Each Little World

Last lilies

These hot sunny days have been just what the water lilies and garden lilies need. The water lilies will keep going for another month but this is the end of the ones growing in the garden.

This one (first two images below) is Lilium oriental 'Time Out' from Brent & Becky's Bulbs.

The next four images are Lilium henryi or Henry's lily. According to Old House Gardens (where I bought this lily), it is a wild Chinese lily and takes sun to light shade. 

These are reaching for more sun but still fully blooming. I kind of like the curving stems so I may leave them where they are. 

I planted these lilies in memory of my late father-in-law whose name was Henry.  He's also represented in the spring garden with Iris ensata 'Henry's White."

I've looked at my plant I.D. cards and assorted garden journal entries from 2008, which is when I received these beautiful red speckled lilies from Brent & Becky as trial plants. At the time, I marked them in B&B's catalog so I would remember the name. But the catalog, along with the name, is long gone.

The coloration is reminiscent of the famed 'Stargazer' lily, but the flowers are more recurved than the typical Oriental lily. Any guesses?

Some things like this hot weather . . .

Our relentlessly hot sunny weather has made the bright center of our garden — the pond and its water plants — shine. White, yellow and the interloping pink lilies are all at their peak. The flowers are all fairly similiar; it's the leaves that are more distinctive. The white lilies have very large leaves while the yellow ones have wonderfully mottled leaves on both the tops and undersides. And Mark's new telephoto lens finally let us see what these beautiful flowers look like on the inside. Since they bloom in the middle of the pond we have always viewed them — and snapped pix — from too far away to get a good look at the interiors. The same with the inside of the screaming yellow Nuphar. The heat and lack of rain has also made the pond water cloudy, which happily makes it more reflective!

The Driveway Border

Hot sunny weather, followed by a little rain and the acquisition of new camera lenses sent Mark on a walking tour of our garden. Here's the long driveway border (about 60' long x 10' wide / 18.3m x 3.05m). Originally I called it the "Hendrix border" because my idea was to create a purple haze. There are still a number of plants from that plan like dark red 'Claude Shride' martagon lilies, red barberries, the 'Forest Pansy' redbud and dark Heucheras and Heucherellas. But the addition of a Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Gold Rush') shifted the balance toward ochre, yellow and chartreuse. This spring we finally took out our 'Royal Purple' smoke bush to give the redwood the room it needs.

Epimedium rubrum (above) is filling in nicely along the front of the border along with a broad-leaved yellow sedge (Carex siderosta 'Lemon Zest'). This is the area with the Claude Shride martagons, also Heucherella 'Sweet Tea" and two ferns: Athyrium hybrida 'Ghost' and Dryopteris felix-mas 'Linearis Polydactyla'.

The large ceramic pot holds a dwarf waterlily. The bare space behind it is the home of the former smokebush. We will replace it with a 'Green Mountain' boxwood that is currently in a planter on the deck.

The standard tree in the angle of the zigzag stone wall is my "lollipop lilac." 

This sloping stone path is the wheelbarrow route to the back garden. You can also see some of the peeled trunks from the Arbor Vitae that Mark removed 14 years ago when we began the garden. We are still using them in a number of projects, including as a support for a red clematis that is visible (the support, not the clematis) in the 4th image.

Traffic island update: Summer 2011

Over the last half dozen years our city has installed traffic islands and circles on residential streets all over town. They're an attempt to slow down traffic on side streets that were not meant for the number of cars trying to take a shortcut to avoid the volume on nearby main roads. In most cases, residents plant and maintain these little oases of greenery.

The traffic island in front of our house is one of the few on our street that is in full sun. So I've filled it with everything that doesn't get enough light in our big garden. Most things — like the catmint and dwarf daylilies — are doing so well that they have to be continually divided. Here's a July snapshot of what's happening out in the street. The actual planting area is 6' x 6' (1.82m x 1.82m) of surprisingly good soil. The big lilies are from Brent and Becky's Bulbs and the geraniums and coleus are from Kopke's Greenhouse. And yes, the pansies and poppies have made it to July courtesy of all the cool days we had in June.

More Martagons

My large stand of Martagon lilies in the back garden are all the variety 'Mrs. R. O. Backhouse'. In only a few years half a dozen bulbs have exploded, while the Martagons in the driveway border — the deep red 'Claude Shride' — have expanded much more slowly. The difference may be the quality of the soil, amount of sun (or lack thereof) or the degree of rainfall that reaches the different groups. I've never quite been able to determine the reason for the difference in their growth habits. Even though there's not many of them, the lacquered red of the petals of 'Claude Shride' make up in drama what they lack in volume. 

Martagons at their peak

If you've been trying to grow tomatoes our cool weather has offered little help, but it has been ideal for the Martagon lilies. They've been blooming in massive stands in the Sacred Grove for almost a week. All of these pictures show "Mrs. R. O. Backhouse," with masses of soft peachy pink flowers atop tall stems. I'll take a mass of Martagons dancing in the breeze over those giant Oriental lilies any day!

Snow date

Four months to the day since our snow season began with a record-breaking storm on Dec. 8, 2009. Judging by the view of the garden this morning, it ain't over yet. Mark took a quick tour with the camera to mark the moment. 

 

For those of you interested in such things, the plants are: Dryopteris odontoloma fern, Lilium martagon buds with one of last summer's stems, Paeonia japonica, Hosta, Bergenia (If past years are any indicator, the rabbits will eat these before they actually bloom), Trillium sessile, Muscari latifolium, yellow primrose from the grocery store planted many years ago, Pulmonaria 'David Ward' with its apple green leaves, Hellebous orientalis Blackthorn strain. The primroses probably are done for, but since almost everything else is still in the bud stage, they will easily weather this little April setback.

Pink water lilies

After my recent post about limiting the color of the water lilies in our pond to whites and yellows, what should suddenly appear but a pink flower. A delicate, sweet, baby pink — but pink nonetheless. Where it came from or how it came to be, I leave up to the more scientifically inclined to determine. My guess is that our white lily — Nymphea marliacea albida — which is typically flushed with pink, had a hot flash. 

I suggested we pull off the flower after photographing it, the way you'd pull out a green leaf on a variegated plant, but Mark demurred. Whether pinkie was a fluke or a sign of things to come is not clear yet, as that plant has not sent up another flower. I can't deny she was very pretty but I'm hoping she doesn't try to spoil my carefully made plans again.

Monet, me and the Water lilies

Painter Claude Monet said that the intent of his famed series of images of the water lilies in his garden was to portray "the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon or bank." The intent of this series of photos is to portray the water lilies in our garden. But it appears that we, too, have water without horizon or bank. 

Not true, as you've seen, in our many posts describing the design and construction of our Garden Odyssey. But water lilies beg to be captured on film in a manner most deceptive.

Unlike in Monet's paintings and his garden, you won't find any pink water lilies here. Nor tropical blues and purples. Just whites and yellows for us.

I limited the colors of our water plants to those two hues because I wanted to visually "read" the pond as a unit that quietly nestled within the larger garden. I felt that white and yellow water lilies looked natural in a way that bright reds never would be able to do. And they would not draw attention to themselves to the detriment of the larger view, as is so often the case with red flowers.

Though our color palette is limited, the size of the water lily flowers and the number of petals varies with the cultivar; some of each color are also blushed with pink. And the size and markings of the leaves varies widely as well.

We don't grow any vegetables in our garden because the sunniest spot is where the pond is located — so we can grow water lilies, which need lots of light and heat to do well. Our dose of high temperatures and sunny days in mid-June got the water lilies off to a great start.

Our first water lily of the season opened on June 12; there were 5 blooming two days later — white and yellow both. We noted 12 lilies blooming on June 16 and 24 flowering on June 23. Our current record is 27 water lilies blooming at once on June 27. The flowers are fleeting, though not quite as short lived as daylilies. Usually they bloom a second day at the minimum.

The stems can be quite colorful, as this shot emphasizes. If I were doing a painting of our water lilies, this is the image I would choose to interpret. I love how everything seems flat, as though it's all floating one one picture plane.

Our water lilies are like all the other plants in our garden: they're perennials. We cut off the dead flowers and stems in November, and put the plastic pots they grow in down at the bottom of the pond where it's three feet deep. They over-winter just like the rest of our perennials.

The water plant on the left — also with a yellow flower — is a Nuphar (N. pumila). This plant grew in the pond where Mark went as a child and he insisted we have one in our pond also.

All of our water lilies were purchased in 1998 and, like all happy perennials, have been divided again and again. This is done when the plants are not blooming and, after eleven years, we're hard pressed to correctly identify them. And, of course, there's the usual confusion: the water lily marked Nymphae odorata 'Alba' was found to have a second tag deep within the plant when we went to divide it, suggesting it might be N. marliacea albida (another while with a pink blush).

Ultimately, we don't really care which plant is which. The water lilies are the stars of a seamless, floating garden. But they're not garden prima donas. Their beauty lies in the way they change with the light, their lush buds unfolding into endless layers. From now until fall, they will be the only flowers on display. And if they exhaust themselves and disappear, their huge leaves, spotted and blotched, flat and curled, will be display enough for us.  

Bulbs: More on Martagons

For those of you interested in more information about the Martagon lilies that I wrote about yestereday, one of the best sources is the North American Lily Society. The society categorizes the different types of lilies into groups according to parentage as well as flower shape. If you want to get technical, martagons are Division 2 lilies which includes hybrids derived from similar species including Lilium hansonii, L. medeoloides, and L. tsingtauense. NALS also sells “Martagon Lilies” by Eugene Fox, a 182-page book that is “the most complete reference on martagons available.”  

Martagon 'Claude Shride'/Mark Golbach photo

If you're looking for great pictures of Martagon lilies, check out the North Star Lily Society. This Minnesota group sells a CD-rom containing photos of over 150 species of martagons, along with articles and assorted information. If you grow martagons and take good photos, you may be interested in submitting them to the group for future CDs. (Mark's photos are not on the CD, but all the images you see on this post are his).

The two Martagon lilies that I'm currrently growing — 'Claude Shride' and 'Mrs. R.O. Backhouse' — are both such great plants that they've had me hunting for the most interesting martagons out there. I've been able to locate the plain species and few other interesting looking ones locally at the Flower Factory. As for mail order, I've found them at Brent and Becky Heath, McClure and Zimmerman, Old House Gardens and Plant Delights Nursery. 

Martagon 'Mrs. R.O. Backhouse'

But now I'm searching further afield which is how I discovered the Lily Nook, one of the few Canadian sources that ships to the U.S. At last look they had around a dozen different martagons for sale with prices ranging from $10 to $50 per bulb. That’s in Canadian dollars and Lily Nook’s Web site notes that credit card payments will be automatically adjusted for exchange rate. There’s also a $10.00 Phytosanitary Certificate charge per order. This certificate is required by the destination country and proves the bulbs have been inspected to be sure they are free of insects and disease. 

Not very romantic sounding, but you’ll be sure that those mail-order packages won’t contain any unpleasant surprises — just these gorgeous lilies.