Come see me!

On Friday April 6th from 11-12 I will be running a class at Tower Hill Botanic Garden called

‘Get Ready! The Spring Garden”

I will be covering some spring chores( fertilizing, clean-up) , pest and disease prevention , some fantastic planting ideas that will enliven your garden later in the season, and an intro to spring pruning and tool sharpening . I promise you will learn tons of stuff and have a fun time while you do!. You can register through Tower Hill, by clicking on the link below

Tower Hill class registration

See you soon

plans

This spring I am planning with Wil’s help ( and his go-pro) to start filming some videos in and around the garden. The hope,if it ever stops snowing and the stuff we have ever melts, is to start with an instructional video on spring clematis pruning.

The videos will be on youtube, linked here, and since I had to make a youtube channel for them I decided to upload a few slide shows. If you are felling the winter blues I though you might like to check out the Spring Slideshow for a little lift!

Click the link below to be taken away from this long winter

Spring Slideshow

Plant Profile and fun news

This past weekend something exciting happened, but more on that in a bit.

In February and March of every year, and even more so in the past week , I have been thinking about the subjects and plants I talk about in my classes and lectures because it is planning time for the 2018-19 season . I need to decide on and write new presentation topics, and tweak the older material to be fresh and up to date , The research part of my job is perfect for Nor’easters ( of which we have just had two doozies with a third on the way) and I may even like it as much as the teaching part.

What I found when going over things is that although I love to try all sorts of challenging and rare plants , sometimes getting very frustrated in the process, on the whole the people I speak to like to hear about plants they can a.) be successful with and b.) find easily. It is so exciting to order seeds from a great source abroad , or get them from a gardening friend, and grow something unusual. It makes my garden life interesting to try plants that are fussy and work out what they need to thrive. I have species clematis in my garden that have been here for years, been relocated many times and had all sorts of soil amendments added , fertilizers applied and given stern talkings- to and they have yet to bloom (clematis fusca I’m talkin’ to you!) but those tough plants are on the whole not what makes up the bulk of my recommended plant list.

In that vein, I decided to add a plant profile of an easy to grow annual that not only gives garden joy outside in the summer but inside here all winter as well with very little in the way of effort to find and grow, the Blue Potato Bush Lycianthes rantonnetti ‘Variegata’. (Z9-11)

I have seen this plant in a boatload of places both outside and in. It is often grown as a standard or topiary in conservatories , and around here you see it offered as an unusual annual filler for use in container plantings. I bought my two at a great little nursery in Amherst, MA called Andrew’s Greenhouse that specializes in just that kind of plant.You should go there is if you live in driving distance, really, I mean it, go there. Right away in when they open in spring. Go..

Left to it’s own devices the Blue Potato Bush will grow into a lax sort of shrub and that is indeed how I grew it for the beginning of it’s stay here, but then a few years ago I trimmed it into a ball on a stick and it has yet to disappoint me.

In the original container it was part of a mixed annual planting and it was the beautiful variegated foliage I was taken with. It grew in full sun and was watered when it was very dry, but the container was very large and left to fend for itself otherwise.

Late in the season I trained it into a standard(topiary) . I did this about a month before the move to give it a chance to recover form the pruning before the stress of a move. Training a plant into a standard is very easy and just requires picking one vigorous branch and cutting all the side branches off , leaving only leaves at the top . Then, gently holding the remaining stem upright, tie it to a firm stake and keep trimming all side growth until you have a thicker “trunk ” with all the growth now coming from the top. You can do this easily with coleus and geraniums too. Before frost I brought it inside where all winter long I enjoy not only the foliage but what seems like a constant flush of sweet little purple flowers .

the blue potato bush viewed from the walkway outside

In my big bay window it gets morning sun , watered once a week, and will start getting a weak dose of fertilizer this month to prepare for being moved outside in late May. During the winter months I do not prune it all all, instead letting it soak up every little bit of the winter sun with every leave it can push out. Once it has transitioned to the porch I will hack it back into shape.

A quick word about moving indoors to out. I have had over the years a number of plants that I overwinter inside and move outside in the warm weather.I have always followed a routine of slowly acclimating them , putting them out on the deck for a very short time in the morning , then back in when the strongest sun heats the day , adding on time spent outdoors every day until they could take the bright sun and windier conditions full time. In the fall I bring them back in before frost and often deal with a lot of leaf drop as they re-acclimate to lower light levels inside. After burning the leaves of a bougainvillea that i transferred too quickly I had an “A-HA ” moment and starting bringing the bigger plants out onto my porch and never moving them out into the full sun at all. You would think, like I did, that plants like the lycianthes and bougainvillea would need all the sun they could get and would suffer in what are most definitely part sun conditions, but they surprisingly thrived and when they come back in for the winter drop only a handful of leaves because the change is not so drastic. There is work trade-off; instead of all that in and out moving and leaf sweeping you have to water these plants regularly as they will get no rain under the cover of the porch. During the summer I wish I could say I regularly trim them, but alas many times they end up looking like Cousin it from the Addams family when I forget Image result , but that is easily remedied in a few minutes with some sharp pruners. The only other maintenance is watching for branches that throw out solid green leaves, as with many variegated plants these reversions need to be nipped in the bud so their more vigorous growth won’t out-compete the variegated growth .

so, moving on from fun and easy plants that bring loads of color but not loads of work to the exciting thing that happened this weekend……….

Last summer a local publication , Worcester Living Magazine, came here to take pictures of the garden and they came again in February to take pictures inside. The feature story of our house and garden came out yesterday and it is so cool. One of the things I love about letting other photographers loose in the garden is seeing their perspective on things, which is always very unlike my own. Clearly for this story the focus was on the whole property as opposed to my focus on the little things that make up the whole, but that led to wide all encompassing shots that give you all a much better idea of the layout.

If you follow the link below you should be able to read the article online if you wish

Worcester Living Magazine Article

planning a trip

For the past few years Wil and I have been discussing taking a trip to the UK. First we talked about a trip to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary (long past) thena trip to visit to our daughter Erin who was doing a semester abroad in Ireland (she has been home a year.)Now we need a new goal.

Of course we would both like to see many of the historical sites , and you all know my affinity for castles and all things moat related,but we can’t forget all the great gardens there ,and of course great gardens take precedence in the planning.

I dream of visiting Great Dixter and Sissinghurst , which for years have topped my list and I was sure those two places would be where I wanted to start. But now as time has gone on I am drifting in another direction; north.

It all started when I started following a knitting podcast of all things , where the hosts, a married couple named Andrea and Andrew visit Snowdonia in northwest Wales annually. They actually filmed their first episode there,. Now back up a few years to my love of historical fiction and my obsession with Sharon Kay Penman books especially the Welsh trilogy starting with “Here Be Dragons”

Why i am infatuated with all the unpronounceable names of people and places with too many consonants and far too many ‘Y’s and ‘L’s and errant and unnecessary’E’s is beyond me, but the wild land she described has been calling to me since I picked up her first book many moons ago. Seeing Andrew and Andrea’s footage while there got me rethinking our original plans.

Then , after a very busy last few months when time has been a blur and I have not been able to do many of the things I love ( like read , blog, and garden) , I finally have hit the stack of books and magazines that have been awaiting cold snowy days spent by fireplaces and was gobsmacked by the photos in The English Garden magazine (Jan 18) taken of the winter garden in Bodnant. I just can’t take my eyes off them, The Winter Garden at Bodnant Garden

This is a garden that was never on my list to visit, and according to John Rippen, the head gardener there it is not on many other people’s either because of it’s northern location, John stated that if it were more southerly and closer to other touristy stuff it would be in everyone’s top ten. Well ,John, you got my attention for sure!

A quick google search led me to find there are stone cottages for rent , are you kidding me???? Craggy cliffs and ancient forests? yes,please.

it’s like a kid getting to stay at Cinderella’s castle!!! Add in sweet villages around mountainous terrain with scenery to die for and hiking trials and cafes with homemade scones and clotted cream and a small shoreline and I feel as though there was a reason our trip has been delayed so I could find all this first.

there are some battles to be fought. Wil likes amenity filled hotels as opposed to drafty cottages with unknown hosts and iffy mattresses. There is also no way you could stretch your imagination enough to call him “outdoorsy” or a hiker so the appeal of a nine km trek over a small mountain to get a scone may seem far less appealing to him than it does to me. Also we would be far from the touristy UK stuff in England in Ireland that were in the original plan so some maps would need to be acquired and a great deal of planning be done.

I remain optimist and hopeful. I hope you are all enjoying your winter down time dreaming up new things for the garden, ordering seeds, and maybe planning a trip of your own.

I will be back in full swing here very soon!

viorna and texensis groups

the viorna group is unusual in that instead of having lots in common, these vines differ in cultivation and appearance. They can be woody vines, sub -shrubs, or more like herbaceous perennials, some need damp soil, some like it hot and dry, and for the most part they all have at least one fussy requirement that needs your attention for them to grow well in a garden setting. I know this is supposed to be about easy to grow plants, but some of these requirements might fit right in with your garden conditions which will of course make them easier to grow.

interesting fact; many of our native ( to the US ) species of clematis get lumped here including texensis, c. crispa, c adisonii, c. pitcheri, c. viorna c. glaucophylla and c. reticulata reminding us yet again that just because a plant is native doesn’t mean it will grow either well or easily in your yard.

let’s talk about one of the most beautiful yet frustrating, c. texensis . ph roslina 0409 clematis texensis red Clematis texensis is a beautiful bright red and has been used in breeding to attain variations of the color . You will not find the straight species anywhere in retail nurseries as it is most difficult to propagate and rare even among collectors. The hybrids of texensis, however, are often found for sale and are bear striking flowers on the reddish pink side . A few well known varieties are

Duchess of Albany Image result for clematis duchess of albany

(image from Brushwood Nurseries where you can purchase many of these plants)

Princess Diana (image from RHS)

Image result for clematis princess diana

Princess Kate (image from crocusuk)

Image result for clematis princess kate

and Gravetye Beauty

All of these vines are susceptible to powdery mildew which will discolor and eventually defoliate the vines. I tried for years to get Gravetye Beaty to look good in the garden , alas, this year I gave up and ripped my two vines out before I could change my mind and I really feel good about that decision. It became such an eye sore no matter what I tried and although I loved the flowers , that just wasn’t enough to warrant keeping them. I have had much better luck with Princess Diana and the Duchess of Albany, I would choose these for easy care plants if grown in full sun.

(For clarity I will make what seems like a stupid statement here, clematis texensis gets put in the Viorna group yet most of it’s hybrids are in the Texensis group. No one said this was easy lol)

Clematis viorna (AKA vasevine, leather flower) is a species that is highly variable in form and flower and due to some on going field research being done is about to get split into many new species and sub species . I waiver in my loyalty to either lumping the species together as they currently are (making it easier to remember and ID )and splitting them up which requires me to learn more names but is better for accuracy.

c. viorna has adorable leathery pinkish bells and spectacular feathery seed heads and can be quite vigorous (read:easy)

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C.crispa, is sometimes called Swamp leather flower , and that will give you a clue what differentiates this one from the group….water. Unlike mot clematis , It likes wet soil and can even tolerate being water logged which would kill it’s cousins. . If you have a spot that meets this requirement I would rate this plant as easy to grow. It sports recurved white-lilac bells and the vine tends to be pretty open and sparse. The one thing clematis is the viorna group definitely share is the adorableness of their flowers. Petite and sweet.

Photo again from Brushwood. I did finally dare to plant this clematis here in my dry sandy soil, it is right next to the hose and and although not flowering yet , it is alive and growing , fingers crossed.

Image result for clematis crispa

Clematis odoriba is a cross between viorna and crispa. It is and extremely free flowering vine whose intense pink flowers face slightly upward making them a wonderful addition to my back arbors where we can see the top-most blooms over the fence. I adore this vine, it is ignored out back and is thriving in neglect .

the crappy picture is from my phone which usually does a better job.

Another from this group I grow here is clematis fusca, which as soon as I figure out just what it is looking for to bloom and be happy I will let you know. So far every location and soil amendment etc I have tried has just shown me what makes it sulk and die back. I look forward to seeing the very unusual flowers in the garden as opposed to plant catalogs

Related image

So keep in mind, if you have wet or heavy rich soil , try clematis crispa.

Baking sun?? plant any of the c. texenis hybrids

If you have average soil you can easily grow c. viorna and c. odoriba.

and if you successfully grow c. fusca, congrats to you! Please fill me in on what it likes, I am all ears!!!

heracleifolia group

now this is a very interesting bunch of clematis given how unlike the typical , or I should say most well known varieties,look. Instead of thin twiney and grabby vines, the shrubby heracleifolias have relatively large leaves, thicker stems, and a extremely lax way of growing ,

They have no modified petioles to climb with so you can either 1.) tie them onto a support 2.) tie the vines to each other to make it look like a shrub ( whence they will resemble a hydrangea bush) or 3.) let them do as they will and sprawl into the garden or better yet down over a wall.

Here in the burrow I do all three . When letting them find their own way into the garden though, i do find I need to help a little with some careful redirection given that they emerge and really get going after many of the herbaceous perennials are filled out and they need to have their position adjusted so they are either in the middle of or under the other plants and no one gets smothered by all that lovely foliage.

What makes growing this group of clematis so easy is that they are more like the herbaceous perennials in the garden and die back to the ground every winter making pruning a cinch. The leaves are untroubled by the browning and dying off that other clematis are notorious for, instead holding on to their lush green coloring all season long , and they tolerate dry conditions very well.

They bloom in the latter part of summer, August into September and their little white, purple or blueish bell or star shaped flowers ( reminiscent of hyacinths) are a welcome sight when the garden need a pick me up,

Clematis stans is one in this group that you need to grow from seed. I have never it seen sold as a plant , but the seeds are easy to germinate and will flower either that year or at the latest in it’s second. The late-great Christopher Llyoyd famously described this clematis as “bearing flowers of a spitefully non contributory off-white skimmed milk coloring”. High praise indeed! It just goes to reaffirm a lesson we all need to hear in this day, that you can adore many parts of a person ( in this case bordering on worship) and still disagree with them on certain things. Given that c. stans is very variable in it’s flower color and fragrance , it is worth sowing a few to see what you get.

This one I started last spring is flowering and looks more lilac colored and is highly fragrant, reminiscent of lilies.

One clematis in this group I recommend all the time is Mrs. Robert Brydon. (click name to read my plant profile )

Mrs. Robert Brydon, with it’s fancy name, is more widely available than the other heracleifolias (I have even seen it at big box stores ) and has the same clean and green foliage as others in this group.

The flowers grow on short stalks in clusters and are lovely both in bud and when open,

buds of Mrs. Robert Brydon

the further open the flowers get, the more the stamens protrude in a little mini firework display. This one wins a cuteness award.

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The last clematis in this group I grow is it has petite urn shaped flowers that are said to be highly fragrant, my plant has yet to bloom (although it looks beautiful and healthy) so I will leave you with a tease and a promise to post photo when it does for you to enjoy, a promise I wish could make you about the scent , maybe someday it will bloom on an Open Day.

next week we talk viornas including many of our natives, stay tuned!

easy peasy clematis

I hear from many people at my talks that they find clematis to be tricky, fussy , or even impossible to grow. that may very well be true for some of the large flowered hybrids with their susceptibility to wilt and siren call they send out to every slug from here to Nova Scotia, but the more you know about this fascinating genus of plants the better able you are to pick and choose the ones that flower generously and remain more or less trouble free in the garden .

For the next couple of weeks i am going to introduce you to some clematis that are as easy as pie to grow and maintain , and also bring some charm into the garden.

First a little background info. The genus clematis has quite a number of differing species , and these species hail from all over the globe and can be markedly different in their growth and growing requirements. One way growers use to simplify the what and how of each species and their hybrids is to lump them into loose groups based on parentage.

The four groups I am going to talk about are all full of late season bloomers, with generally smaller flowers massed on larger vines , they are the Tangutica group, the Heracleifolia Group, the Viorna Group and the Vitacella Group. One a week for four weeks, follow along!!!

This week we start with the Tanguitica group and three of the easiest clematis varieties you will ever grow.

The Tanguita group holds clematis that have either c.tanguitica, c. orientalis, c.serratifolia, or c. tibetana as a parent, it is sometimes also called the Orientalis group. Many clematis in this group have yellow or orange-y yellow flowers, but also white, cream or even those that look brown, or some that are bi-colored. The clematis in this group also sport some pretty amazing seed heads and many of the vines can grow large enough to cover a shed or pergola.

C.tangutica ‘Bill MacKenzie’ was the first one I ever grew from this group. It can reach 25+ feet and has lovely foliage which never looks ratty because it is very adapted to living in poor sandy soils and is quite tolerant of drought .I t will sulk in heavy or poorly drained soil so add grit and gravel if necessary in your neck of the woods. I have planted Bill under the one ( out of 20) remaining poplar trees in the yard where it happily has grown into the canopy of the tree and flowers from June to September. After the first few flower pass (usually in July) the vine starts to also show off the gorgeous large silky seed heads that persist until early winter . I press the foliage of this guy a lot for my Pressed Flower card workshops, it is quite fine, almost ferny.

seed heads of bill MAc

foliage of Bill Mac

This clematis blooms only growth it makes in the current year, so you could in fact cut it down to 12 inches or so in the late winter, but I chose to cut only a few vines back, and to staggered heights at that, to maintain some of the height into the tree and get flowers at many levels.

Clematis ‘My Angel’ is also a very vigorous plant and quite the charmer. I bought mine from Klehm’s Song Sparrow and am copying their description here because it is perfect (photos are mine)

Charming flowers are yellow on the inside and brushed with plum-red on the outside. Clematis My Angel® has plump, round buds that open to nodding flowers over a long bloom period. Each bloom has four showy tepals and is accented with a center of dark plum anthers. Flowers give way to fluffy silvery, seed heads.

my angel

The only thing I will add is that my flowers tend to be the size of a dime , they are beyond adorable.

I word of caution, I have heard this baby will seed itself , but usually near the mama plant. haven’t had it happen here but good to know.

The third member of this group I am growing is new to me this year, and seriously, if you can’t grow this one you should maybe take up a new hobby.

‘Radar Love ‘ had solid yellow open bells and gorgeous seed heads, how do I know this so soon? Started from seed in April, my plants are already blooming and one has seeds too. 4 months from seed to blooming vine, and mind you, I had almost 100% germination rate so I actually ran out of locations to put them in the garden and I left some in pots where they have been deliriously happy .

radar love

radar love seed head

Doesn’t get easier than this, well, except maybe next week’s group, The Heracleifolias!

cheap thrills

As the season goes on ( and boy is it ever a glorious one thanks to Mother Nature being generous with the water works) each day I stroll around eagerly awaiting to see what has come into bloom around the next corner. We are in prime summertime; coneflowers, black eyed susans, garden phlox, hydrangeas and many a treasured and sought after plant ($$$$) are sure strutting their stuff,and while I love to see rare clematis and well grown roses, if is the cheap thrills that get me the most.

There is such a sense of satisfaction knowing you can create a beautiful landscape on a shoestring budget if you just are a little prepared ahead of time in a few ways.

Fist and foremost buy seeds of things that are easy to both start from seed and save seed from when they are done blooming, things like morning glories, love in a puff vine, hyacinth bean vine, nasturtiums, zinnias, amaranth and cosmos. Dahlia tubers also fall under this heading even though it is a tuber instead of seed you save. It may be a teeny bit of work but worth every bit of effort in the end when you can fill loads of containers and empty spaces in the garden for next to nothing. Almost all of my annual vines are now started from seed I have saved , initial cost was minimal, and now it is only my time that gets spent as I watch for w week or two and gather the seeds to store over winter.

Nasturtium seeds form quickly as the flowers fade and can be collected as soon as you see them big enough , and before the birds get to them.

Hyacinth bean forms cool electric purple pods and these get left on the vine until brown and then dry and then take the seeds out of the pod and store .

Love in a puff halicacabum cardiospermum makes these cool puffs after flowering and the seeds are in them, but you can just store the puffs after they are brown

love in a puff

I use little glassine envelopes for all most but not all of my seeds. For things like amaranth and even zinnias you can just pop the whole flower head in a paper lunch bag to deal with later in the winter when you are bored and feel like separating the seeds from all the chaff. Just make sure they are dry before placing them in the bag. With the amaranth a quick vigorous shake of the bag in the spring will send the seeds to the bottom of the bag leaving the rest of the flower stalk intact and you just take out and pitch the stalk and pour out the seeds.

I have several large containers that are filled using many of these saved seeds .the first key to success is a large pot + less watering+ greater germination and survival rates. Because i save way more seed than I could ever use, I sow heavily and then thin out the seedlings them later if necessary .

This pot has a mum and a sedum that live in it year round and then I pop in seeds after all chance of frost has passed. This year it was actually very late as I used hyacinth bean seeds which I never plant outside until June 1. I also add a single dahlia tuber in there and by early July the pot is full and fresh looking and will be flowering within the month lasting through frost. Someone on my garden tour this June happened to be standing next to me and the pot when it was all just starting to grow , and commented “I see what you are doing here, how clever! ”

large pot with dahlia, mum, sedum, hyacinth bean vine

Another pot nearby gets morning glories every year and this year I added the hyacinth bean as well.Within a week with this heat (finally!) it will be outrageously full and blooming

You can read more about my use of annual vines for late season interest here

The two large pots on the pool area are even easier. These are quite large and are made to hold the umbrellas. (you can see what I did here) . They are heavy and I actually never change the soil in them partially because of the cement , but mostly because the petunias that I planted in it the first year they were made ( probably 6 years ago) seed readily and come back for free. I will admit it takes time for the seedlings to get to any reasonable size so the pots initially remained quite empty until the middle of July but then I started planting lettuce seed in them very early in the season, Now I grow lettuce in one of them , harvest lettuce all spring , and just as it is starting to get too warm for the lettuce, the petunias are of a decent enough size to take over and the lettuce gets ripped out while they carry on until frost.

In the second one I actually get celosia to self seed as well, so i just pop in few seeds of nasturtiums and call it a day. this year the chipmunks planted sunflowers in there and although I do not like the look of it I will let them stay, cut the sunflowers for inside once they are flowering , and then move some of the other plants to fill in the gap. You may notice that the petunia growing in here is one of those “illegal ” orange ones. This is a very long but very interesting story you can read about here if you like in an article titled “How the transgenic petunia carnage of 2017 began”, but suffice it to say that petunias do not contain a gene for expressing the color orange so some wacky engineering was going on for them to exist. I actually bought one plant for a dollar to tuck in this pot very late in the season and I was very surprised to see it come back.

celosia

variegated nasturtiums

Which brings me to my second way you need to be prepared, and that is learn what seedlings of your favorite annuals look like and be aware when weeding what you are pulling. Lots of annuals leave seeds that will happily overwinter in some years, sometimes they can get annoying like Morning Glory sprouting all over the place but many times it is delightful to find free plants to either leave growing where they sprouted or lift and move elsewhere. This little nasturtium seeded itself here, and every petunia I grow was a self planted seedling.

Any way to save a few dollars helps and makes it so I can splurge on the cool new bulbs I have been eyeing!

clematis as cut flowers

It is not too often that I give a presentation on clematis when the garden is in full swing, but as luck would have it I am headed out to Rockport to talk to a group there and so I have cut some flowers to bring for show and tell 😉

If I were to make arrangements with any of these clematis, I would most definitely cut long stems with multiple blooms but for this talk single flowers will do.

Here is what I cut today:

Hagley Hybrid

Star River

Dr. Ruppel

Ville de Lyon

Orodriba

Catherine ClanWilliam

Betty Corning

Rosemoor

Pink Mink

Recta ‘Serious B;ack’

c. mandshurica

polish Spirit

Elsa Spaeth

Triternata rubimarginata

roguchi

Purpurea plena elegans

Comtesse de Bouchard

alba luxurians

foliage of Mrs. Robert Brydon

foliage of tanguitica Bill McKenzie

seed head from omishiro

and here are a few I like to for their usefulness in vases

Let’s start with Star River. ( Zostarri) This clematis was bred by Wim Snoeijer from Holland. It has lovely two toned violet flowers that are actually quite beautiful from both front and behind, is an integrifolia ( herbaceous) hybrid that does not climb so is a set of long and untangled single stems with multiple flowers at the tips, and blooms easily for months. All of these attributes make it the perfect candidate to cut and arrange with. I adore this clematis in bud and flower both in a vase and out in the garden, it’s only drawback is it really looks awful after the flowers start to go past. They fade to a dreadful color and I immediately deadhead them , but that is in a no way meant to dissuade you from planting it as deadheading is actually good for the plant will stimulate new growth and more flowers.

Rocuchi is great in arrangements for all of the above reasons and the buds are really cool too so a definite for textural as well as floral interest.

roguchi bud lower right

while it is nice to have lots of big colorful flowers, you need also filler and foliage too and clematis mandshirica is a great one for that. It is also an herbaceous form, so again, very easy to cut longer stems which are act just like baby’s breath filling out between flowers with a goes-with-everything-white froth.

The foliage of both the tanguita group and the herbaceaous heracliefolias could not be more different but both are wonderful to use when cutiing.

The heracleifolias ( like c. stans,c. urticifiolia, and the one pictured her Mrs. Robert Brydon, ) grow upright and errect and the foliage always perfect, never bug eaten or browned in the garden, They are also very large and highly textured, great for flower arranging

Mrs. RBry leaves under the yarrow

The tanguitcas on the other hand are long, ferny and wonderful to drape and let hang, you can see the leaves in the photos above

All of the plants in both these groups are quite large, so you can cut at will and not worry about loosing their presence in the garden.

We are due for another stormy and rainy day, our weather has been perfect for my garden . I am grateful that the sprinkler system is getting a much needed break after the drought last year, although without all the watering I gotta admit I am a little bored.

clematis tour

this is a marvelous time for clematis, when the early guys are still trucking along and the late bloomers are just starting, makes for lots of flowers that’s for sure!

Elsa Spaeth is a favorite, in my top ten , and blooms start early and carry on for weeks. Only a handful of clemmies get planted more than once here and she is definitly one. The HUGE flowers, that deep color, the vigor of the plant, all combine to make perfection.

elsa spaeth

Betty Corning s another on my top 10 list.I here back from people I have taught telling me how happy they are to have planted her. She is a show stopper because of the sheer volume of flowers at any one time, disease free foliage and 18 + weeks of bloom. Amazing

Another vitacella, venosa violacea is just adorable but may get a new home give she is being swamped by other plants where she is

Odoriba is a cross between our natives crispa and viorna. It has cool wide recurving sepals Delicate to look at, easy to grow.

odoriba

Catherine Clanwilliam has sure taken it’s time getting going here but after a few year is showing a little more vigor. It is rosy pink throughout and will twist the tiniest bit after opening

catherine clanwilliam

a tanguitica called ‘Bill McKenzie is currently blooming way above my head in a tree. It is extremely early this year. the seed heads on this one are fantastic

bill mckenzie

purpurea plena elegans is a very diminutive vitacella that really needs to be grown on it’s own to appreciate. It lives here in a large container in the pool area.

pupurea plena elegans

Polish Spirit has the stamina and strength of my people. It blooms so long and so hard and the vines themselves are huge. I grow it here up a covered bench and over a gate into rugosa roses AND over my black fence It is that wonderful!

polish spirit

etoille violet is another on my top ten list, it is a flowering machine and can take quite a bit of shade. I grow it into a crabapple tree and up lattice on the north side of the house

this guy is clematis triternata rubromarginata although it is far more dark purple than my other vine of this variety which is more on the reddish side and it has green in the mid section instead of white.The flowers are very recurved and twisted like a mini-pinwheel. It is very unusual but an up close and personal plant given it’s small and dark flowers which do not stand out from any distance.

roguchi is a reliable long bloomer that does not twine or climb. It’s buds are just as interesting as the opened flowers which are a very deep dramatic purple. Here it grows in a small raised bed under a maple next to and into a yellow foliaged arborvitae.

rogucci

this one was sold to me as Snow Queen but I am sure it is Hagley Hybrid. It never fades to pale , instead remaining clearly pinky mauve with textured mid-ribs and those dark anthers

speaking of dark anthers, this is Countess of Wessex sporting some very dark anthers indeed

on the arbor with her is Huldine who has been in recovery mode for the last two seasons after consecutive rabbit attacks. The flowers are a little smaller than usual but much better than last years. Both grow into a very rambunctious rambling rose.

flueri is a very compact vine bred by Raymond Evision with very deep dark coloring. This clematis is placed all wrong here, growing under a dark ninebark and barley visible to the world. It is on the to do list to move this next to something variegated and light so it can be seen by all.

flueri

These buds and the one backward facing bloom below are from Burning Love (or Vitiwester’) which is a lovely deep red and has the added bonus of being crossed with a vitacella parent so it is disease resistant .

burning love

i am Lady Q is ever so dainty and delicate with a crisp white center and purple-pink edges. This weekend the pop up tent we were using for garden check- in on the tour went flying in the wind and took her obelisk down, but she weathered the storm quite well loosing only one of her vines.

I am Lady Q

Normally Dr.Rupell is one of my earliest bloomer, this year it is a bit behind but welcome all the same

Star River has been performing quite nicely for many weeks now. I must say I do not care for the fading flowers on this one so have been regularly deadheading it.

star river

Rosemoor is another dark beauty . Rosemoor used to grow here on a willow tutuer I made but last year I swapped it out for this white one and now she really pops

Comtesse de Bouchard is another on the top ten list, you will never regret growing this a stalwart plant , easy care, generous bloomer, just a delight

comtesse de bouchard

Last but not least are two herbaceous clematis. Arabella has been going strong for 4 weeks , I may start a herbaceous top ten list just so I can add this beauty to it.