This Grass Almost Made Me Miss a Wedding

Masses of 'White Cloud' Gulf Coast muhly

Matt and I were in Atlanta last weekend for my cousin's wedding. We went to the Atlanta Botanical Garden during the day, where we saw the awesomest grass--'White Cloud' Gulf coast muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris).  It makes frothy masses of pale blond billows, and it is very aptly named: it's like being surrounded by a fluffy, luminous cloud.

In my excitement over sharing pix of this beautiful new grass with my brother, I kept the three of us from leaving the hotel on time, which meant we had to slip in the side as the bride was processing up the aisle. Oops. The irony is, my brother doesn't really care about plants at all ("Sure. It's awesome," he said, appeasingly.  He did not say, "Can we go now?" but I'm pretty sure that was in the subtext.)  The further irony is that none of my pix really do the plant justice.  You'll just have to take my word for it: in real life, it's awesome.  AWESOME.

More 'White Cloud' in the background

Anyway, the ceremony was very nice (flowers were very stylish--terra cotta orange lilies and lime green accent flowers. And the boutonnieres were made of moss and yellow globes of the disc flowers from some sort of asteraceae--very funky.  And at the reception:  sashimi!).  I don't think anyone noticed our late entrance, aside from my gimlet-eyed grandmother.


And we really enjoyed the botanical gardens (good thing, too. Admission was $20 a pop!  Yeesh.)  It wasn't a super-geeky bot. gar.--labeling and signage was spotty; you got the feeling it was more into design than botany.  But it was very pretty, and intelligently pretty.  Sometimes this kind of pricy destination garden depends on waves of gaudy annuals (yuck) to wow the visitor.  But when the heart of your gardens is perennials and shrubs, you have to know how your plants will work in all four seasons.  In Atlanta, for example, they left spent hydrangea heads on the fading shrubs, which is wonderfully seasonal and melancholy; not the Disney World approach.


My second favorite plant, after the inestimable 'White Cloud' was this radioactive Japanese maple, 'Yama Kagi' or "Full Moon" maple.

Acer japonicum 'Yama Kagi'

Here's a closer view, showing the brilliant color and interesting leaf shape (click for a bigger version).  I started making sounds about digging a really deep hole, filling it with peat moss and sulphur, and trying to grow this glorious thing back in Texas.  Matt just snorted.  Maybe he was remembering my earlier attempt at this kind of thing with the doomed farkleberry. Ours is a cruel, cruel climate.

Closer shot of 'Yama Kagi'

Also of interest was this espaliered loquat--who knew you could grow them this way?  Matt thinks it's insincere, but I think it's a very clever way to enjoy your loquat without having to find space for a giant, shaggy monster.

Espaliered loquat (Eriobotrya japaonica)

Other than that, my favorite thing was the orchid house, which was really a wonderful place: tons of freaky strange orchids, several very nice water features, and three staghorn ferns that were bigger than stags.  No lie. Beyond that, it was just a place that felt nice to be in, maybe because it featured a stimulating balance between formality and wildness.

Orchid house with giant staghorn ferns

This was one of many nifty weird orchids in the orchid house.

Strange pink orchid

Finally, my other favorite thing of the whole trip. I give you--Bugscuffle, Texas. It's better than Oatmeal, Dime Box, or even my old favorite, North Zulch. To whomever named this town: my hat is off to you.

Bugscuffle, Texas

Horticultourism--Tyler, TX

Lovely glass fountain at Blue Moon Gardens with complementary gazing balls

I've been meaning to visit Tyler's very large municipal rose garden for some time now.  We are rose enthusiasts, after all.  So we woke up early, stopped off at the little red taco wagon for our customary Saturday chicken fajita breakfast tacos, and hit the road.

The gardens were looking well--plenty of blooms, well maintained--but the truth is that it's not really our cup of tea (excuse the pun)--and not just because of its focus on moderns.

Here's the thing: making an entire garden out of nothing but modern roses is like trying to write a sentence using nothing but exclamation marks.  All these vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows are screaming at you from all over the place, trying to grab your attention.  But there are so many of them, and they are all in uniform, boxy parterres, so nothing really draws you eye any more than any other thing.  It's overstimulating and unsatisfying simultaneously.

Using parterres seems like a clever way to impose form on plants that are often so formless and scraggly, but it represses the distinctive personality of each cultivar.  It de-emphasizes the rosiness of roses.  Or so it seems to me.

The admittedly impressive rows upon rows of roses.  Note that the garden is at least this big again to the right.

There are some nice architectural elements in the park. I think it would have been better to select some roses for specimen plantings and some for massing, and then use the architectural elements to support the specimen plants--corners and archways and urns and central medallions in walkways that direct your attention and make the best use of different cultivars' strengths.  And then use evergreens in the background to ground the whole thing and to give some relief from the riot of color.  Think of a classic perennial border in England--a veritable Mardi Gras of colors and forms, set off by an impossibly smooth grass walk and the neutral background of a weathered brick wall--uniform, serene contrasts to the busyness of the flower beds. (See also the Bagatelle rose gardens in France)

As it is, this was our favorite part of the whole experience--a three-level koi pond tucked in a shady spot away from the roses.  Why not put a few roses around the pond's sunnier bank?  Some lovely cascadey thing, like swamp rose or 'Climbing Pinkie' or a very mature unpruned Tea rose.

And then my other favorite thing was this cultivar--you should click on it to fully grasp how heavily covered it is with hips, and what a bright gold those hips are.  I've never seen anything like it. Unfortunately, it was unlabeled--maybe 'Dainty Bess'?  If anyone recognizes it, please let me know.

I feel like I've been a little unfairly harsh--it's pretty nifty that a smallish town--or any town at all, really--has taken on the expense and trouble of maintaining a collection of this size.  I mean, look at the pic above--so clean and orderly!  Can you imagine how much mulch this requires annually?  And there are some very pretty spots--the koi ponds, the camellia walk, and the idea garden full of blooming perennials, for example.  It was just that it helped clarify for us some of our own ideas about how we think roses are best used in the landscape, which would be less rigidly formal, more individualized, and mixed with other species.

After that, we went to Chamblee's Roses, which I had always thought of as the Antique Rose Emporium's main competitor.  I think their main focus is wholesale and mail order, though.  Their excellent facility was scrupulously clean, tidy, and weedless, but it isn't a showplace the way that A.R.E. is. It is definitely worth the visit--we bought 8 roses and a book between the two of us--but it's a straightforward production unit for a terrific boatload of roses rather than a magical garden experience.

It was thanks to Chamblee that we finally got Buck roses.  "Moderns," we had hitherto sniffed dismissively.  But when saw them in person and full of blooms, they pretty much had us at hello.  We bought 'Dawn Star' and coveted 'Quietness' and 'American Legacy.'  They seem to combine old rose flower shapes with high fragrance on what are reputed to be very hardy plants.  We'll see what kind of shrubs they make. (Footnote: all 3, coincidentally, are posthumous releases of seedlings Dr. Buck gave to family and friends, according to this thread on Gardenweb.)

And I finally got some David Austins: 'Abraham Darby' and the 'Ambridge Rose' and 'Sharifa Asma'.

We also picked up a 'Mrs Dudley Cross' and peppery little 'Spice,' to replace the one from my undergrad days that died of Horrid Fungus our first summer in Elgin.

Then, back in Tyler, I saw the official lettering of the trip--how adorable is that New York Store?

 Delectable vintage lettering in Tyler's brick-paved downtown square

Next, on the spur of the moment, we googled "best nursery in Tyler," and got a recommendation for Blue Moon nursery, which turned out to be that unexpected something extra that makes a trip.  It was a small place with a lot of very nice plants in excellent shape set in creative, lovingly tended--and immaculate--display gardens.  We picked up a bog sage, a tiny yellow daisy whose name eludes me, some purple-flowering Thai basil, a hummingbird feeder, and two Dwarf Hamlins (that Pennisetum alopecuroides cultivar I was seeing all over the place at TNLA).

On the grounds they have this awesome patio/performance area--a fireplace, a niche for an urn, a mantel, a window, and--is that a pizza oven?  Whatever it is, it's delightful and convivial filled me with envy.

 Fireplace and patio at Blue Moon Gardens

At Blue Moon, they recommended we eat at either Edom or Ben Wheeler--apparently, these two rather remote hamlets are bursting with culinary goodness.  We chose The Shed in Edom where we had very satisfactory old-school chicken fried chicken and country fried steak; but interestingly, it was the fried cabbage (pretty much everything on their menu is fried--be prepared) that was the revelation--caramelized, sweet, but not soggy. Delectable. They must fry it very fast, in what tastes like bacon grease.  So it's going to be a salady week making up for that one, but, lordy! that cabbage was good.

I like this conjunction of signs.

So, all in all, a good trip. Long, but good.  We learned some useful things, bought some nice plants, saw some gardens, and had some yummy food.  That's about all you need.

TNLA 2011

'Emerald Choco Zebra.' Yeah, I'm serious--that is its name. A zebra that is made of chocolate and also of emerald. That makes sense.

Matt's company went to the 2011 Texas Nurseryman and Landscaper's Association convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago and very kindly let me come too.

I saw some of my old favorites from previous TNLAs, like 'Summer Chocolate' mimosa, 'Teddy Bear' magnolia, weeping atlas cedar, and 'Emerald Choco Zebra' curcuma (above). I have no idea how they perform (except for the Atlas cedar--we can't grow that one here). But I noticed a hell of a lot more grasses this year than previously. Not sure if that's because I'm in a more grass-receptive mood, or if there is a turn within the industry this year toward drought-tolerant/nativey sorts of plants.

If so I sympthize. All the plant pain in my garden distresses me (we've lost my new funky 'Wedding Cake' rose to a faulty irrigation valve, 'Autumn Damask,' a rose I nurtured along in a pot for eleven years after A&M and that has been in the ground happily for four, is on the brink, and it looks like Serenoa repens is succumbing to transplant shock + heat stress + drought after we planted it (idiotically) in July. Ths is despite getting water 3 times per week.) And I hate the amount of watering we're doing--I hadn't expected to water more than once per week during the heat of the summer, but we'd be living in a desert if I kept to that schedule these days.

So. Grasses.

We've got 3 varieties in the Grass-n-Roses bed:

• Big muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri)
• 'Mexican feather grass (Nassella/Stipa tenuissima)
• the new blue grama grass, 'Blond Ambition' (Bouteloua gracilis).

And we're looking for more.

This appears to have been the year for 'Dwarf Hamlin,' a Pennisetum alopecuroides cultivar. It was all over the place, along with 'Little Bunny' a particularly compact and adorable cultivar of the same species.

Pennisetum alopecuroides cvr. Hameln AKA 'Dward Hamlin'

Pennisetum alopecuroides cvr. 'Little Bunny'

That dramatic purple millet from a couple of years ago (or one like it) was also everywhere. Very stylish, but it doesn't look drought-hardy.

This specimen of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium--how's that for an orthographically challenging mouthful?) made a compelling case for use in the garden--so dense, vertical, and strikingly colored.

Schizachyrium scoparium

And this yucca with the painstakingly coiffured trunk--wouldn't that be a wonderfully sculptural addition to the garden? I love the buff-colored trunks against the grey-green leaves.

Yucca,  Can't remember genus offhand

I also saw quite a lot of both green and silver Carexes this year. They're pleasingly tufty and soft-looking. We might try some in the shade garden as a ground cover, if the heat ever breaks and we ever plant anything again.

Mexican blue palm and Carex flacca/glauca

Other than grasses & friends of the grasses, there were also some interesting new Echinacea cultivars. It's a lousy picture, but I love the pale lemon of the 'Sandy Yellow' Echinacea in the Sombrero series (poorly named--it's not the color of sand at all). And, while not to my taste, the I-am-a-PRINCESS! frills of 'Double Scoop Bubble Gum' would add variety and pizzaz to a nativey perennial bed. (But who comes up with these names? My mouth feels sticky just reading it.)

Echinacea 'Double Scoop Bubble Gum' and Echinacea Sombrero 'Sandy Yellow'

I also really liked two more cultivars in the Sombrero series: 'Hot Coral' and 'Salsa Red'. How well all of these fellows perform down here is an open question, but I do love their looks, and their slightly unusual proportions for an Echinacea--great chubby disc flowerheads with adorably stubby little ray flowers (the "petals"). Kind of the opposite of a sombrero, really, but what the hell.

Echinacea Sombrero 'Hot Coral' and 'Salsa Red'

In other trends, the industry seems very interested in new redbuds. In addition to the lovely 'Forest Pansy,' which has been around for a while, and the 'Hearts of Gold,' which I remember from last year, they're also selling 'Ace of Hearts,' 'Rising Sun,' and the stunning if slightly coarse 'Ruby Falls.'

(A) Hearts of Gold, (B) Forest Pansy, (C) Ace of Hearts, (D) Rising Sun, (E) Ruby Falls 
Apologies for the atrocious picture!

(A) Hearts of Gold - chartreuse leaves
(B) Forest Pansy - purple leaves
(C) Ace of Hearts - compact form, dense small leaves
(D) Rising Sun - newest foliage is orangey-pink, with older chartreuse leaves behind and mature dark green behind that
(E) Ruby Falls - weeping purple

Magnolia grandiflora appears to be undergoing similar diversification. There were several cultivars that appeared to be 'Little Gem' competitors--large, columnar evergreens. However, the only one that was really compelling at first glance was 'Teddy Bear' (so cute! so fuzzy!), which is several years old.

In a completely different vein, TNLA always has at least a few lovely things trucked in by hopeful vendors from Florida or Tennessee or Oregon that would never do here, like this wonderful strangeness: a Black Bat Tacca. I've never seen anything quite like it. Sadly, it's incredibly prissy, so I'll just have to admire it from afar. If I ever become a vampire, however, I'll have to have a whole garden of these.

Tacca chantrieri "Black bat flower"

Finally, I rather fell in love with these pots this year. I love the blue and the old fashioned French-looking patterns.

Some nice pots

Sparkly San Antonio

I've been AWOL since early December--busy month. So here's the first installment in the backlog: our annual trip to San Antonio to see the Christmas lights on the riverwalk.

We spent the night at the St. Anthony Wyndham, which is a few blocks from the river (and therefore a little cheaper than the places that are directly on the water). It was built around the turn of the last century, and as you can see from the lobby, it's très chi-chi.


The bit we liked best, though, was the doorbell.

Each room room has a brass plate with a button on the outside; push the button, and a clapper chimes on a couple of pieces of metal inside. We know this because we were fascinated by it and pushed the button over... and over... and over... Our poor neighbors.


I would pay good money to buy such a device and install it on our front door--so cool, so analog, so fin-de-siècle.

This is mostly what we came to see: the lovely lights blinking in the trees and reflecting in swirls on the water. We never found a camera setting that could really capture all the color, but this trippy picture was oddly the best. Drink enough overpriced margaritas, and this is roughly what the riverwalk looks like.


The next day, we visited the San Antonio Botanical Garden.

It was in the throes of a lovely explosion of fall color. I think--but wouldn't swear to it--that these are chalk maples--Acer leucoderm.


The baldcypresses were also changing, which looks especially nice against clumps of palmettos.


I always like visiting the fachwerk house they have on the grounds. They had to replace or resurface the plaster and replace the roof, but the beams are original. I'm not sure what kind of wood they are, but these gnarled old beams are neat.


Although it was quite crisp out, a number of plants were in flower, like this Turk's cap (Malvaviscus arboreus).*


*Actually, technically, a giant Turk's cap, Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii--good catch, Bob!

San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum

San Francisco Trip, Part 2

Eucalyptus bark. I couldn't believe how huge these things get in CA. And they're everywhere.

Our other big hort excursion in SF was the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Golden Gate Park. Wow, was that humbling. In general, I'm glad that I majored in horticulture rather than botany, but on trips like this, I remember the drawbacks to a horticentric education: my plant knowledge is so location specific. If I had spent more time studying plant taxonomy & morphology, I wouldn't be so utterly bewildered when dropped in an alien ecosystem.

Fortunately, the signage at the SFBG was really pretty good, and we were able to identify most of the plants were interested in. And these were many. Most would probably fry in our heat, but I'd like to try at least a few.

We started out in the prehistoric plants section, where, interestingly, the plants are said to be microchipped.

Presumably, some are so valuable that people steal them. Perhaps this nifty sago--I know big cycads can be worth a lot of money, and this one has an especially ferny quality to it.

Cycas pectinata. Tight like Fort Knox?

Or this neat tree fern--someone would pay a lot for that black quill-like bark, right?

Dicksonia squarrosa

There was also a dwarf equisetum in this area. It's native to only the very top of the US, and it's listed as endangered in a few states. This blows my mind. It's possible to endanger an equisetum? How? With plutonium?

Equisetum scirpoides: adorable, grass-like, and ancient

Elsewhere in the garden, we found this Cuphea nudicostata, which Matt would like to grow. It has the nicest deep cherry red flowers. Green is my favorite color, but I never do get tired of deep cherry red.

Cuphea nudicostata - unusually large flowers for a cuphea

In a similar vein, I was delighted by the big fuzzy spikes of the red velvet sage, Salvia confertiflora.

Salvia confertiflora. That has to grow here, right? All salvias grow in Texas.

Then there's this elegant Kashmir cypress, Cupressus torulosa var. cashmeriana.

Cupressus torulosa var. cashmeriana

Dave's Garden only has two members growing this one, but one is in Houston. So there's hope! It's got the most artistic-looking flat zig-zaggy leaves, and I love its graceful droopiness.

Kashmir cypress leaves

Then there are the plants I'm not even going to try. This beautiful dome-shaped tree, Maytenus boaria. It's from the cloud forests of Chile. It looks like it doesn't know the meaning of the word "August."

The delicately ferny foliage of the Maytenus boaria

This exuberantly flowered little tree with the absurd moniker of Fremontodendron. It goes from sulphur yellow (in the background) to that awesome peachy-orange in the foreground. Despite the leathery leaves, it just doesn't feel to me like it could live here.

Fremontodendron 'California Glory'

And finally, awesome though it is, I have no hope at all for this beautiful and unexpected orange passionflower, Passiflora parritae. Apparently, it drops its flowers once the temperature reaches 90 degrees F. Beautiful, but wimpy.

The beautiful but finicky Passiflora parritae

Falling Piers, Muir Woods, & the Taxodiaceae

San Francisco Vacation, Part 1



We just got back from our vacation to San Francisco--phew! There was a lot to see in a small space of time. I wore holes in my feet and caught a cold, but we saw a lot of lovely things, at some scrumptious food, and enjoyed just being in a place that was so very different from our everyday lives.

Being plant dorks with a limited time, we managed to miss Alcatrez and Chinatown, but we did see Muir Woods and the botanical garden at Golden Gate Park.

I think this was Matt's Favorite Thing from the whole trip:


It's a sign that warns you not to walk on the rickety old part of the pier because it could fall down under your weight... and then pieces of it might hit a passing swimmer. Please: Think of the swimmers.

And I made an exciting culinary discovery within the first couple of hours of being in the city: Vietnamese pancakes, or banh xeo.


I've never noticed them on the menus of local Vietnamese places, but they're scrumptious crispy crepey confections, just slightly sweet, with a stir-fried savory filling. Yummy.

Butmy favorite part was probably Muir Woods. We took this pretty road to get there.


Muir Woods is populated by coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), which are the tallest trees in the world. They are not, however, the most massive trees in the world: those are their cousins, giant redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum). Giant redwoods are the ones you can drive cars through. While coast redwoods are no slouches in the diameter department, the tree below may be the widest we saw in the park.


I was interested to see that the National Park Service still describes redwoods as members of the Taxodiaceae. That family was named for one of my favorite tree species, Taxodium distichum or baldcypress. Sadly for the honor of my favorite tree and my home state (it's the state tree of Louisiana), recent genetic research caused that family to be dissolved into the larger cypress family, the Cupressaceae (for the curious, here's a phylogenetic tree of the Cupressaceae, showing the genera it currently contains).

But baldcypresses and redwoods share a certain something or other that sets them apart from their cypressy cousins, like junipers, Italian cypresses, and arborvitae. Even baldcypresses have an august, primordial quality, and that same narrow, linear form. Below you can see an impressive example of the deeply furrowed bark that is characteristic of the former family.


And this tree--in addition to being covered in interesting aqua-colored lichen--exhibits the same graceful flare at its base as baldcypresses do.




Nevertheless, folks who know a great deal more than I do about botany, plant physiology, and genetics seem persuaded that the new classification is the most accurate. And it does now put the tallest tree, the most massive tree, and the longest lived tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) in the same family, which is kind of neat.

We took the main trail, which is paved and very congested, and took the first turnoff (Ocean View? Something like that). That trail goes up the mountain by way of a bunch of steps and is WAY quieter than the main trail. It's less lush, but there are no joggers up there (there were joggers on the main trail! Galumphing along, getting underfoot, and generally harshing the redwood mellow). The Ocean View runs into the Lost Trail, which takes you to the Fern Creek trail, which, by innumerable knee-jarring stairs, takes you back down to the main trail. The beauty of this route is that you get lots of quality alone time with the trees, and at the end of your exertions, you're rewarded with the best of the trees--the ones in the part of the trail that runs along Fern Creek at the base of the mountain. These are the biggest, most lush, and most mossy and lichenous of the lot. And the creek's beautiful too.


Many of the trees in the park are hollow, which doesn't seem to bother them one bit.


And, of course, there are fallen trees, which form an important part of the forest ecosystem. They also look really neat.


There were other interesting plants in the park. These dessicated ferns glowed in the dim forest light.


And there was moss everywhere, making everything look soft and green and fertile.



...More to follow...


ADDENDUM:
Bob asked if we saw any Pacific black-tailed deer while in Muir Woods. In fact, we did (or at least we saw a deer with a black tail--presume it's the PBTD), and we even snapped a picture:

Click picture for larger version

It looked at us inquisitively, determined we did not have any food, and slouched off in a huff. Or something like that, anyway.