Unique Blooms

I love Daylilies (Hemerocallis) for great midsummer color.  The blooms are interesting, with great form and colors, and they’re really easy to grow.  To me, though, the best thing about Daylilies is that these unique blooms last only a day.  Normally that might be a bad thing, but on Hemerocallis it’s wonderful.  You see, healthy Daylillies bloom profusely all along their stems, and they replace fallen flowers very quickly, so you’ll often have loads of flowers for the entire bloom season.  Because they’re different blooms every day, though, the plant is amazingly dynamic, truly a different plant every day.  For an easy gardening centerpiece,  you just can’t beat that.

I’m especially excited about the new Hemerocallis ‘Prarie Wildfire’ that we’ve just made available exclusively to our internet customers.  It’s a large plant, reaching about 23 inches tall, and its particularly prolific blooms are attractive to hummingbirds and butterflies.  It’s also relatively drought-tolerant and disease-resistant, meaning that it’s especially easy to grow.  While all of that is great, it’s the rich, intense color of the blooms that really sells me on this plant.  I have only rarely seen hemerocallis display such deep red tones, and they are set off perfectly by the yellow throats that each bloom sports.  So, if you’re looking for a truly jaw-dropping centerpiece for your summer garden, consider this stunning Daylily.

I get a lot of questions from customers asking about unique and interesting blooms.  A lot of gardeners love to have centerpiece flowers that really draw the eye and make you want to lean in for a better look.  My first responses are usually flowering vines, particularly Passion Vine and various Clematis varieties.

Of course, despite my great love for them, climbers are not always the right solution.  Another of my favorite blooms that is both really unique and that you don’t see in a lot of gardens is Tricertys, common name Toad Lily.  The blooms of the Toad Lily are absolutely fascinating, and really invite you to stop, come closer, and give them a nice long inspection.  They do well in full and part shade, which brings out the texture and form of the flowers and lending a certain air of mystery to the rich colors.  We chose the Tricertys ‘Raspberry Mousse’ for inclusion in our catalog because its very nearly solid coloring (unusual among Toad Lilies) really brings out the best qualities of the almost alien form of these small blooms.  The flowers are small; just about an inch across, but they bloom all along the stems, so the size only serves to make them all the more interesting.  If you’re looking for a truly unique flower to star in your shady garden, you really can’t do any better than this Toad Lily.

This is one of my very favorite times of the year.  Everything is really starting to come out here in South Carolina.  We've got White Dogwoods blooming strongly right now, and, of course, one of my favorite blooms of the year is out in force right now: Wisteria.  Around here we have Wisteria growing everywhere.  It peeks out from somewhere in almost every yard, it seems, and many of the pine groves around town have at least some of the amethyst or lilac-blue blooms on almost every tree.  Wisteria hangs off of trees all up and down the streets in the older parts of town, and sometimes a strong wind will dislodge small showers of the small purple petals.  The Wisteria bloom gets started across town, usually over the course of just a couple of weeks, just when the weather really starts to turn for the better.  The first few picnics and hikes of the spring are usually accompanied by Wisteria in Greenwood.  Growing Wisteria is probably a tradition around here because in large part because it's so easy, but it certainly doesn't hurt that it means amazing purple against the bright green of new tree growth just when we're most ready for lots of flowers,  after the Daffodils have stopped blooming.  Either way, I'm glad for it.

When you’re blogging about gardening, there is often a tendency to
write about what you’re doing now.  This means that we’re talking about new planting in the Spring, conserving water and weeding in the Summer, planting tulip bulbs in the Autumn, and cleaning up the yard in the Winter.  While that stuff is all great, sometimes we just want to talk about what is actually going on in our gardens, especially what’s currently in bloom.  When it comes down to it, gardening bloggers are gardeners first, and so we love to brag.
Winter is always tough on gardeners, as our supply of color in the garden is so much more limited than in the rest of the year.  Fortunately for me, I live in Greenwood, South Carolina, and we get some great winter color down here.  I’ve been enjoying my Helleborus niger, which has been giving me blooms for almost two weeks now.  I still find myself envious, though, of my boss’s Camellias.  He came into a meeting yesterday and announced that his wonderful hedge of Camellias is now in full bloom.  My envy is not without product, though.  I’ll be planting a small hedge of Camellia ‘Yuletide’ this Spring (Not, of course, because I want to
have earlier blooms than my boss next year.  Well, not just because I want to beat out his Camellias.).  Which, of course, brings me to the "what I’m doing" side of things.  If you want winter color, than now is the time to be planning what you’ll plant this spring and fall for next winter.  It is far easier to plan for the current season, as you’re able to see the lines of your garden, the position of the sun, and all of those other things that go into great seasonal garden design.  Of course, it’s not yet time to plant winter bloomers, such as Camellias or Helleborus, but if you plan now and order soon, you should be able to get them happily in the ground this spring to have maximum growth by next winter.

Clematis Sweet Autumn is a wonderful treat for anyone who wants to extend the life of their garden. This fall blooming vine will reach up to 30 feet covering your garden with bushy white fragrant blooms. With silvery seed-heads and beautiful star-shaped flowers, this plants will really show out once it gets going.

It usually takes a couple seasons for Clematis Sweet Autumn to establish, but once it does, it is hardy and fairly low maintenance. It will perform best if the roots are shaded and the top part of the plant gets full sun. This will be the star of any garden from late summer to fall.