Brief Of Montauk Daisy

    Montauk Daisy
Nipponanthemum nipponicum
(nip-pon-AN-the-mum) (nip-PON-ih-kum)
Synonyms: Nippon Daisy, Leucanthemum nipponicum
What I consider the Queen of the Fall Flowers is now blooming. Montauk Daisies really light up the fall garden and for me it is finally a relief after getting the plants through the whole season and seeing them bloom. Luckily not much affects them through the growing season but we still want them to have nice foliage and a lot of buds. There seems to be a few different fall flowers on the market these days with a steady parade of new Asters, Calibrachoas, and a good selection of Pansies. For a long time Chrysanthemum and cabbage seemed the only thing available.
Montauk Daisies are a tough somewhat deer resistant perennial that looks good during the summer. It can tolerate a lot of conditions that many plants can’t. They are always a treat in the border, massed or just planted as singles.

Forced Hyacinths for Garden Bloggers Bloom

Just like last year, I forced some hyacinths to cheer me up. I think I was a little more successful than last year.
First of all, I used good quality bulbs. Last year I bought some on impulse at a big box store. This year I subscribed to Brent and Becky’s email newsletter and waited until they put the hyacinths on sale. Then I bought some ‘Crystal Palace’ hyacinths. On November 7 I put two of them in hyacinth glasses and potted the rest of them up. I remembered that last year they didn’t spend enough time chilling, so I marked January 16 on the calendar to bring them up. That’s ten weeks.

At that point you could see the green tips coming out of the potting soil and the bulbs in glasses had quite a bit of roots. I put them in the coldest room in the house, where I also happen to have my seed starting setup, so it was easy to put them under the lights.
When the buds started showing color, I brought them to the sunniest windows we have, which are in the kitchen. The ones in the glasses bloomed first, and then the ones in the pot. They look blue in the picture, but when I look at them they seem more purple in color. However, I took the picture a week ago, so perhaps the color changed gradually. At first I thought I hadn’t kept them in the cold long enough, and the flowers weren’t going to emerge out of the leaves enough to enjoy them, but in the end it seemed to be about right. One flower was so top heavy that I had trouble keeping it upright in the glass:
I tried jamming a marble between the bulb and the glass. That worked for a while, but I guess the bulb shrunk, and then the marble dropped down into the glass. Elizabeth Licata, who inspired me to start forcing bulbs to begin with, says she displays them on a windowsill and just lets the floppy ones lean against the window.
This post is a little bit of a cheat, because the flowers are well past their prime now, though I am still enjoying them. I have to admit that if these hyacinths were blooming in the ground outdoors I would consider it time to deadhead them. I also have one miniature rose bloom.

March 17's Flowers

Darkly chilly days. Expectations are unrealistic. But there are always surprises. Among the ladies final at Indian Wells and men, I made my way cautiously over snow and ice remaining in the jungle, where many snowdrops already visible were joined by the first winter aconite gold at the foot of Magnolia 'Jane'. From there I turned south into the orchard and was walking in the shrubbery, where I noted with pleasure that many of the white flowered plant Digitalis purpurea var. alba looks like they survived the winter and can prove to be permanent temporary. But my eyes were suddenly attracted by a large patch of rosy-pink flowers, and although I was surprised, I immediately knew what they were.

We started to grow cyclamen from seed to four or five years ago, even though our efforts to integrate the purchase of a dozen plants in autumn flowering C. hederifolium Ellen Hornig of Seneca Hills Nursery Oswego. Cyclamen from seed is easy, and if conditions are right, and soon begins to self-sow that is already happening is not very hospitable to our situation, and we look forward to planting of seedlings.

It 'a paradox, he writes, "is not very hospitable to the circumstances", as it is in cyclamen thrive in a dry shade where few other plants are doing well. What I was seeing was the garden of C. coum, is said to be less hardy than hederifolium the mold, we both species in late autumn, preferably after the ground is a bit 'frozen, with pine needles. I had to see the plant had shrugged off the cover to reveal a patch of about 40x35cm. I spread a towel (to put it aside for these purposes) is a wet-land, lying down, fired my way, according to some bushes and the flowers fall, there were at least 70, and I could see the brothers neighbors urgent need to pass their coverage.

Coneflower Marmelade's Characteristics

Coneflower Marmelade

Echinacea

Echinacea purpurea 'Marmalade'

(Ek-in-AY-Shee-a) (PUR-PUR-ee-uh)

Another Coneflower new for 2011 Marmalade has a unique color. The large flowers are fully double with many petals. It is a flower that we look at different colors depending on lighting with tangerine, yellow and pink tones. Appears robust and the mother can bear heavy flowers. This plant was developed as part of a series of cone-fections by AB-Cultivars in the Netherlands. The flowers are fragrant (not seen) and work as well as cut flowers.

The Essence of a Garden

　　What makes the loss of the ptelea particularly surprising is that a number of other small trees thought to be more fragile came through with flying colours. Fraxinus ornus, the Manna Ash from southern Europe, with some shelter from spruce trees on the west side of the Western Triangle, lost not an inch at the top, though it seems to have lost a lower twig or two to deer. It is unlikely, given its provenance, the fact that it is a member of the olive family and its May flowering time, that we shall ever see the “showy, creamy white flowers.” Never mind, says Hugh Johnson (The International Book of Trees, the flowers “are only half the story. The whole tree is so voluptuous in glossy leafage that…it stands out in staid parkland like the velvet-framed bosoms of Nell Gwynn and her contemporaries on ancestral dining-room walls.” Even at my age, that’s a cheery thought.

Three other trees are worth a mention. I first saw Aesculus pavia, the Red Buckeye, flowering in the Leonard Buck garden in New Jersey almost twenty years ago, and have longed ever since to be able to grow it. It is a native of the southern United States, a small tree eventually to about 6m, with deep crimson flowers in typical horse-chestnut racemes in June. The buckeyes, both the Ohio and the Yellow, have thrived here, but pavia has been a struggle even though it has the protection of the north fence in the Nursery Garden. This spring it has grown forcefully for the first time, and even though it is less than 2m high, its foliage is striking. The Ohio and Yellow buckeyes flowered well this year, but our Horse-chestnut had not a single flower.
Yet the past winter cannot have been harsh. I am permitted to be definitive on that because Stewartia pseudo-camellia, a tree that meets all of Henry Landis’s criteria, is also about to reveal the bonus.