Transatlantic Plantsman

Transatlantic Plantsman shortlisted for Garden Blog of the Year!

At the British Garden Media Guild awards gala in London today, this Transatlantic Plantsman blog was shortlisted for Blog of the Year!

The other shortlisted blogs were:
Matthew Appleby’s Gardening Blog
Richard Jones’ Wildlife Blog
Jane Perrone on The Guardian Gardening Blog
Veg Plotting by Michelle Chapman

And the winner is: Blogging from Blackpitts by James Alexander-Sinclair

Thank you, judges! And congratulations to the winner and to the other shortlisted blogs. Where's the bubbly?

Variegated rhododendrons - more coming?

Lecturing to a chapter of the American Rhododendron Society about perennials recently proved interesting in way I didn’t expect: I got the chance to talk with rhododendron breeder Tom Ahern. His first interest was in creating yellow and orange flowered types that are hardy in his area of Pennsylvania (zone 6A: -10 to -5F/-21 to -23C), like his ’Orange Ruffy’. Then he became more interested in breeding for good foliage.

I asked him why there were so few variegated rhododendrons – after all, their flowering season is short so variegated foliage would be a good year-round feature. He explained that in rhodies variegation is caused by a virus and is not inherited when hybridizing so you can’t breed for it. He also pointed out that some variegated varieties are rather floppy and they also often revert to plain green; the plain green shoots must be cut out otherwise they take over but this often ruins the look of the plants.

In theory you should be able to create a variegated version of any rhodie by approach grafting. You grow ‘President Roosevelt’(above), for example, and another variety in pots, position them so a stem of each touches, shave a sliver off each stem, and bind the two cut surfaces together. The virus in the sap of one would be transferred to the other. Don’t understand why this hasn’t been done? Any rhodie experts know?

But now that rhodies are being grown in the laboratory in tissue culture, variegated sports are turning up – like 'Claydian Variegated', a tissue culture sport of 'Madame Masson'. These will be genetically variegated so could be used for breeding. Is the variegated sport of ‘Yaku Princess’ (left) virus or genetic?

Either way, as more variegated sports turn up and these are used in breeding we can look forward to more variegated rhododendrons. And any form of good foliage is valuable in plants with such a short flowering season – however flamboyant.

Tom Ahern is also a highly accomplished bird carver.

* More on variegated rhododendrons from Ron Rabieau of Rare Find Nursery (scroll down)

Radio gardening special

Today’s entertainment is the WJFF Fund Drive Garden Special.

Adrianne Picciano (the Dirt Diva) and I are hosting a two hour fund raising garden special on our local public radio station, WJFF serving the Catskills of New York State, North East Pennsylvania and the Upper Delaware River Valley. You can hear it locally on 90.5FM, 3.00-5.00pm EST and streaming live online across the country and around the world at WJFFRadio.org. WJFF is the only hyrdo-powered radio station in the country!

Along with out guests Master Gardener and local newspaper columnist Will Conway, Permaculture Expert Maria Grimaldi of Panther Rock Farms and orchid expert judywhite we’ll be answering emailed questions from listeners, taking pledges to help support WJFF – and giving away lots of garden goodies as “thank you gifts”.

This is, of course, a local event but here I’d just like to thank the various gardening companies and organisations who are supporting independent public radio – and good information about gardening – by donating “thank you gifts” to the station. I's a fine testament to these businesses and individuals that they're happy to make donations to a good cause in these difficult times. Thank you.

Local supporters
* Permaculture Design Certificate course (one place) hosted by Andrew Phillips of the Hancock Permaculture Center and Maria Grimaldi of Panther Rock Farms.

* Garden notecards donated by Echo Letterpress (see samples above) in Jeffersonville NY. Beautiful woodcut-style designs of garden tools, herbs, and Japanese pruners.

* Bloom Again Orchids Signed copies of a colorful new book on easy orchids that bloom again and again donated by local judywhite.

* Green Up Time CD Locally based horticulturalist and Broadway performer Ellen Zachos combines her two passions in life with songs about plants.

* Gift memberships to the Hudson Valley Seed Library.plus art packs (left)

* Annuals and Perennials Book Bundle The Readers Digest Complete Guide to Perennials, Gardeners Guide to Growing Hellebores, Discovering Annuals, and Handbook of Annuals and Bedding Plants. All by Graham Rice, all signed by the author.

(We feature local nurseries in our spring special)
 
National supporters
* $50 Gift Certificates to White Flower Farm, the country’s leading supplier of mail order perennials and shrubs.

* One year membership to the American Horticultural Society.

International supporters
* Natural gardening book bundles: The Truth About Organic Gardening and Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants – donated by Timber Press

* Collections of vegetable seeds, specifically chosen for our area, donated by Thompson & Morgan

Thank you to all these supporters – and to our listeners who provide over half the funds required to run the station. It’s going to be a fun afternoon.

AFTER THE SHOW UPDATE We had a great show, answered lots of questions, raised a good amount for WJFF, and gave plenty of thank-you gifts away - in spite of the distraction of the first snowstorm of winter. Thanks to all our listeners and supporters.

The Dead Plant Society

I’ve been taking a look at the coffee can on the shelf where all the labels collect, the labels from the plants which are no longer with us. The Dead Plant Society. It's not necessarily as sad as it sounds.

Needless to say, it’s been added to recently as the fall clean up confirms the absence of plants which never peeped through on time in spring. But, also, a space behind a label may reveal something else.

Some plants are definitely very very dead, including the white mophead Hydrangea ‘Queen of Pearls’. It’s odd, some mophead/Hortensia hydrangeas do well here in chilly zone 5 and others get clobbered. “Can be grown in Zone 5 with good winter protection” says the website. No, I’m not going to protect some hydrangeas when others are happy without it. ‘Princess Lace’, in the same series, and ‘Forever and Ever Red’ are not dead.

Also very, very dead are:
Echinacea ‘Lilliput’ – not all echinaceas can cope with a combination of not quite enough sun and drainage not quite good enough either.
Aster ‘Marie III’ – don’t really care for these Yoder asters, the flower form is poor and I hate the way they go from ‘Marie’ to ‘Marie II’ and so on as they “improve” the individual colors. There‘s ‘Peter III’ as well, also dead!
Chrysanthemum ‘Will’s Wonderful’ – mentioned often on TP, most recently here. A great loss.
Hibiscus ‘Peppermint Schnapps’ – yes, gone gone gone. Bred in tropical Florida. Not a good candidate for the frozen north. Stick with those from bred in icy Michigan by Walters Gardens.
Ranunculus ficaria ‘Double Bronze’ (and others) – I shipped just about all the double, and therefore non-invasive, varieties over from England but every one has now died. The single one thrives all too well on a river bank 150 miles away.

Also genuinely gone are some heucheras: weevils munching through the roots, I fear; Helleborus argutifolius: well, it does come from Corsica, zone 9; and all but two buddlejas… invasive? Hah! Not here.

But sometimes there’s just nothing behind the label
Achillea ‘Pomegranate’ – The deer ate (yes, I know achilleas are supposed to be deer-resistant)… The deer ate the ones planted outside the fence while they were soft and succulent and not sufficiently pungently off-putting. Those inside the fence are fine.
Aster novae-angliae ‘Snow Flurries’ – lovely white form of the New England aster found along a lonely road in Cattaraugus County, New York. Actually, it’s thriving. The birds moved the label to another bed. Thanks guys.
Athyrium ‘Ghost’ – It’s there, it’s gorgeous, its tag is fluttering down the driveway.
Vinca ‘Giant Steps’ – I think it grew so violently that it flung the label across to the other side of the garden. Currently escaping through the deer fence and looking at total eradication in the spring. So, yes, dead – one way or another.

And that’s only a sample from one coffee can… How many more cans are there?!

Bloom-Again Orchids - the book for people who think they can't grow orchids

OK, first of all I'll come clean - I'm married to judywhite, the author and photographer of Bloom-Again Orchids!

So without eulogizing about how wonderful the book is... Let me just describe what it does and who it'll help. It helps people - like me, actually - who are nervous about growing orchids because we think we're going to kill them.

But first, she tempts us. judy's pictures have been exhibited at the Smithsonian so of course they're are stunning. They make you want to grow them all, and all the orchids in this book are varieties you can grow easily. Here's a slide show of pictrures from the book.

Orchid Stock Images from Bloom-Again Orchids - Images by GardenPhotos .com

And they're easy to find in stores, too. judy visited Home Depot, WalMart and Lowes and local nurseries - I know, I went with her - and also checked on the varieties on sale in other parts of the country. From all these she picked out those varieties we can all grow and all get to flower again and again without special care. She wanted only to write about orchids we can all get easily without having to spend a fortune at a specialist mail order supplier, and only those we can all get to bloom again and again.

Of course, they need care and attention so she explains just what each needs, in an easy and engaging style and with the help of some simple checklists. And judy (left, click to enlarge) should know, as well as being a former Trustee of the American Orchid Society she's also the author and photographer of the award-winning Taylor's Guide to Orchids.

So there you have it. An inexpensive book about orchids which we can all find in your local store or nursery and which we can all get to bloom again and again. Simple, really.

You can order Bloom-Again Orchids in North America here

You can order Bloom-Again Orchids in Britain here (and for Brits: Home Depot, Lowes and WalMart = B&Q, Homebase and Asda)

"That OK, dear?"
"That's fine, honey."

New article on Christmas roses

My article on the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, and its hybrids is in the December 2009 issue of the Royal Horticultural Society's magazine The Garden. And while, of course, I urge you to become an RHS member and benefit from your free members' copy of The Garden - you can also read the article online.

Last ‘mum standing

It’s almost December and until yesterday, before the gales (and the power cuts), there were still two plants flowering well. Both are hardy garden chrysanths – not those horrid things like painted footstools that have been flowering since July. These are the toughies, and they’re taller and more elegant than most modern garden mums.

‘Country Girl’, in pink with white ring around the eye, looks battered this morning but the star is still ‘Nantyderry Sunshine’. This is one American gardeners may not know but it’s a star in Britain. The most recent in a small group of 24in/60cm, rather twiggy, small-leaved plants with neat little semi-pompom flowers – this one is bright yellow. It’s a sport of the better known ‘Bronze Elegance’ that occurred in the Welsh gardener of plantswoman Rose Clay.

Here in Pennsylvania it’s sported again – back to a single shoot of ‘Mei-Kyo’… which is the plant from which ‘Bronze Elegance’ sported back way in the 1970s. Too gusty to shoot a photo today – so I’ve included one from earlier.

The usual star of this time of year – ‘Will’s Wonderful’ chrysanth – was completely killed by last year’s coldest winter in ten years. Very sad… The fact that the apparently identical 'Color Echo' was also wiped out just tends to confirm that the two are indeed the same. (That's 'NantyderrySunshine' in the background behind 'Color Echo' - click to enlarge.

Two Christmas roses also getting going – Helleborus niger ‘Joshua’ and ‘Josef Lemper’.

Latin names - has their time come at last?

Animal roll call - with scientific names in Latin - from Fantastic Mr Fox. Mr Fox voiced by George Clooney... (Just wait for the ad to run...) Plants next?

And check out the trailer, without Latin.

Amazing hellebores - doubles and singles

This post is simply to highlight the amazing hellebores created by Marietta O’Byrne of Northwest Garden Nursery in Oregon.

Here are links to two sets of galleries on their website, you can click image on this page to get an idea:

Gallery of double flowered hellebores

Gallery of single flowered hellebores

It’s too complicated to explain which varieties are available from which retail nurseries, on each side of the Atlantic, a web search will tell you. Please note that although Northwest Garden Nursery will deliver in their local area, they do not operate a mail order service.

Just thought you’d like to see these gorgeous plants, really.

The leaf problem

Over on the Homestead Gardens blog, Susan Harris again raises the whole issue of what to do with fallen leaves. For many British gardeners this is not a big issue – we Brits cut down most of our tress in the 1800s to build ships for the navy in a doomed attempt to hang on to our colonies – like America.

But it’s an issue in parks and some small gardens over in Britain while in North America what to do with dead leaves is a big issue in many towns, suburbs and rural areas – there are just so many more trees.

This is my simple take: it all depends on what you grow.

1. Get fallen leaves off the lawn. Leave them there and you’ll end up with bare patches – it’s that simple.

2. If you grow mainly shrubs, rake or blow them under the shrubs and forget about them. They’ll slowly rot down and if you usually smother the soil in bought-in cedar mulch you won’t need to bother.

3. If you have the time and energy to put them through a shredder first - or spread them on the lawn, mow them into pieces, and rake them up again - they’ll rot down more quickly and will be less likely to blow back where you raked them from in the first place.

4. If you grow small woodland plants like wood anemones, epimediums, corydalis and the like under and between your shrubs, or in shady borders under trees, do NOT simply dump freshly leaves on top of them. Their delicate shoots just won’t be able to penetrate and they will die. (In fact one of my upcoming jobs – after I’ve cleared the leaves out of the ditch alongside the drive so the rain and snowmelt runs off quickly - is to take the fallen leaves off some of the shade beds.) Even bugle (above, click to enlarge) will suffer is leaves are left to smother its leaves.

5. The best – and, needless to say, the most time consuming – answer is to shred the leaves and make a heap so they rot down; then use them as a mulch anywhere and everywhere or to improve the soil when planting. And the heap will often be a useful source of worms for fishing.

6. Finally, rake or leaf blower?  Clearly, blowers are noisy and emit all sorts of nasties. But if it only gets done if you use a blower there’s no argument really. Raking can just take too long. In densely planted beds use a hand fork or your fingers to get them out.

Leaves are valuable free resource – just do your best to make the most of them in the time you have.

Black Plants - all the books reviewed

What is it about black plants? They not only seem to inspire fierce disagreement amongst gardeners – “What’s the point of a plant with black leaves, you can hardly even see it?”/“Simply sumptuous!” – but with another book on the subject just out competition is flaring between the new book and those already published by the acknowledged expert on black plants.

So. Karen Platt has been popularising black plants since her first book came out in 2000 and she now has three different books on the subject. There’s the latest print edition of Karen’s first book, Black Magic and Purple Passion, from 2004. She also has an eBook update to Black Magic and Purple Passion published just a couple of months ago and she has The Best of Black Plants, another eBook published back in the summer. All self-published by Karen Platt. This fall these are joined by a new title from Timber Press, Black Plants by Paul Bonine. (Ordering links at the end.)

Between the latest print edition of Black Magic and Purple Passion and the eBook update Karen covers an amazing 3,500 black plants. Of course, as her title infers, “black” is not always true black, in fact on the jacket of her book Karen refers to them as “dark plants”. There’s also purple and maroon and indigo. Take another look at our slide show, below, for some of the blackest. (Mouse-hover over the images for captions.)

Black Plants Stock Photos - Images by GardenPhotos .com

The large format 2004 edition of Black Magic and Purple Passion is excellent. And at only about 50% more expensive than the recent arrival, Black Plants by Paul Bonine, which includes only 3% of the plants, it’s excellent value.

The eBook update is a good addition, with 650 more plants, but is generally less successful. One big problem with eBooks supplied in pdf format is that monitors and printers vary so the same true color is difficult for everyone to achieve. Only one low-resolution print-out is allowed and the low-res image quality of the print-out is nowhere near as good as the printed edition of Black Magic and Purple Passion. And it annoyed me that every time I opened the pdf to look at the book I had to re-enter my password. It should remember.

Then there’s the new Paul Bonine book, Black Plants. This is a small book – 6.5inx7in – and covers just 75 plants. And I have to say that this smaller-then-usual format makes the book seem less significant than I’m sure the publishers would like. Each plant has a full page picture and a description opposite. Generally the images are good (Declaration of interest: four of our images are used in this book); the descriptions and cultural info are not generous and that’s because of the small format. The plant choice is at times odd: two ipomeas, no bearded iris – and why include a very blue Agapanthus when there are many much closer to black? But this is a well-designed, instantly appealing little book.

Black Plants looks good, and (depending where you buy) more or less matches the price of Karen Platt’s Best of Black Plants (pdf only) - and a printed copy will beat a pdf any day. Karen’s eBooks are only available as pdfs, not in other eBook formats. But Karen has more and better info. Paul also fails to recognize Karen Platt’s pioneering work in popularizing black plants – even when discussing a plant named after her.

So, where does that leave us?

If you want an attractive and inexpensive gift book - choose Black Plants by Paul Bonine
If you want the best print reference book – choose Black Magic and Purple Passion (Third Edition)
If you want the most comprehensive reference to black plants choose the third (print) and fourth (pdf) editions of Black Magic and Purple Passion
If you’re a fanatic and want everything, add to these three The Best of Black Plants (pdf only).

Here’s how to order these books.

Order Black Plants by Paul Bonine in North America
Order Black Plants by Paul Bonine in Britain
Order Black Magic and Purple Passion (Third Edition, print copy) from the author
Order Black Magic and Purple Passion update (Fourth Edition, pdf only) from the author
Order The Best of Black Plants (pdf only) from the author