Gardens by Kelly Productions

I like to think of the autumn months as the calendar’s candy shop.  Bright colors, sweet sights.  Each year the grandest and most august of seasonal shifts lends the landscape a richly saccharine palette.  From the licorice red colors of maples to the butterscotch tones of oaks and witch hazels, deciduous trees and shrubs shed their coats as we don ours in preparation for the bustle of winter.

Today I’d like to share with you some of my favorite “candies” from around the Iowa State University campus, my surrogate home for the last four years (and two more).  Anyone who has ever visited campus knows of its beauty–a proverbial arboretum of many hundreds of species of trees and shrubs, including woody plants less appreciated than their overplanted counterparts.  In that vein, let’s take a walk.

As indecisive as I am, I could easily narrow down my list of favorite native trees to several dozen or so.  Near the top of that list is the American smoketree (Cotinus obovatus).  Dream no longer of purple smoketree, the purple blight on the landscape.  Instead think a little bigger, heftier, and prettier.  American smoketree boasts conspicuous, smoky flower clusters in mid-summer, puffing out like billowy clouds of not-so-pink cotton candy.  The semi-glossy, bluish-green foliage often holds raindrops, perfect distractions for nebbish, naturally minded kids of all ages.  We’ve got three trees on campus just west of Kildee Hall.  Each is different.  One literally glows in amber and cider tones.  One shines in gold, hopefully an inspiration to the sun which these days doesn’t show itself much.  The third sports a zebra look with black veins harnessing bands of yellow trapped between.

My next find was a colony of dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii).  These happy companions to daphnes and rhododendrons look sumptuous this time of year with rounded, coin-shaped foliage reminiscent of a bowl of hard candy–greens, yellows, oranges, and reds.  Perfect for borders or that small bed where you’d like a shrub but don’t have room for a viburnum or weigela, dwarf fothergilla blooms in late spring here in Iowa, sending out bottlebrush-shaped flowers that glisten in May sunlight.  Keep in mind that this southeastern U.S. native loves organic matter, so top-dressing with compost never hurts.

Making my way west along Osborn Drive, I stopped by a most elegant specimen of Chionanthus virginicus, our native fringetree.  This is one of my favorite Ozarks native shrubs, occuring in southwest Missouri at the very northern limit of its range.  Dangling, silvery white blossoms adorn all limbs of the plant in late spring.  I love the texture of the flowers, even though I’m not the biggest fan of white in the garden.  But perhaps the best part of the show comes along in fall when lime green foliage ages to baked gold, providing a glowing backdrop for chocolate chip-like drupes that dangle where flowers once did (at least on female plants; the species is dioecious).  Aesthetics and ornamentation aside, I love American fringetree because it’s tough.  This multi-stemmed, large shrub thrives near water and in rockier soils as well.  Durable, adaptable, and gorgeous.  What more could you ask for from a specimen shrub or woody focal plant at the edge of the shade garden? 

Before ducking into my office in Horticulture Hall, I took a quick peak in the courtyard beyond my door between the building and the greenhouses.  This alcove of plant life sports collections and fun accessions of faculty in our department.  My favorite specimen of Heptacodium miconioides (seven sons flower) dripped in bright pink this morning, thanks to the colorful sepals left behind from the white flowers that finished several weeks ago.  Munchable candy they’re not.  But they’re damn sweet to look at!

My last plant of note is a red twig dogwood (Cornus sericea).  I know…what could be so fascinating about the most overplanted dogwood in American history?  Just take a look at this amazing specimen’s fall color.  What a trip!?  Even the most ordinary plants can earn their keep when you take a moment to look past what makes them ordinary.  Great gardens most often feature great plants.  But the best gardens feature great plants used in remarkable ways. 

I’ll hope you’ll take a trip through the candy shop in your part of the country–hopefully in your own backyard.

Nothing thrills me more than the October ritual of planting bulbs.  The thrill of grabbing my straw hat for the last time this weekend and using my trowel before stowing it for winter excites me more than you could know.  Though I’m not an athlete, any coach would say to finish with exhilaration, capturing the thrill of the quest soon to end.  Such is bulb planting for me!

But my favorite bulbs (actually corms) show up in autumn.  No, not in dried, bundled, boxed and ready to plant form either.  They’re the autumn crocus, just finishing up now in places all over the country.  Planted in the fall like other crocus, to which they are absolutely NOT related, the so-called autumn crocus possess an unimpeachable suite of ornamental qualities not the least of which is their peculiar bloom time.

I stumbled head first into autumn crocuses when I was a teenager, fascinated as I was with their paradoxical nature.  Their waxy, rippled foliage appears in mid-spring, hangs around just long enough to make you wonder what on earth you could’ve planted there, and promptly disappears.  Many might express alarm.  Others, like me, forget that fleeting glimpse of tropicalismo-inspiring foliage and proceed ignorantly through the summer months–until September.  That’s when I got hooked.  I might have been 15 or 16, I don’t quite remember.  But I do remember the overwhelming sense of excitement when I stumbled upon that tidy pink bouquet of ground-springing, shell-like flowers freckled with lavender checker-square boxes.  I was in love, seduced by their lustiness at the onset of fall. 

Since that ephemeral moment I’ve tried to rustle up as many of these central Asian natives as I can find including C. kesselringii (which I’m determined to grow at all cost), C. cilicicum, and C. byzantinum.  Unfortunately, many whimper and die in the summers of my mid-continent garden.  They’d love to be drier I’m sure.  But hardier and more robust forms of C. autumnale and C. speciosum offer most Midwesterners just the treat needed in the waning months of the growing season.  Take a look at some of my favorite,  Zone 5 hardy Colchicum cultivars.

I ask this question every year.  Don’t you?  You’d think after so many years of gardening, the answer would be empirical, at least to an extent.  But it’s far from empirical.  Where did the growing season go? 

Sure I’m wistful, wanting badly to relive the evening of July 7 when my ‘Peppermint Twist’ phlox roared in full bloom.  Or July 10 when that lusty orienpet lily called ‘Shocking’ ruined normalcy in my backyard with its startling, to say the least, flowers.  In contrast, I could go all the way back to June 14, the day after I got home from the Ozarks and recall the sparkling, pristine racemes of foxglove penstemon (Penstemon digitalis). 

I recall more recently the sunset-lit heads of my Northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), an assured sign of closure in my Midwestern garden.  Maybe then, or earlier, I started to take the hint.  Gardens have a way of signalling change, passing days on the calendar with floral bounty and ripening fruits.  As a timepiece they remind us of the rhythm of the seasons, keeping us in time with a natural clock that has ticked for longer than we can know. 

Leaves fall, the ground freezes, and life retreats to chambers.  But the passion for gardening lacks such a good, steady watch and a place to persist when conditions don’t permit flourish.  Though for many of us in the temperate north where the act of gardening begins to subside, the passion springs eternal through snowflakes and cold.  Where has the growing season gone?  No where too permanent at all.

My trip to North Carolina was one of the richest horticultural experiences of my adult life.  The Garden Writers Association (GWA) rocks!  These are routinely some of the best conferences I attend, and if you have any affiliation with communications in the garden realm, you MUST join.  Tell them I referred you!

Other than relishing the company of good friends, good plants, and good food, I attended GWA this year to present a lecture entitled “Gardening with a Y”.  I’ve never felt better after a presentation and I owe that feeling to a room full of attentive, energized, and intellectually gifted GWA members. 

But that message of enthusiasm, my so-called gospel of the goodliness of green things, didn’t end that Friday in Raleigh, NC.  In fact I relate the spirit of gardening to an often cited Robert Frost quote: “It doesn’t matter what course you take. Simply hang around until you catch the spirit, or the spirit catches you.”  How many of us began our gardening experiences in the stead of an elder, whether a family member or neighbor?  How many of us can’t quite relate the exact sequence of events that took place after that, like a blur?  We just know that we’re gardeners!  The spirit caught us.

That simple stance might net the gardening world more newcomers than any high-class, big dollar marketing scheme ever could.  Pardon the overuse of religious connotations, but spread the gospel, catch the spirit.   Gardening is bigger than any one product, marketing campaign or person.  As I wrote in the epilogue of my second (as-of-yet unpublished) book:

“Gardening is magnanimous, inspiring and a luxurious privilege that anyone can enjoy.  Gardening is equitable after all.  It’s in and through gardening that lessons on life become so clear.  Seeds fail to germinate.  Plants fail to grow.  Then something forgotten blooms religiously with defiance that stares you in the face, petal on petal.  These lessons seem more tolerable, controlled and learnable in the garden than things like failed marriages and job opportunities.  One has to wonder if gardening was borne of a humble need for sustenance or a yearning desire to see beauty where it’s least expected.  Maybe more as a parable to life.”

For so many people regardless of their age, gardening fills the void and becomes that parable to life.  Now nothing this profound probably struck any of us the first time we picked up a packet of seeds at the grocery store or drug home our first transplants from a generous mentor’s garden.  We were hung up in the lust for the quest, the fever to dig and plant and grow.  But season on season, gardening for each of us starts to mean something more than it did before.  You all know this.  But what about your 12-year old, your neighbor boy or girl down the street, or your niece or nephew?  If we can’t invest in the process and joy of gardening, we obviously can’t expect anything of value in return.

Today’s photo gallery:

Today we spent six hours at the modern mecca of plant collecting: Plant Delights Nursery.  Bona fide plant goobers (like myself), avid enthusiasts, and passion-crazed beginners alike will find items of interest on this 10-acre property.  Tony Avent and his dream team of horticulturists continually amaze the horticultural world with their unprecedented palette of plants.  I could ramble on in hyperbole for paragraphs more, but you really just want to see some cool plants! 

Where to begin…Tony and I share a passion for underappreciated natives.  Tony and his cohorts have scoured native haunts of Texas and have uncovered a host of fun things.  Hardiness?  Eh, you never know.  Logically, it would seem unlikely.  Biogeographically speaking, it’s entirely possible seeing that at one time our entire continent rested at a more northerly latitude.  Let’s dream. 

In the same vein of thought, the GWA attendees sojourned to the JC Raulston Arboretum for an evening gala Friday night.  The late Raulston was a mentor to Tony Avent and select photos from that dark, rainy evening are included here (though you could foreseeably think they all came from the same garden).  Great minds you know.

Found below is a sampling of underappreciated natives and other outstanding plants from two fabulous gardens in the heart of USDA Zone 7b.

Due to Internet connection issues, I wasn’t able to finish my reports from the Garden Writers Association last week.  I’ll post them now along with my follow-up thoughts and comments.  I hope you enjoy!

<<Clearly, I missed blogging yesterday.  Our haul back to Raleigh from Asheville began early with a morning-long stop at the famed Biltmore Estate.  Our private tour with head gardener Parker Andes was a treat.  He kindly guided us around the fog-draped estate pointing out time period restorations that will greatly add to the historic feeling of the property.  We examined hand drawings made by landscape architects from F.L. Olmsted’s design firm.  Despite the numerous notable landscapes in his portfolio, Olmsted regarded Biltmore as his crowning achievement.  It’s in that spirit of excellence and pride that Parker and crew continue to this day.

Our next stop, after a FABULOUS lunch respite at Posana in downtown Asheville, found us in Hickory, NC at Hawksride Farm Nursery.  I could go on for hours about the plants we discussed and talked about with Rick Crowder, general manager.  Rick’s extensive travels in Japan have netted a fine collection of nerdy collector plants and choice landscape selections with distinctive and unique appeal.  Take a look at some of the wicked-looking plants we saw (listed in order of appearance, variegated Hydrangea serrata, Yucca aloifolia ‘Purpurea’, variegated Quercus, Cercis canadensis ‘Rising Sun’ [leaves emerge bronze then fade to lemon]):

I haven’t the attention span left tonight to share with you my six hours of adventures today (Day 3) at Plant Delights Nursery.  Wow!  Tony and the PDN dream team have created the prix d’elegance of the plant world, a truly jaw-dropping and mind-numbing collection of plants that range from budding mainstream commodities to esoteric BIO (botanical interest only) plants.  I’ll try to post a photo blog of that visit tomorrow.

Admittedly it’s hard to collect my thoughts.  My mind whirls in conversations with, handshakes from, and hugs by colleagues that I only get to see a few times each year.  What wonderful people!  Gardeners and those who write about such passionate work embody the best of humanity.  I’ll try to keep up tomorrow.  Some of us plan to play a little hookie and skip out to Sanford, NC to visit renowned NC garden center Big Bloomers.  Fun plants are in store!