Wow, this is quite old school. Is it making a comeback? That would be nice. Avens, which is also known as Chilean avens, Geum quellyon, is an old fashioned perennial relative of the strawberry. Instead of producing fruit, it provides handsome yellow, red or coppery orange flowers that look something like small single, semi-double or double anemones, but can bloom through most of May.
Although perennial, avens do not last forever without some degree of help. After the first season, most of the slightly ruffled and hairy foliage dies down during the colder part of winter. New foliage and bloom develop in spring. After the second or third year, and every few years afterward, mature plants should be divided before or after bloom. Pups are more vigorous than the parent plants.
Happy avens gets as high and wide as a foot and a half. Much of the height is in the branched floral stems, which might need to be staked if they get too heavy with bloom, or are in a breezy spot. Most of the mounding foliage is basal. A bit of shade is tolerable and actually preferred to hot situations. Soil should be rich and well drained. Avens plays well with others in mixed perennial beds.
The popular wisterias that bloom so profusely before their new foliage appears in spring are Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis. Others specie are rare. The impressively longer floral trusses of Japanese wisteria are not as abundant, and bloom late amongst developing foliage. American and Kentucky wisteria are more docile small vines, but their floral trusses are both short and late.
Flowering dogwood, Cornus florida, seems like it should be more popular here than it is. It blooms spectacularly in April. The foliage can color nicely in autumn. Mature trees are proportionate to medium sized or smaller suburban gardens. However, the limiting factor to their popularity in the local climate is that they are understory trees that prefer to be in the partial shade of larger trees.
Once it gets into a lawn, English daisy, Bellis perennis, can be very difficult to get rid of without leaving bald spots. The thin but tough rhizomes creep along the ground, producing rounded leaves that get no longer than two inches. Mowers barely scratch the surface. English daisy seems to prefer partly shaded areas to drier sunny spots. Although invasive, it can be pretty in informal lawns.
Although a relatively small agave, the Queen Victoria agave, Agave victoriae-reginae, is also one of the most striking. Mature plants form dense foliar rosettes that are between only a foot, and a foot and a half tall and wide. What is so striking about them is the abundance of stout succulent leaves that can be so densely set that some older plants look like big, round and green pine cones.
What an unappealing name! That is probably why so many of us know it simply as ‘wild onion’ or ‘allium’. Few of us bother to get sufficiently acquainted with it to know it by the species name of Allium triquetrum, which is actually not much more appealing than ‘onion weed’. It is not really wild, but has naturalized as an invasive exotic, or in other words, ‘weed’. At least it is a pretty weed.
It is not easy to forget annual forget-me-not, Myosotis sylvatica. Even if it dies back early in the heat of summer, it will probably throw plenty of seed to regenerate through next winter, and bloom again by next spring. It can easily naturalize in damp or riparian areas, and might be considered to be a weed; but like nasturtium and foxglove, it is a polite weed that is not aggressively invasive.
Just before the weather gets warm enough for real marigolds, and after the weather starts to get too cool and rainy for them, pot marigold, Calendula officinalis, is at its best. It can bloom at any time of year, depending on when it gets planted, but prefers cool and humid spring and autumn weather. It is not so keen on frost in winter, or the arid warmth of summer that real marigolds enjoy.
It is a shame that forsythia is not more popular here. Years ago, there was a commonly perpetuated myth that winters were not cool enough for it, as well as lilac. We now know that both lilac and forsythia are happy to bloom here. Now, some might insist that there are so many evergreen shrubs that bloom nicely right through winter, that there is no need for deciduous blooming shrubbery.
This is one of those plants that many of us have strong feelings about. Many of us who remember it from when it was more popular in the 1970s might consider Algerian ivy, Hedera canariensis, to be an aggressively invasive weed. Those of us who are less familiar with it might appreciate it as a vigorous and resilient groundcover that gets dense enough to exclude most other weeds.
Tony Tomeo 