accidentally ripped a stem out with roots attached.  Not wanting to throw away a plant, I tucked this cascading goldenrod near the cornerstone of my rock garden dreaming of its pendulous waves of yellow and gold about mid-September, just like in the Ozarks.  But in my fervor I forgot about another favorite rock garden plant, Saponaria lempergii ‘Max Frei’.  This groundcovering character already had dibs on the wall edge and now happily engulfs the goldenrod.  But it doesn’t look all that bad, does it?  Just wait until that goldenrod hulks up in a couple of years.  It’ll be an all-out war.  We’ll see.  Maybe the stress of being in hotter soil will limit the root growth of the goldenrod and keep it in check?  Wishful thinking I bet, but that actually is exactly how it works in the wild.

What all this does, I hope, is encourage y’all to get out there and plant a few mistakes.  Gardens are like little experiment stations for people who like to play God, so long as you can deal with the consequences.  Go on now, be nature.

Every garden grows a few divas, plant world-rocking earth mamas that know how to put on a show. Maybe it’s a pass-around plant that’s gotten out of control running everything else over in colonizing fashion.  But it could as well be a highly sought after accession worthy of all the glitz and glam it can garner bloom after bloom. Either way, I’ve got several fab flowering friends that you should hear about.

Listed in no particular order, I must start with the plant that inspired this whole diatribe.  I think I’ve crowed about Phlox paniculata ‘Peppermint Twist’ before, but it bears mentioning again.  One look and it’ll take your breath away (at least it did mine).  Disease-resistant, long-lasting, fragrant, and vigorous, this recent introduction has gotten quite a lot of press recently and should be readily available.  Pick it up, even if you’ve been burned by phloxes in the past.  But be warned that if you choose to install a small row of these in the front border you’ll need to up your homeowner’s insurance, otherwise you’re going to have an awkward conversation with your insurance agent when that Ford Fusion wrecks in the yard.  But I digress…

Planted right next door is Echinacea Pixie Meadowbrite™, the first true-dwarf coneflower at only 18″ tall.  It’s compact and has bloomed non-stop now for weeks (with no signs of stopping).  The ray florets are richly lacquered in frothy pink and accented by rich raspberry chocolate cones (known botanically as disc florets).  Honestly as in love with both of these as I am, they really have no business growing as next-door neighbors.  It’s frankly overwhelming.  But growing in concert with an early blooming grass like sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) and old-fashioned perennial flax (Linum perenne), it would surely shine.

Moving to the backyard, I can’t help stop for a stare near the smart-looking Lilium michiganense.  The Michigan lily is a sorely underused native lily (see this earlier blog post for enlightenment).  Lack of humanly praise withstanding, the Michigan lily quite literally glows, almost like those little translucent party lamps from the 70s.  The blossoms dangle in trios from tall stems, and stooping for a peak isn’t unwarranted or inappropriate.

Elephantoid in proportion to its garden mates, Petasites x hybridus no doubt makes some of you cringe.  I know, I know.  It can be a little aggressive in some climates (he laughs mischievously).  Here in Zone 5 I don’t seem to have much trouble with it getting out of hand, probably thanks to our harsher winters.  It marks the epitome of texture in the backyard, classically contrasting with lanceolate-leaved daylilies and heart-shaped hostas.  I love it.  Plus the leaves make my fat head look smaller, at least by comparison.

But perhaps the most electrifying diva in the garden this summer is my Dream Catcher™ beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis ‘Maradco’).  The foliage drips in fluorescent gold and bronze, flowing as beauty bushes do from many stems that burgeon from the crown.  Though only a few years old, this high-impact shrub really brightens up an otherwise uneventful corner of the yard this time of year.  I can’t say enough about this plant (and if I could it would make for a really long post).  Just go buy it and trust me.