Gardens by Kelly Productions

Last June, I wrote about my Veronica collection in a post entitled “The Veronica Parade”.  I have a habit of interjecting the phrase “oh I collect those” in conversations between plant nerds, prompting many of my close friends to mockingly reply “Kelly, what don’t you collect?”

Today I thought I might take you on a little parade through the sedum collection.  I have no idea how many different taxa I grow–surely dozens upon dozens.  Many of us no doubt appreciate the ‘Autumn Joy’ “types” that start to bloom now and continue through fall.  I’ll do a round with those later.  Today I focused the camera on groundcover sedums.

Sedum album ‘Murale’ –This chocolately, sedum family wunderkind is one of my newfound favorites.  In just a couple seasons, this little white-flowered sedum has taken off with vigor and apparent glee, cozying up to nearby rock cress (Arabis) and shining in the garden through four season thanks to its evergreen nature.  A must have.

Sedum ewersii var. homophyllum –Here’s one ultra-hardy sedum, reported by some to thrive winters as far north as USDA Zone 2.  Bright pink flowers occasionally complement marine, blue-green foliage, but I can’t recall seeing them more than a couple of times in the last few years.  It’s really all about that cool kid foliage.  I always expect it to be cooler to the touch for some reason–it’s just looks “cold”.  Terrific.

Sedum sieboldii –There are more Siebold stonecrops floating around gardens and nurseries than any one of us needs.  It self-seeds freely, but not enough to make a nuisance of itself.  I’ve saved some fun seedlings over the years with different leaf margins, etc., but nothing to get all worked up about.  The cultivar ‘Mediovariegatum’ is one of my favorites.  Commonly known as October daphne, it throws up hot pink flowers very late in the fall and spells dynamo when paired with those sharply variegated, coin-shaped leaves.

Sedum spurium ‘John Creech’ –This sedum tops my “desert island” list (a list of my 25 must-have plants should I ever be shipwrecked on a lonely island with the option of a having a lovely garden).  Nothing fancy about the foliage.  But it’s reliably tough, blooms well, seeds around a bit (that’s a plus for me–a sign of happiness), and forms the perfect ground-hugging mat.

Sedum tetractinum –This may also be a candidate for the “desert island” list.  This stonecrop has the weirdest-colored foliage ever.  Bronze, green, and yellow blend together to create a pseudo-metallic color that catches my eye every time I’m in the garden.  It’s hardy, shows off yellow flowers in late spring, and laughs at our Midwestern winters and summers.  It’s also seeding a bit in its immediate vicinity.  Kind of reminds me of carpet colors from the 1960s, only with far more class and style!

Sources for sedums:

SMG Succulents (formerly Squaw Mountain Gardens)

Joy Creek Nursery

Plant Delights Nursery

{Terribly important side note:  You may have already noticed that I’m not following my usual etiquette of capitalizing and italicizing the word sedum.  That’s because the genus Sedum as we know it has been broken into a number of other nomenclatural monikers.  The genus Sedum does still exist in this new state of taxonomic fun, but for now they’re still sedums in my garden, vernacularly and botanically.}

I don’t claim to have much of a sense of smell.  Because I don’t.  For whatever reason, I don’t pick up on smells like the rest of the human race, remember them very well, or recognize them easily when I do manage to sniff across one.  But recently I’ve had something of a nasal epiphany, far and away from the kind of surgical procedure that the phrase ‘nasal epiphany’ no doubt sounds like.

I’ve been entranced by heady scents–not the kind of subtle, sweet perfumes that often elude my nose.  Rather, bawdy and cloying scents that hang in the air and drip, otherwise described as the sorts of smells not associated with conventional moralities.  Imagine fragrances that would make you blush from self-indulgence.  Those smells permeate my garden these days, thanks in part to a few fragrant characters that obviously have a pseudo-evolutionary way of catching just a little attention.

In the “I’m Rosie, and I’ll be here all week” department grows the Orienpet lily ‘Robina’.  With nearly a dozen flowers held atop six-foot, green-plastic stems, this pinkster is programmed for gaudy and outrageous.  She’s like the bombshell blonde (in pink) at the party.  Twelve feet away and somebody notices.  Except this time it’s her smell.  I’ve decided after much contemplation and personal reflection that this nose-nabbing scent, though associated with an absolutely lovely flower, obstructs my sensibilities just a little too much.  Admittedly though it does make for animate storytelling.

Jumping off the house of ill-repute high, my nose ambles over to an astounding clump of my favorite phlox ‘Peppermint Twist’.  I’ve said too much about this plant already, and my friends are tired of hearing me rave about it.  I know, you get it.  It’s fabulous.  But I’ve never mentioned the scent, because until now I’d never really noticed it had one.  While weeding in the front garden a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but taste, yes taste, sugar.  Not sugar cookie sugar.  More like cotton candy sugar–the sort of sugary goodness that sends 10-year olds into mania at carnivals and fairs.  I suspected nearby ‘Peppermint Twist’ when the taste (and smell) crossed my palate.  But I needed a confirmation, and my mother came to the rescue.  Cotton candy indeed.

All this raving about “scentsibility” lately has caused me to notice the increasing presence of sphinx moths in the front garden at night–an observation intricately bound to fragrance.  Within the hour before dusk, these soundless Lepidoptera whiz through the garden, probing nectaries for sugary juices with a long and nearly invisible proboscis.  These elegant creatures stop me in my tracks.  With the calm curiosity of a 10-year old just before a sugar high, I’ve watched a trio of sphinx moths for several nights in a row.  For whatever reasons, we apparently drool over the same lily and phlox, though I suspect they derive more sustenance from them than I do.  For those sphinx moths, that air-flooding fragrance triggers the very basest of evolutionary instincts.  For me, that cloying odor merely incites vivid adjectives in my brain for the purposes of blogging.

Normally I wouldn’t call the 8th of July midsummer, but in a year like this it feels like it already.  Maybe it’s because I’m not here nearly everyday like I was last the past two summers.  Time rolls on in waves of new flowers, color in and out with a rhythm I admire.  That rhythm can be seen beautifully in the restored, remnant, and reconstructed prairies across my home state where the seasons fade into each other with paradoxically exacting effort.  Each week seems to own its identity.

Some day, maybe next year, I’d love to start a calendar project that documents the passing of each week in my garden photographically.  You can join in too!  It’ll truly be a garden calendar that causes us to revere the seasons as they evolve across the tapestry of our landscapes.

Until then, here are a few of the garden-worthy natives gracing the stage of my garden and/or local prairies this week.  More again soon, but for now, I’m headed to the garden!