Posts made in February, 2008

Around here many of us tend to think of Azaleas as a feature primarily of Southern gardens.  Maybe that's because Azaleas are so closely associated with the Masters Golf Tournament (which is played just sixty miles from our Greenwood, South Carolina home), or it could be that many Southerners occasionally assume that anything that they really like must come from the South.  Either way, one thing that I can tell you for sure is that hardy Azaleas are becoming a more and more popular choice outside of the Deep South, and for good reason.  They're the perfect low-maintenance flowering shrub for just about any part-shade area that isn't exposed to harsh winds.  They flower heavily for weeks, usually only need one deep watering a week in drought, and require no pruning to flower.  Many are evergreen, and some, such as the Azalea 'Golden Lights,' thrive all the way to zone 4.

Plant your Azalea bushes shallow.  Their root structures are shallow, and they won't do well too deep.  A good rule of thumb is to just plant them to the same depth as the nursery had them.  They like loose, well-drained soil, so if you're planting them in clay or hard-pack, dig some of that up and add compost, peat, or sand to the soil.  Because the roots are shallow, give them some room without competition. 
Azaleas prefer acidic soil, so if your soil is neutral or alkaline, you would do well to add a bit of sulfer to it to bring that pH up (you're looking for a little over 4.5).  Also, if you're planting them next to a lot of cement, keep an eye on your pH from time to time, as the cement breaking down can add lime to the soil.  Azaleas do best with mulch down to protect them from the cold in winter and to retain some moisture in the summer.  Around here pine straw is the most common mulch used with Azaleas.  It provides great protection, it's inexpensive, it looks natural, and it breaks down enough that it will usually do all the fertilizing that your Azalea bushes need.  You shouldn't need to prune your Azaleas except to shape it to your liking or if it happens to get a dead branch, but if you do prune it do so in the middle or late summer, after the shrub is done flowering.  July is probably best for most areas.  Do not prune later than the end of July unless you have to, as once the weather starts to cool the shrub starts producing its buds for next year's flowers. 

With all the interesting new choices we're getting this year, I find that I keep coming back to flowering vines as a topic.  Between my love of flowering vines and my almost compulsive fascination with unusual blooms, I don't see how I could not write often about some of these great new flowers.

Take these two new roses, for instance.  The Rose Climbing Night Owl is an amazing rich violet, the likes of which you rarely get to see in full sun.  However, this rose has an amazing resistance to fading, so you'll get to enjoy that color even in the hottest of areas.  The deep purple will just keep on coming, too, as this heartily disease-resistant rose is a strong rebloomer that will keep your trellis or fence in those interesting flowers all summer long. 

On nearly the other end of the spectrum is the bright, fun Rose Climbing Candy Land.  While it's just as disease-resistant and profusely blooming, the Candy Land is
certainly a far cry from the Night Owl in color.  These bright pink roses feature interesting white streaks that bring a double-take from anyone that sees them.  The overall effect makes the flowers look, frankly, delicious.  I can easily imagine a confectioner producing a candy that looks nearly like these blooms, though it seems unlikely that even the best candy-maker could produce anything so consistently perfect of form as this plant does.  Maybe the best thing about these new roses is how easy they are.  Rose gardening isn't just for gardeners with all the time in the world anymore, and these two incredibly easy to grow climbing roses are certainly no exception to that trend.  The only question for me this spring is which of these two will be going on my archway.

Several of my coworkers and I were given planted Amaryllis bulbs last week.  The stalks on each were just beginning to make their way into the world.  The obvious move for us was to agree to race, to see whose Amaryllis grew the fastest.  However, the problem with having several Amaryllis plants in the same office led inevitably to an argument: what is the proper plural form of the word "Amaryllis?"
This seems like a question that a group of employees of Wayside Gardens would know, especially garden writers.  However, with questions about plant names, there often isn’t a single simple answer.  The plant names are often either Anglicized Latin or Greek, or Latinized English.  Also, they are usually created by botanists, who are rarely too concerned with the grammar questions they may be creating.  In the case of the plural for Amaryllis, there are four possibilities that we are considering: Amaryllii, Amaryllides, Amaryllises, and Amaryllis.

Amaryllii seems like it could be right, as many words that end with a similar sound are pluralized that way (Fungus, fungi, etc.).  However, words that are pluralized that way generally end in a "us" rather than "is," so I think that it’s safe to count this one out.  Amaryllides makes use of another form of Greek pluralization, and some botanists do use this.  I haven’t actually met any of these botanists, though, and I really don’t think that this is a very common form of the word (interesting fact, though: the word Amaryllis is Greek, and comes from a common girl’s name in Ancient Greece).  Which brings us to Amaryllises or Amaryllis.  The basic question here is: should the word be changed at all in its plural form?  Amaryllis is a genus name, and the general rule in botany is that the genus name is never pluralized, even when it is being used in the collective.  However, this may be an exception to this rule, because the plants that we’re usually referring to when we say "Amaryllis" are not
actually in the genus Amaryllis, which consists of a single species, Amaryllis belladonna, a South African plant more commonly called "Naked Ladies" or "Belladonna Lilies."  The plants more commonly called Amaryllis in the United States is actually of the genus Hippeastrum (which should definitely not be pluralized).  Thus, I think that it is safe to pluralize the word (unless you’re referring to Naked Ladies), and that we should use the English plural form, Amaryllises (or just always call them "Amaryllis bulbs" or "Amaryllis flowers").  Plus, my spell-checker likes that form better.
As to the Great Amaryllis Race of 2008?  I’m winning.

It hasn’t felt much like Spring is coming around here lately, but this morning I noticed that my patch of daffodils next to my driveway is starting to come up.  That was very heartening for me.  Of course, I still have a lot to do in my garden before the weather starts to turn, but I can’t wait for the growing season to get rolling.  The worst part about a gardening hobby (addiction?) is not being able to do it part of the year.  Planning your upcoming plantings helps a great deal, and looking through garden pictures helps some with that seasonal impatience, I find.  Of course I’ve looked through most of my own garden pictures several times already this winter, and I’ve just about worn through my gardening catalogs and magazines.  I find myself searching online for pictures.  I love finding pics of gardens from other parts of the world, but one of my favorite online picture collections is from quite a bit closer to home.  It’s our Wayside Gardens Flickr collection, where several members of our team here at our Greenwood nursery post garden pictures that we’ve taken.  Some of these great pictures are from our gardens at home, but most of them are from our showcase garden, which is just about fifty feet from my office.  It’s open to the public, and during the spring and summer it’s one of the most spectacular gardens in the Southeast.  If you get a chance to visit us in Greenwood, South Carolina, we’d love to have you come stroll through our gardens and garden center.  Until then, cruise over to our little collection of garden photos at Flickr.

We are absolutely ecstatic to announce that this year’s Wayside Gardens Collector’s Edition is now available on our website.  Unfortunately, we no longer have any copies of this publication. We’ll keep you up to date throughout 2014 for any new additions. We got to work with the amazing Ken Druse (I listen to his podcast, Real Dirt, every Saturday, and so should you), which was a tremendous honor and pleasure for everyone at Wayside Gardens.  The collection includes some of the most amazing plants I’ve ever seen, both woody and herbaceous.  Some of these plants are truly unique, and beautiful beyond almost anything currently in my garden (I’ll be including some of this new collection in my garden this year, you can be sure of that).  With this great collection finally being released, I can’t help but take the chance to write about a few of my favorites.  Making the cover of our Collector’s Edition catalog this year is the Epimedium Ogisui.  It’s a stunning flower that, as a great bonus, will throw out those elegant blooms very early in the season.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of flowering vines, or that Clematis is one of my favorite flowers.  It should be no surprise, then, that the flower that excites me the most in our new collection is the Clematis ‘Haku Ookan.’  Besides producing blooms of an amazing purple reminiscent of the popular Clematis Bourbon, it is one of the most prolific bloomers we’ve ever seen.  It also has two blooming seasons, which is something that I can rarely resist.  Once a vine has stopped blooming in mid-summer, I almost never remember that it will start blooming again later in the year, making the second season a fantastic surprise.

With more and more gardeners becoming deeply concerned with the effects that their gardening have on the environment, planting native flowers is a great option for nearly everyone.  We are offering as part of this collection one of my favorite native
plants, Trillium erecta.  This flower’s stunning color and unique blooms make it a great accent perennial.  It could even hold its own as the centerpiece of most gardens.  It is actually a red flower with pale green sepals that make it seem like a distinctly two-color bloom.  It is native to woodland areas up and down the Eastern US, all the way from Georgia to Ontario, and I have often encountered these while hiking in the hills of Georgia and Tennessee.  I wondered for years what these great flowers were, and this year I’ll be planting some of my own.