Purple-Orchid

Orange-Canna-Lily

Orange-Canna-Lily

This Canna was brightening up the urban environment down in Manhattan. I know a lot of people don’t like orange flowers but ones like this that rejoice in their orangeness are hard to not like. Orange flowers for me are okay and it took me a long time to learn to appreciate them.

We only grew a few Cannas in containers this year after swearing off them for a couple of seasons. They did great and still look nice. None of that nasty brown on the leaves. They are a very structural plant that I like mainly for the foliage. The flowers are just a nice bonus when they come along. The newer varieties seem to be self cleaning so the old flowers don’t make a mess of the plants. I think that next year a few more Cannas are warranted by the performance of this years small crop. We are already trying to plan the garden for next spring. I might try and change the small rose garden in front of the house into an annual/perennial more seasonal type of planting. The roses are nice when they are on but look bad for a good part of the year.

Korean-Sun-Pear

Korean-Sun-Pear

The naming of this plant is a little confusing. For this post this is what it said on the plant tag but after looking it up I realized it seemed to have several names. This particular tree was bought this spring as a small 10 gallon pot sized specimen to replace a Bradford Pear that had completely fallen apart last winter. It really had a lot of flowers for a young tree and the foliage was a nice glossy green with just a tinge of red. It has already grown a little this spring. We are looking forward to a good show in the fall as most Pear trees provide great fall color.

The genus name comes from the ancient name for Pear and the species is named after L'Abbé Urbain Jean Faurie. A well known 19th century botanist from Japan and Korea.

Peach Drift_Rose

Rose 'Peach Drift'

 Recently when the weekly email from a local wholesale nursery arrived in my inbox it featured ‘Peach Drift’ roses. Since I was still looking for some replacement roses it made up my mind to try a few of these since the color and habit looked so nice. There was no disconnect between the picture and when I actually saw the rose. Both were beautiful. As I have said here before the owner of the rose garden and I decided to try a few untraditional types of replacement roses this year and ‘Peach Drift’ seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

The color pretty much melted me but I was happy to read that the flowers can be used as cut flowers and has some fragrance. It is also touted as being very disease resistant. One of the more important aspects of the selection process this year was hardiness and ‘Peach Drift’ is a winner on that front also being rated for USDA Zone 5b. Growing only to about 18 inches tall I selected a prominent position in the front of the border of roses for the two plants. I am interested to see what happens. It has been about 2 weeks so far and it is still loaded with flowers and buds. Hope it can continue through the season.

Clematis

Clematis

Vagabond ivy geranium

Vagabond ivy geranium

Lavender-Blizzard

Lavender-Blizzard

Royal Dark Red

Royal Dark Red

Picasso ivy geranium

Picasso ivy geranium

Henry-Japanese-Anemone

’

Seeing this plant at the nursery led me to do something I hardly ever do, which is make an impulse buy. Most of my plant purchases are well researched in advance for both culture and price. The Japanese Anemones have done so well this year and in the perennial border we only have the light pink and white ones (which isn’t bad but a little drab). I thought ‘Prince Henry’ would brighten up the patch and it did. It grows a lot shorter than the species and other cultivars so it looked nice in the front of the border.

In general Japanese Anemone is a nice perennial that really gives a blast of color in the late season garden. They are easy to grow and seem to be very hardy. It must be the year because the Anemones seemed to bloom earlier than ever this season.

Pink "Hawaiian" Daisy

Pink Hawaiian Daisy

Daylily "Role Model"

Hemerocallis

Since finding a couple of cards with Daylily photos from the summer with a lot of good pictures on them here, at the risk of being a little insipid, are a few more. The first two pictures are a nice kind of pinkish cultivar named ‘Role Model’. You can see from the group shot that it has large flowers and is a heavy bloomer.


The second flower is a macro of a cultivar that I didn’t get the name of. Since I have heard there are over 50,000 Daylily varieties forget trying to figure it out. If it is not a common one than you really have to try some research.



This is the last Today’s Flowers of the decade. I would like to wish all the participants a Happy New Year and a great decade coming up. Your visits and comments here have always been appreciated and I am looking forward to seeing your flowers this week and in the future.

Apricot-Foxglove

Foxglove

This is the first year we tried ‘Sutton’s Apricot’ in the garden and it did well. The color was a nice addition to the regular Foxglove and the Strawberry ones that we planted. I treat all Foxglove as annuals although the Strawberry Foxglove (Digitalis x mertonensis) looks like it may have lasted as it was still alive when the snow came. The Apricot type is much taller and straighter than the Strawberry ones. I dutifully let them go to seed and even scraped the mulch up underneath so the seeds would hit soil and not the mulch. We will see what happens and if any come back.


The Apricot color does kind of liven up a shady area and if you like the pastel types colors this plant would be perfect for your garden.

We got the last big push here before Christmas. I still have some shopping to do but mainly I am waiting on the UPS guy as I ordered almost everything on the internet.

White-Bat-Flower

White-Bat-Flower

This is the strangest flower I have seen blooming in quite a while. It was flowering in the Wave Hill Conservatory last week. These pictures were taken with the Nikon Coolpix P6000. The close up was taken with in the macro mode, which allows for extreme close focusing (less than an inch, 0.8 cm).

There wasn’t a whole lot of information on the internet about this flower. It does seem to grow from seed as there were several sites offering seeds. Apparently this white form is a little more rare that the black Bat Flower (Tacca chantrieri).

Japanese-Camellia

Japanese Camellia

This dainty little Camellia was blooming in the Conservatory at Wave Hill. The colors were striking and the very shiny green leaves were helping showcase the flowers. Someone burning charcoal in the woods discovered this wild hybrid, named after the historical fishing village in Japan. It is easy to root and also hybridizes easily.

We can’t grow Camellias outside in Connecticut. Even the so called ‘winter hardy’ ones don’t make it. They do well in pots and containers but are prone to insect infestations when grown inside. That doesn’t stop us from keeping a few around. It is always a welcome sign that spring is around the corner when they start to bloom.

Since it is Sunday and that means Today’s Flowers here is an Orchid that was blooming at work.

Taking pictures inside the greenhouse is always a challenge.

Two-Roses

Large-Flowered Climbing Rose

 Here are two roses introduced in the 1990’s. ‘Fourth of July’ is a good producer with a nice scent. It’s coloring makes it a bit of a novelty but the fact that each flower is different is interesting. My “Fourth of July’ seems to be growing more like a bush than a climbing rose. Maybe this year I will let it grow out a bit more and see if it will climb up the fence around the rose garden.

‘Easy Going’ is a floribunda rose that was introduced in 1998. It was discovered as a sport of ‘Livin Easy’. It has been featured on this blog once before. It is an easy to grow rose that seems resistant to black spot.


Tuesday was the last day of the gardening season. I hope to have some notes on the past year coming up soon. Yesterday I had to go to the dentist for a multiple extraction. What a way to start the off-season.

Poison-Arrow-Vine

Poison Arrow Vine

Today’s Flower is a native of the tropical part of West Africa. It doesn’t tolerate cold temperatures (doesn’t survive below 40 deg.F) but can be grown as a houseplant in colder zones. Preuss' Strophanthus is kind of a shrubby vine that can reach 10 feet tall under the right conditions. The flowers have a light and pleasant scent. I am including the second picture not because it is a good picture but for you to see the interesting tentacles or hair that the flower develops. The common name comes from the use of the sap on arrow tips in its native realm.


As a bonus here is probably the nicest Daylily I saw all year. Part of the Woodside Nursery stable of beautiful Daylilies this flower knocked me out when I saw it.

NYBG Water Garden

NYBG Water Garden

I went down to the New York Botanical Garden today. I saw some unusual flowers and learned a couple of new plants. It was a quick tour with my main goal of hitting the Rose Garden. These are a couple of shots of the Water Garden that is outside the Conservatory. It was in bloom with a good collection of Lotus and Water Lilies. Lighting wasn’t optimal and it felt like it was going to rain at any minute.



I will probably be living on the photos I took today for a while. My upcoming week doesn’t really have a lot of flowers forecast. I wanted to get my ‘E’ picture for ABC Wednesday. I have a couple to choose from now. I kept my eye out for plants that start with the letter e. That was kind of fun.

I probably won’t be providing a lot of commentary with the pictures that I post for a spell. I have revived a project that I was working on a few years back. I wrote a book on the history of the Premier Gold Mine, which was along the Alaskan/BC Border. A couple of my cousins worked there. I had a deal to publish it but it didn’t work out. I have recently been researching self-publishing the book on the internet. It still needs a bit of work (bit of an understatement) and I have literally hundreds of historical photographs to wade through, again. This blog has always been mostly about the pictures so It probably won’t be a bad thing.

From Long Island

Twin Butterflies

Twin Butterflies

This picture is of two butterflies on the same patch of Coneflower. I thought they lined up kind of nice. Has any else had a lot of butterflies this year? I distinctly remember saying last year that we had “hardly any butterflies” and this year there have been clouds of them. Go figure. I am almost finished with the overgrown garden I pruned out. Quite a bit of the granite terrace around the pool had sunk so I have been relaying that, then some planting and mulch and its time to move on.

Polygonum bistorta 'Superbum'

Polygonum bistorta 'Superbum'
(pol-LIG-go-num) (bis-TOR-tuh)
Synonyms: Adderwort, Dragonwort, Easter giant, Snakeweed, Easter Ledges

I saw this plant growing and blooming at Wave Hill a couple of weeks ago. It kind of looked like a weedy perennial but the flowers made up for that. The number and shape of the flowers was interesting. The color was not fantastic but it was not unattractive. The foliage is a nice color green. It looks like this plant would make a good ground cover in a rough area. The family, Polygonaceae, has some noxious weeds included in it but also a few plants that I enjoy. Mountain Fleece (Persicaria amplexicaulis) and Himalayan Fleece Flower (Persicaria affinis 'Border Jewel') are two good ones.

Hybrid Tea Rose ‘Spellbound’

Hybrid Tea Rose ‘Spellbound’
Synonym: JACpribe

I can’t give any personal experience on growing this rose. I must say that the color and form was captivating. I forgot to smell it although I was rushing around when I snapped this photo. It is from a rose garden that I am officially going to be caring for now. It has 160 plants in it, with many types and colors. There are only about 20 or 30 repeat varieties so it really covers a broad spectrum. I am looking forward to the challenge of keeping it up.

'Spellbound' had the most ‘clean’ flowers in the garden, although one of my new favorites ‘Strike it Rich’ was a close second. This rose was bred by Dr. Keith Zary and introduced in 2006 by Jackson & Perkins and was named their 2006 ‘Rose of the Year’. Dr. Zary started work at J & P in 1985 as only the fourth breeder in the company’s long history.

Spellbound
Type: Large Flowered Hybrid Tea
Parentage: Ingrid Bergman × Pristine (hybrid tea, Warriner 1978)
Petal Count: 30
Fragrance: Mild. Spicy
Height: 5 feet



Here is a picture of part of the rose garden. I wish I had a wide angle lens with me to capture the whole thing, You can see it needs a little help but it is still producing some flowers. It is a lot of garden to work with and that is always helpful.

Two Orchids

Two Orchids

This Orchid was blooming at work. I was surprised to see it . I took all the Orchids out of the conservatory and just tucked them in among the tropical foliage plants that I put on the terrace. I usually don’t bother with the Orchids as they seem to be getting enough light and water. The tag that was in the pot had faded away and I couldn't tell what the name is.



I have been going over some old files from Florida in February of 2006. I saw this orange Orchid blooming at Nancy Forrester’s Secret Garden. I read a lot of complaints about the condition of the garden and the admission price but I found it a lot of fun with a good mix of botanical stuff. Not bad at all for an ‘in-town’ type of garden.
I uploaded several new pictures to my Florida Keys webpage if anyone is interested. There a few good pictures but in some respects represent an extra culling of all of the files.

Rose of Sharon Bud (Hibiscus syriacus)

Rose of Sharon Bud
Hibiscus syriacus

Most gardeners are familiar with this great summer flowering plant. I bought about 20 of them and planted them in one area and it is just a riot of color right now. For a lot of years the deer kept the flowering down but they also made the plants bushier and more compact (trying to make a positive here). I have since taken to pruning them hard in the spring to keep them from being overgrown. There seems to be a nice range of colors and flower types available now. I am partial to the blue ones but like them all. I have seen them grown as a shrub, a tree and a hedge so they seem pretty versatile. Looking around the net I noticed a lot of people complaining about the seedlings and that plants are late to leaf out. I haven’t had a lot of seedlings but the ones I am growing are named varieties so they maybe sterile. As far as leafing out late I have never noticed that (it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen) and I guess if I had it planted in front of the house that might be problem. Those are minor problems in my mind. The color these shrubs provide are worth it.

Both of these pictures are leftovers from trying to find something that started with the letter ‘A’. I also took this picture of Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia maritima). I had a post on Alyssum awhile back:




This is a purple cultivar called ‘Oriental Night’. I bought a few growers packs of seed (it is like 25 packets) and spread some here and there, in situ.


I think this last picture is a Crab or Flower Spider (Thomisus spectabilis) sitting on a Coneflower. It is a master of disguise and ambush. This is the first time I have seen one at the Estate in over 20 years but from what I understand they like to keep a low profile. I took a few pictures of him (her, actually) and when I went back to show the person I was working with sure enough she was munching on a small fly. Unfortunately that picture didn’t come out.

Garden Phlox

Garden Phlox

This is a beautiful cultivar of Garden Phlox. It is the most resistant to the dreaded Powdery Mildew in my experience. The bright white blooms are fragrant and don’t need staking in my garden. Phlox is such a classic flower and it is nice to see it in the border. It does need good air circulation and it is best to water the plants at the base. I wanted to find out a little more about Powdery Mildew and I found these pages:




Thankfully it hasn’t been a bad year for PM. I haven’t seen it on the usual suspects, Bee Balm, Lilac, Phlox or Roses.






This is another Phlox that I am growing. I think it is ‘Laura’ but it might be ‘Little Boy’ as the tags got all mixed up. I found pictures with both of the names on the net.

Red Daylily (Hemerocallis)

Red Daylily

Inspired by Garden’s great collection of Daylily photographs and Ki’s post on July 18th I decided to try and take a picture of the nicest Daylily at the Estate. We don't have a lot of different cultivars for two reasons. One, the people don’t live there in the summer and two, the amount of deer we have. There are a few nice ones and I got the nifty fifty from White Flower Farm a few years ago but they are pretty much planted around the house and in the courtyard for protection. Like I said this red is the nicest and I think I bought at a Wave Hill plant sale many years ago. It got transplanted several times and finally has found a home next to the greenhouse and just behind the Weeping White Birch (Betula pendula 'Youngii'). I took a close up too.


Just a quick post as I got in late last night. I went to a Chef’s Table at a local restaurant and went for a couple of nightcaps after. The Chef’s table is fun and delicious. Two fellows that own a local restaurant cook a private dinner for just a few people that have bought tickets in advance. There were 16 people last night and it was an intimate fun evening. They make it personal which is nice. They are thinking of doing it every month and while I don’t think I would go every time I would certainly go again.

'Oregold' Hybrid Tea Rose

'Oregold' Hybrid Tea Rose

This rose blooms best during the cool weather though it was chugging along last week with a couple of flowers last week. It is good performer though seems a bit tender as I have had to replace it twice after the winter. I don't do a lot for winter protection for my roses and usually have a couple of losses after the winter. I think this because most of these roses are rated for USDA Zone 7 and my gardens are on the edge of 6 and 7. 'Oregold' has a mild fragrance and a petal count of 25-30. Its parentage is 'Piccadilly' × 'Colour Wonder' and has a good pedigree with 'Peace', 'Tropicana' and 'Crimson Glory' roses in its lineage. Bred in Germany it won the AARS Award in 1975.

I think I have said before that I have really warmed up to yellow flowers over the course of my career. Some of them are amongst my favorites now. Who would have thought that. Yesterday’s Wordless Wednesday featured a couple of nice yellow flowers and I thought I would carry it on today. Yellow roses symbolize friendship and caring according to Rose Meanings Explained.

Since I have heard the phrase “Yellow Rose of Texas’ hundreds of times I decided to look up just who or what that meant. Everybody out there probably knew already that it is a song and here is a snip of an article:

"The Yellow Rose of Texas" is a song about how a slave named Emily Morgan helped win the battle of San Jacinto, the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution, on April 21, 1836. According to legend, Emily was a mulatto slave owned by Col. James Morgan, of New Washington, Texas, who was kidnapped by soldiers under the orders of Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna. She was reportedly brought to Santa Anna's tent, where she entertained him sexually throughout the day of the battle. The distracted general supposedly failed to put his troops on alert, and when the battle began, the Texans caught the Mexicans by surprise. In fact, however, "Emily Morgan" was a free-born black woman named Emily D. West, who worked as a housekeeper at the New Washington Association's hotel. No evidence supports the story of a tryst with Santa Anna.

One of the earliest versions of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" dates back to the first administration of Sam Houston, who became president of the Republic of Texas in 1836. A handwritten manuscript of the song, now in the A. Henry Moss Papers in the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, was allegedly delivered to one E. A. Jones.”





This second rose is the Hybrid Tea ‘Sunny Delight’. I really don’t know too much about this rose as I took this picture at a nursery. I took the picture with the idea that I would look it up when I got home because I only want to buy disease resistant roses at this point but I couldn’t find much information on it. It looked pretty though with a big flower and delicate shading.

Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus

Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus

Synonyms: Devil's Tongue, Low Prickly Pear, Opuntia mesacantha
Opuntia italica, Opuntia rafinesquei, Opuntia fuscoatra, Opuntia allairei, Opuntia cumulicola, Opuntia impedata

I really wanted to take a picture of this plant blooming the last couple of years and never got around to it. This year on July 3rd I did it. I almost missed it as these are from the last couple of blooms. It is a fun plant to grow and seems quite hardy. It is not invasive in my garden it as made a nice little clump, sometimes dying out in the middle and crossing the little dry riverbed they are planted in but always keeping within reason. The areas that died out filled in again. This Cactus is native to the Eastern United States and grows well in Connecticut. In the winter it turns a little brown and shriveled but bounces back nicely in the spring. It is easily rooted with the pads. There are usually a couple of large spines on each pad but be careful of the Glochids or hair-like spines. They can cause irritation hours later. A fun, novelty type plant with beautiful flowers. This is the orange form.




This patch of Cactus is growing next to a Weeping Blue Spruce. I am not sure how the two ended up together but I think I planted the Cactus first in 1988 and when we did a big renovation on the gardens I moved the Spruce there in 1997 with the idea that I would transplant it back into the new gardens but I must have forgot. It reminds of the time I was visiting some wineries in Sonoma Valley and at one place I had a little too much to drink so I asked if we could take a walk out in the vineyard which had a lot of ornamental plants scattered through it. They said sure and after awhile I came upon a row of Palm trees that had Colorado Blue Spruce alternately planted in between them. I think that was one of the weirdest combinations I had ever seen. I would love to live in a climate like that. Although I would probably be run out of town because of my prodigious water use.



This is the flower of a Gold Sword Yucca (Y. flaccida 'Golden Sword') that is next to the cactus and Spruce. It had a couple of nice what I use to call candelabras but have since found out that they are actually a raceme inflorescence. Since the petals and sepals (three of each) are similar they are called tepals.