Here’s a close-up of a plant I recently showed you and labeled as either Mexican or Evening Primrose. My excuse
for not knowing (and Readers, do I really need one?) is its origin in my garden as a passalong from a neighbor. But more will be revealed.
Friday night we Hort Clubbers enjoyed a private tour of the garden of Kevin Conrad, Curator of the Woody Plants Collection at the National Arboretum. I was bad and didn’t snap lots of fabulous photos for you but I did take action when I saw this plant in his garden. When I asked Kevin to solve the mystery – Mexican or Evening – he replied, "Neither. It’s a Missouri Primrose." Aha, I think, I’ll run home and report the results.
Trouble is, a quick Internet search for the Latin name revealed the expert to be mistaken. I knew this right away because the Missouri Primose, Oenothera missouriensis, is yellow, not pink like the Mexican Evening Primrose (O. berlandieri) we were looking at. Kinda unsettling, I know. And his garden was filled with really cool plants and he was cute, too. I’ll just file it away under Don’t Believe Everything an Expert Says or Writes, subfolder Verbal.
Newbie gardeners these days have it easy. Thanks to gardening blogdom, they get to read what real gardeners say about the down-and-dirty of real gardening. Like this little piece of advice I’m happy to pass on. You don’t have to spend 20 years digging with the wrong damn tool like I did because I’m telling ya right now, the pickaxe is the clear winner in the Takoma Digging Trials. The shovel, the tool that’s singlehandedly upped the annual income of my physical therapist, is for lifting and moving the dirt, not digging it. Ya dig? Oh, the shovel could handle digging in store-bought potting soil or pure compost, but the rock-imbedded clay on my property? No fricking way.
[Photo - an improvement over the standard pickaxe shot I first included here. And the umbrella's my temporary solution to the full-sun here resulting from the removal of a Bradford pear. A better umbrella is coming soon.]
The garden blogosphere has been analyzing all sorts of declarations about the state of gardening in the country today and where it’s headed and apparently it’s an inexhaustible subject because there’s more. The
Garden Writers Association reports these results from their 2006 Late Spring Gardening Trends Research Report.
1. Better mental health, nutrition or fitness is the primary reason 36% of households garden.
2. More perennials and more vegetables are the two leading additions households plan to make to their garden this spring.
3. The number of consumers planning to increase their lawn areas rose by 5% over 2005 while the number planning to decrease their lawn areas dropped from 11% to 9%.
4. Fewer households plan to use weed and insect control this spring.
5. Manure is the most frequently planned means of fertilizing gardens and container plants this spring (31%), followed by slow-release fertilizer (27%), potting soil with fertilizer (19%), and liquid fertilizer (16%).
6. This spring and summer, one in four households plan to prepare their garden area with store-bought soil mixes (26%).
The 2006 Late Spring Gardening Trends Research Report was conducted in April and covers consumer expectations and attitudes for activities and purchases planned for the next few months. The survey was conducted by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, a national consumer polling organization, and statistically represents the attitudes of 110 million households with an accuracy of 95% (+/- 3.1 percentage points).
Wow, I hardly know what to think of such a hodgepodge of results. Most of it sounds good but what’s up with the increase in lawns? And the notion that people are gardening for fitness reminds me that my experience of gardening isn’t necessarily what clicks for everybody. So should I rhapsodize less about Nature and Beauty and more about Soundness of Mind and Body?
[Photo: The pink flowers of what's either Mexican or Evening Primrose are new to this border and I love it with the chartreuse of the creeping sedum, my all-time favorite weed.]
Here’s another 
of Takoma’s lawnless frontyards, one of my favorites. The berm is brimming with rock garden plants of all sorts and even a petunia-filled treasure chest. The owner/gardener, a local artist and art teacher, has an infectious sense of fun.
And speaking of fun, I promised you this shot of the beloved cow sculpture in the garden of local landscape designer Margaret Atwell. You can’t tell from the photo, but it’s nearly life-size and adds the right touch to the pastoral feeling of her backyard.
Our local gardening email group recently received a message from a self-described newbie asking for help. Great, you’ve come to the right place. But what he really wanted was a very short version – via email, after all – of everything he should do to start taking care of his full and varied garden after doing nothing in his first three years living there. And a special request – how can he make his azaleas look better? Well, sure, no problem. We all learned to garden by reading an email message or two.
The group must have been dumbstruck because there was no response – a rare event – until I wrote to say "HUGE question," then suggest he read our website chockful of gardening information and hey, how about coming to a Hort Club event sometime? I was too shy to suggest he spend a few bucks and hire me to show him exactly what to do, despite the terrific encouragement I got right here when I posted about my coaching service.
One item in particular I suggested he read on our new site is "What to Do When in the Garden," a feature that’s become a nifty project for our whole Yahoo group – 200+ strong. Every month I’m sending the group a generic list from a source or two that I tweak for our locality, then include input from the group before uploading it for our readers. And from the looks of it, there are particular things gardeners do here only in March or only in April, but when all hell busts loose out there from May through summer it’s basically the same – watering and weeding. I call it General Growing Season Gardening Jobs. I see a T-shirt slogan in my future – To Garden is To Weed.
Take a look and if your climate is anything like the Mid-Atlantic, I’d love your suggestions, especially other late-flowering perennials that you hack back early in the season. We’re in Zone 7A, so dates may need tweaking but hey, summer’s summer.
[Photo: Amsonia hubrechtii, Heuchera villosa 'Autumn Bride,' and unidentified iris in my neighbor's garden.]
Michele Owens at SignoftheShovel is, I know, a fine person, not to mention one of the most talented writers in all of blogdom. But when she leaves this comment on my post about wiegelias, "Nice alternative to those ratty-looking spireas," I want to say – Hey, that’s my Favorite Shrub for Sun you’re talking about there – and rush to their rescue. I know you all understand.
So I present the lovely spirea ‘Snowmound’ to make the case for the not-rattiness of spireas. It’s similar to but possibly even prettier than the popular ‘Bridal Wreath,’ and here it is full-grown. The only pruning I’ve done is my usual limbing up to remove branches lying on the ground. All my other spireas are pruned regularly to make them smaller and they respond very nicely with fullness and good form. I hope to present more evidence shortly.
And for inquiring readers, here’s everything I can think of about spireas. They come in a variety of sizes, this being the largest, require a half-day of sun to bloom, are drought-tolerant, deciduous, and can be cut back after flowering for a nice second show. Blooms are white or shades of pink, and there’s even foliage colors to choose from. See the gorgeous chartreuse of ‘Ogon,‘ a new spirea that’s oh, so popular with designers. And if any of this is incorrect or incomplete, do let me know.
for not knowing (and Readers, do I really need one?) is its origin in my garden as a passalong from a neighbor. But more will be revealed.
