Many gardens have them: wet, boggy areas that just don’t drain well enough. Grass won’t grow, plants won’t grow, and the dog keeps coming in the house with wet feet. OK, maybe just the plants are a problem for you. Either way, you could, of course, set up a rain garden in that area (it’s beautiful and great for the local environment), but that can be much more effort than many gardeners are willing to put in. You could give up and have a boggy, mulch-covered area in your garden, but I know that you, my readers, won’t give up that easily. The best option is to try to find plants that thrive in those difficult conditions, and many of the best plants for that purpose are wonderful Irises.
Give Iris louisiana a try. The do beautifully in damp soils, producing some of the most stunning blooms you can find. They’re the perfect solution not only for those areas that refuse to drain, but also for embankments of water features or other water sources (they look amazing on the banks of a pond). Best of all, they’re easy plants to keep, tolerating not only heat and humidity (as you can probably guess from the name), but also cold winters, some even hardy to zone 3. Iris ‘Bold Pretender’ makes an impressively bright, cheery statement in red and yellow, and it looks great next to the Iris ‘Black Gamecock’s intensely rich velvety purple flowers.
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Black is beautiful. Black is slimming. Black is the epitome of elegance and sophistication. Streamline your garden with the mystique of timeless style by adding these enchanting beauties. Black plants from the dark side of Wayside Gardens will draw attention to your garden. How else can one sing the praises of springtime and be noticeably and utterly forlorn if not by growing a black Iris?
If you want intrigue in your garden, grow the dark flowers. Grow something completely foreign and unexpected. Maybe plant just one of these strange varieties, as a focal point, for novelty, or maybe plant a whole garden of nothing but black plants ( a little too ‘Edgar Allen Poe’ for me, but hey, do what you must). BTW, The black calla lily is my favorite.
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While probing for ideas that might add a little intrigue to the pitifully uninspiring flora of my backyard, I was told by a friend to check out bog gardens. My first thought was of a marsh or swamp, something more appropriate for a wildlife preserve or ghost story than my simple little yard. However, trusting my source, I dove, head-first into that murky swamp of information, the all-knowing internet.
Apparently, if you have a low spot in your yard that never completely dries and you plant some elephant ears there, you have not created a bog garden as some of the sources I found would lead you to believe. It is a clever way to turn a problem into an asset, but not a bog garden. A bog is actually a type of wetland formed from a deposit of dead plant matter, most commonly some type of moss or lichen. Its moisture comes almost completely from precipitation and tends to be slightly acidic. An exotic environment for exotic plants- It’s exactly what I was looking for.
I also found that recreating this environment on the small scale is not very difficult; some people even create indoor bog gardens in terrariums, which would be a perfect way to display those bog-loving carnivorous plants and make an excellent conversation piece. I just needed a place that will hold moisture and that I could fill with peat. I had the perfect place, that gross little pond insert that I installed two seasons ago, or as I like to call it, my “mosquito nursery”. I just cleaned that out and poked a few holes in the bottom for drainage- lined the bottom with coarse sand and filled it with moistened peat. The moss maintains the acidity and I use a soaker hose to keep my bog damp. I planted an Iris, this very interesting Juncus Effusus Unicorn, and two Pine Hibiscuses. Situated in the center of my garden, accented with two lawn gnomes and a pink flamingo, my bog has definitely added spice to my back yard.
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That’s x Pardancanda, if you please — it’s an intergeneric cross of Belamcanda chinensis x Pardanthopsis dichotoma. The name is taken from part of each genus name: Pardan + canda. I have wondered if they knew they were going to call it “Candy Lily” when they came up with the new genus, because the “canda” bit does fit in nicely. (And if you’ve never heard of Pardanthopsis, it used to be called Iris dichotoma. It’s one of the beardless Irises, and has the lovely common name of Vesper Iris — presumably because the blooms opened at the hour for Vespers?)
Anyway, x Pardancanda was introduced by our own Doc Alston in the early ’70’s, but Doc will tell you that all the breeding was done by Sam Norris, who purchased the original plants from Park Seed. The species is named for him, but Mr. Norris never released any varieties onto the market, so Doc redid the crosses and came up with the mix that Park Seed has been selling so successfully for 40 years. Doc claims he played around with selecting individual colors but was never satisfied with the results, which does sound just like him — too modest by half! At any rate, there have been other selections, but I believe ‘Sangria’ is the first individual color. The flowers are larger and the season of interest even longer. Candy Lilies have those big, shiny, blackberry-like seedpods that people are keen to use in indoor arrangements, so after the blooms pass in late summer or early fall, the performance continues with a new look.
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