Naturalizing Within a Stand of Ornamental Grass

I continue to be fascinated with the popular horticultural efforts to create ornamental plant communities inspired by naturally occurring plant communities such as meadows. One approach that has interested me for years and that I have experimented with repeatedly is to create a sort of matrix of a clumping ornamental grass and then introduce compatible flowering plants. (So far the grasses I have used include Deschampsia flexuosa, Deschampsia caespitosa, Calamagrostis brachytricha, Sporobolus heterolepis, and Festuca ovina, and I just started playing around with Sesleria autumnalis which I think is promising.)  Getting the grass established first will help to get ahead of the weeds, and I love the sweep of the grass matrix and the challenge of finding the right flowering plants to insert.

Above is a picture of turf that is mowed only two or three times a year. As you can see yarrow has established itself nicely in a portion of this field and represents a simple form of what I am talking about, but it is a bit rough for a garden.

Above is a picture I copied from William Robinson's 1881 edition of The Wild Garden in which he suggested planting peonies in the midst of a stand of grass. I experimented with that idea myself as can be seen below.

As is so often the case, I think I could do a better job if I could start all over from scratch, but instead I will continue to tweak it to get just the affect I am looking for.

Above is my first attempt (1990) at this type of planting which I thought went fairly well but my work colleagues never seemed very fond of it. The grass is Sporobolus heterolepis along with the blooming Allium cernuum on August 6th. Belamcanda seed pods are about to open. I think this made a nice late summer display, and earlier in the year Allium aflatunense, Liatris spicata, and Hemerocallis flava added seasonal floral interest. One problem was the encroachment of the adjoining turf grass, and I guess the other was that it never looked "composed." Perhaps placed in a location with lower expectations of cultivated splendor it would have been better received.

Another project, still in development, is to create a little community on about a 300 sq. ft. terrace between two rock retaining walls. Above Verbena 'Annie' proved a pleasant surprise in this dry sandy site, growing nicely with Festuca ovina. Judging by how quickly it established itself the Verbena may prove to be a bit aggressive.
Below is the same planting with another pleasant surprise. After having killed Incarvillea delavayi a couple of times this Festuca ovina planting proved to be a place for it to thrive. I will continue to search for suitable companions to join this little community.

Country Scene in What Country?

When I look at this picture without any background information about it at all I can tell that the likelihood of this being taken anywhere in the whole of the United States is so low that I would immediately conclude that it was not. Why is that?

Phipps Conservatory

I am not a big fan of conservatories. Admittedly, my spotty knowledge of non-hardy plants makes me less fascinated than I could be, but more to the point I think they tend to be expensive energy glutons featuring two kinds of displays, throw away seasonal displays and tired fixed tropical plant accumulations. It's not that I avoid them. I do enjoy walking through them fairly quickly, typically finding a handful of pause worthy items. And I love the fern house at Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory, and the rockery, under glass at Calloway Gardens is very engaging. I also appreciate seeing plants I would not otherwise have the opportunity to see.

All this said, I loved my recent visit to Phipps Conservatory. What impressed me most about the place was how well it is cared for. It seems to have that rare combination of adequate funding, good horticultural care and some very nice design. They work aggressively to minimize their energy usage; their seasonal displays are artful and seem to be enhancements of existing gardens more than just temporary and expendable installations; and their permanent collections are fresh, vigorous and attractive. In fact Pittsburgh in general was a nice place to visit. I must get back there again.

Using Fall Blooming Crocus and Autumn Crocus

I think a gardener has to be clever to make effective use of fall blooming crocus and autumn crocus (Colchicum). They are hard to work into a planting scheme and to keep track of during the summer when they are dormant.  Below are some examples of their use:

Crocus ochroleucus on 10 October is growing in the shade of a large beech where little else competes with it. It leaves me a bit unsatisfied in this Kingwood Center location, because it emerges as a sort of curiosity with nothing else around.
 

I planted these Crocus kotschyanus in some rockery and quickly forgot about them. Fortunately they survived and were blooming on 4 October to my surprise and delight mixing in nicely with other plants in the garden.

Autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale: Somebody on the Kingwood staff did a nice job of selecting this dark spot under a dawn redwood tree (Metasequoia glyptostroboides). With little competition they survive and brighten up the spot beautifully in the fall. This picture was taken on 28 September

Here is another good use for autumn crocus, coming up through a perennial; in this case it is a low growing Nepeta at Kingwood Center

Planting out in the lawn seems to be a very common use of autumn crocus. Here at Kingwood Center we mix them with daffodils. We get a few negative comments about the long grass that we have to tolerate in the spring until the leaves of the autumn crocus and the daffodils die down, and the turf takes a while to recover after being neglected, but the surprise of the autumn crocus in the lawn in the fall is very pleasant.

Promises Broken

Sold to me by The Lily Garden as Crocosmia 'Brilliant Sunset', a flower with a "distinctive cream to soft yellow eye". Clearly this picture is not of 'Brilliant Sunset' 

It is always disappointing to discover that a plant you bought was misidentified or misrepresented by the nursery selling it. Your loss is so much more than the cost of the plant. This year I discovered what was represented by J. E. Miller Nurseries as Himrod Seedless, a "white seedless" grape that I bought in 2009, was neither white nor seedless. It took four seasons to make that discovery. Now as I start over I can expect another three or four years to get to this point again with a correctly identified seedless grape. There isn't much point in asking for a replacement plant. How can you believe them? And the $9.00 plus shipping I paid for the plant seems insignificant at this point.

I had another similar disappointment this year that remains a bit of a mystery. The nursery called The Lily Garden included in their catalog the last couple of years or so a section on Crocosmias that really sound exciting. Where I live the only hardy Crocosmia is Lucifer. A plant breeder named Niels van Noort, the catalog says, has a new assortment of hardy Crocosmia said to be "generally hardy to zone 5". I bought some and one of the plants bloomed the first year. The problem was it didn't match any of the pictures in the catalog, especially the picture of the variety it is supposed to be (Brilliant Sunset). So I e-mailed them. No reply. I called and left a voice mail. No reply. I have called and e-mailed (with image) repeatedly over the last six weeks or more. No reply. What am I to think? It is very disappointing. I guess I will learn something when I see if the plant survives the winter. It is attractive even if I have no idea what variety it is. Unlike the grape, however, it didn't take four years to discover the problem, and if it proves hardy I will still have something of worth.

Growing Candy

What a thrill to have a watermelon patch. Each watermelon seems like a special treat just waiting to be enjoyed. Definitely more exciting than squash.

There is the tendril that is supposed to indicate ripeness when it turns brown. We will see.


Long frustrated by failure to put the edible plants I grow to good use I have moved more and more to what I think of as candy plants. Blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and the like are, to me, like growing candy. Perhaps I don't harvest the whole production, but I get good use out of at least those three. This year instead of green beans and squash I am growing watermelon. Yum! I used plastic for the first time. It was kind of against my general approach to gardening, but not any more, at least for watermelon.

I searched on line for how to determine watermelon ripeness. I got a few clues but the only really reliable approach, I was told, was to cut one open and see. I did that and while it was edible, I think I will wait for another week or two. I will watch for any changes in the first tendril from the fruit stalk and see if that technique works. I can't wait.

My wife came through for me recently. We harvested tomatoes, eggplant, garlic and leeks and used them to make egg plant Parmesan. Wow was that good. But now that we have used one egg plant (I grilled another couple without great success) we are, alas, probably done with the other fifteen or twenty out in the garden. I have a recipe for tomato cobbler that comes highly recommended. Perhaps that will be this week-end's cooking project.

Bedding-out Scheme Features at Kingwood

Colocasia 'Mojito' (Elephant Ear) This is a relatively new plant on the market and it makes quite an impression in the garden.

Colocasia 'Diamond Head' (Elephant Ear) is a show stopper. The deep dark color and the sheen of the leaf surface always make me stop and marvel.

Canna 'Australia' also has a dramatic dark luster to its leaves, and it also has brilliant orange flowers. The flowers could easily be too much, but it is something that seems to be possible to incorporate into seasonal beds more easily than in temperate climate perennial gardens.

Another dark plant, Pennisetum 'Princess' makes a quite an impact in the garden with its size and color. We overwinter this in front of some big windows in a building we keep at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

This Nicotiana sylvestris (flowering tobacco) is the only one of the five that is a true annual and that we grow from seed each year. It is amazing how such a huge plant can grow so quickly from a tiny seed.


When I garden at home I prefer growing hardy plants. I like establishing plant communities that develop and evolve over the years as I make changes, as things grow and get bigger, as some things die or recede, and as plants compete with each other. I enjoy working with all of these dynamics.

Kingwood Center, where I work, has a wide assortment of gardens, but seasonal bedding-out schemes are featured. As an administrator I am not directly involved in these seasonal beds, but I have come to appreciate the very different skills, techniques and results obtained from creating garden beds anew each year from scratch.

One of the most exciting aspects of the seasonal bedding-out schemes is the opportunity to use big, bold, exotic looking plants that really make an impression the very first year they are planted out. Most of these are tender perennials that have to be overwintered, which is often a special skill in itself.

Once again this year I am particularly impressed by several large featured plants and the special qualities they bring to the gardens. I have included photographs of four of them above.