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White Trash

P71018Long before my white supremacy garden (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/white-supremacy/), I noticed that some white flowers were inferior to their more colorful counterparts. Brent (to the left in the picture in that other article I just cited) is often pleased to remind me of it. Only a few flowers are at their best in white. I, of course, am pleased to remind Brent of them. Then, he reminds me that black flowers are very rare, as if that makes them special. I then remind him that most black and dark flowers are pollinated by flies, so must imitate the fragrances of what flies are attracted to.

Callas, lilies, gladiolus, camellias, oleanders and dahlias all excel in white. They are at least comparable to their more colorful varieties. White callas, gladiolus and oleanders are actually superior to those more colorful. Some but not all varieties of rose, hydrangea, wisteria and tall bearded iris are exquisite in white as well.

Then there are plants like bougainvilleas, crepe myrtles, geraniums and angel’s trumpets that are less impressive in white. Bougainvilleas and crape myrtles just are not quite as bright in white as they are in their vibrant pinks and reds. White geraniums and angel’s trumpets are relatively weak, and white geraniums do not drop faded flowers efficiently.

Many white flowers do not even try to impress. They throw their pollen to the wind and let it do the work. Color is for flashy flowers that want to attract pollinators. Pyracantha and photinia flowers, for example, are neither colorful nor big and flashy, but are very numerous. They are somewhat fragrant, just in case some sort of pollinators happen to be interested. Other wind pollinated flowers do not even offer that much.

Nocturnal flowers that rely on nocturnal pollinators might be big and fragrant, but are mostly insipid pale white. Some are slightly blushed with yellow or pink. They are not bright white only because they do not actually use the brightness of their white to get noticed. They instead use ultraviolet or infrared color that is invisible to us. Many of these seemingly bland flowers have rather flashy patterns of stripes, spots and blotches that are only visible to nocturnal animals and insects who can see ultraviolet or infrared light. Many flowers that are active during the day use this technique in conjunction with visible color (that we can see) as well. Regardless, it does nothing for us, since we can not see it.

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Society Garlic

71025Some flowers are better left in the garden rather than cut and brought in. Society garlic, Tulbaghia violacea, looks like it would be an ideal cut flower, with nice bare stems. The aroma suggests otherwise. It smells something like a strongly aromatic combination of onion and garlic. Even in the garden, it might be a good idea to keep it at a distance. Deer and rabbits do not mess with it.

Society garlic is sometimes known as pink agapanthus because it has similar foliage and flowers, only much smaller. The tiny flowers are really more lavender pink than pink, and bloom in round clusters on stems about a foot and a half tall in late summer or early autumn. The narrow leaves are only about a quarter of an inch wide, almost grassy, but more rubbery like those of agapanthus.

Mature plants form dense clumps of foliage at least two feet wide. Variegated plants stay much smaller, but are also very likely to revert to green (non-variegated) growth, which if not removed, overwhelms and replaced variegated growth. Society garlic is very easy to divide for propagation. It likes full sun or slight shade. Although somewhat drought tolerant, it prefers regular watering.

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Dago Pansies

P71007You can say what you like about nasturtiums. My landscape designer colleague, Brent Green certainly did when he named them ‘dago pansies’. They are still one of my favorite flowers, and just might be my favorite, even though none are convincingly white. They were my first. I discovered them when I was very young. They were growing near an old English walnut tree in my great grandfather’s garden. He noticed that I liked them, so found some seeds underneath to send home with me.

I did not know what to do with seeds, so I poked holes into the ground and dropped the seeds into the holes just like my great grandfather showed me to do. A few days later, small round leaves appeared where I had put the seeds. The leaves expanded and looked just like those of the nasturtiums in my great grandfather’s garden. Yellow, orange and even a few red flowers were blooming within a month. I was so impressed when the flowers first appeared, but was then briefly saddened when the first flowers to bloom faded.

I say that I was ‘briefly’ saddened because of what happened next. Where the flowers had been, I discovered what appeared to be the same sort of seeds that my great grandfather had given me! I still did not understand how these things worked; but I took the seeds and stuck them into the ground in other areas . . . anywhere I thought nasturtiums would be nice. They grew, bloomed and provided more seeds, which I took and planted elsewhere . . . and everywhere! To this day, my pa considers nasturtiums to be invasive weeds because of how they overwhelmed the garden that he thought was his.

In my kindergarten classroom, we had ‘color boards’ on a wall. Red, yellow and blue were the tree primary colors. Orange, green and purple were the secondary colors. There were also boards for pink, brown, black, white and gray. We could bring small disposable artifacts from home for our teacher to tape to the various boards. The artifacts were mostly bits of fabric, colored paper, pictures from magazines, Legos, buttons, or really anything we could find that could be taped to a wall. Of course, I had to bring yellow, orange and red nasturtium flowers, and a green nasturtium leaf. Our teacher probably did not want to tape them to the wall, but did anyway. They turned brown, but stayed there. I bragged about them for the rest of the school year.

I still grow descendents of those old nasturtiums. I also try new varieties just because I enjoy them so much. I still like the classic ‘Jewels mix’ because they have every color. They are smaller than wild nasturtiums at first, but are more prolific. After a few years, they revert to the common yellow and orange. Renee’s Garden Seeds at https://www.reneesgarden.com/ has some very interesting varieties, including a few old classics. The climbing types do not bloom as much, but are fun anyway. I probably have not tried them all yet, but I would if I could. I have history with dago pansies.

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Dwarf Pampas Grass

71004Modern garden varieties of pampas grass found in nurseries are generally non-invasive. Their flowers are described as ‘sterile’, and therefore unable to produce seed. What that really means is that they are exclusively female, and unable to produce seed without male pollinators. However, they have the potential to be pollinated by naturalized pampas grass, and sow a few hybrid seed.

Of course, if naturalized pampas grass (Cortaderia jubata) are already in the area, a few tame dwarf pampas grass, Cortaderia selloana ‘Pumila’ will not make much of a difference anyway. They have the same elegantly cascading foliage and boldly fluffy flowers in the middle of summer, but on a smaller scale. The long and narrow leaves might stay less than five feet tall. The white flowers might stay below eight feet tall. Unfortunately, the leaves can easily cause nasty paper cuts!

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White Supremacy

winchesterMany people have a favorite color. I learned how seriously some people can take their preference for a particular color when I was in high school, and taking care of the yardwork for a few homes in the neighborhood. There were three tract homes next to each other. One was grayish blue, with a silvery blue Sedan deVille in the garage, and a garden of blue flowers. The middle house next door was soft amber yellow, with a buttery yellow Oldsmobile 98 in the garage, and a garden of exclusively yellow flowers. The house next door to that was iron oxide red, with an exquisite rich red Electra in the garage, and a garden of, you guessed it, red flowers.

The blue garden was the most challenging because true blue is not easy to find, and the big hydrangea kept trying to bloom pink in the slightly alkaline soil. Yellow was the easiest. There is no such thing as too many marigolds; and I really like nasturtiums! Red was my favorite because it included a few white flowers to contrast with the rich dark shades of red. Between the dark green juniper hedge and the deep red petunias, I grew a row of white petunias. A few white pansies got mixed with two shades of red pansies. I grew my first white geranium there, with several shades of pink and red. I really liked the white flowers.

Then I went to school with Brent. He was from a neighborhood with a purple Bonneville and an orange Caprice with a small dent in the driver side tail flank (which I can explain in another essay). Brent loves color! To him, white is only good for brightening dark areas or highlighting other colors. I can not argue with him. He is a landscape designer. I am primarily a grower. He knows a lot more about color than I do.

Well, by the 1990s, while I was growing citrus trees (which, incidentally bloom primarily white), ‘white gardens’ became a fad. How annoying! I always liked white; but loathed fads! I had this thing down long before it became a quaint coffee table book! It was mine! Brent thought that it was funny, especially since my garden had very little white in it. I would not give up my brightly colored nasturtiums and geraniums that I had taken with me to every home I lived in since childhood. I grew sunflowers, and yellow and orange gladiolus in front because they looked so good on my old apartment building. Too much white just would not have been right.

Eventually, I moved my blue lily-of-the-Nile and roses from a side yard that was not visible from out front, and planted only white flowers around a big white oleander tree. I had callas, daisies, iris, dahlias and white lily-of-the-Nile. There was not a lot of bloom at any one time, but there was enough for me to brag to Brent about. I had such attitude about it that Brent said it was more than a mere ‘white garden’. He said it was my ‘White Supremacy Garden’! Oh my! Take a look at the picture above. That is Brent and me back in the early 1990s. I am on the right. When we were in school, Brent would sometimes get marked absent at our night classes.

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Baker Creek Seeds

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The problem with growing the same reliable plants that I have been growing for so long is that I rarely get to try something new. Seriously, my rhubarb was in the garden long before I was born, and will be around long after I am gone. I will probably never grow a different variety of rhubarb. The same goes for my lily-of-the-Nile, geraniums, many varieties of bearded iris, all nine apple varieties and all fourteen fig varieties! Sustainability can be such a bother. Only on rare occasion, I grow something from seed that I do not already have available. I do it in moderation; and I do not feel too guilty about it.

California is the best place in America for gardening, but ironically, we do not have as much variety of vegetable seed to choose from as other regions do. We can get all sorts of weird kale and heirloom tomatoes, including some that were recently developed to exploit the heirloom tomato craze; but if it is not a hip new fad, we might not have access to it. (Yes, ‘new’ ‘heirloom’ varieties) I still get my favorite simple and common vegetable seed from the local hardware store like I did when I was a little kid. There is not much in between. Most vegetable seed here is either very simple and common, or hip and trendy.

Baker Creek Seeds is one of my favorite seed suppliers, both for the formerly common varieties that I grew up with, as well as varieties that might be common in other regions, but not available here. I know it sounds silly, but we just do not have much variety of collards, okra, beets and turnip greens to choose from. The catalog of Baker Creek Seeds, which can be found at rareseeds.com, has it all. If you can not find it in their catalog, you probably do not need it. Although I cringe to say so, Baker Creek Seeds has more heirloom varieties than any other supplier I can think of.

I cringe at the term ‘heirloom’ because I do not like fads or crazes. Baker Creek Seeds does it differently though. Their heirlooms are legitimate and documentable, with nothing to prove, even if some of them look like the ordinary modern varieties. The tomatoes do not need to be blotched, striped, wrinkled, black, purple, ugly, or whatever it takes for them to be marketed as ‘heirloom’, although a few of them are. Some were developed by the Amish. Some were developed by Early American settlers. Some Baker Creek Seeds are heirloom in other cultures, but new introductions here. You just need to take a look at what they have.

All of Baker Creek Seeds are ‘pure’. This means that they are NOT genetically modified. This is their ‘Safe Seed Pledge’:

“Agriculture and seeds provide the basis upon which our lives depend.  We must protect this foundation as a safe and genetically stable source for future generations.  For the benefit of all farmers, gardeners and consumers who want an alternative, we pledge that we do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants.  The mechanical transfer of genetic material outside of natural methods and between genera, families or kingdoms, poses great biological risks as well as economicc, political, and cultural threats…”

This makes their work significantly more difficult. Any seed that fails to meet their strict standards can not be marketed. Sadly, some heirloom corn varieties are no longer available because they became contaminated by pollen from genetically modified corn. While so many unscrupulously exploit the ‘sustainability’ fad with products that are contrary to sustainability, Baker Creek Seeds is the real deal. They can be found at rareseeds.com.

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The Colors Of Karma

0407160708aThe statute of limitations allows me to discuss this now. It happened thirty years ago, in the spring of 1987. The famous landscape designer, Brent Green, was my roommate in the dorms at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. As the bearded iris started to bloom, Brent immediately noticed a bed of uniformly pink bearded iris off the edge of a lawn in the inner campus. He watched it bloom from beginning to end, and occasionally updated me on the progress. During the process, he convinced me that these iris were very rare. Neither of us had ever seen pink bearded iris before. We had no idea that they could easily be purchased from mail order catalogs or nurseries.

Late one warm spring night, Brent telephoned me from a landscape design lab where he had been working late. Back then, we answered a telephone when it rang. Before I could wake up enough to think about what I was doing, or just say “No.”, Brent convinced me to bring something that he needed from our room to the lab. Without thinking, I got dressed, grabbed his designated duffel bag and got on my way. I was sort of concerned that the duffel bag seemed to be empty. I figured that whatever was in it was very lightweight.

By the time I got to lab, Brent was in the lobby, and his associates were leaving. Brent did not seem to be interested in whatever was in the bag. He just thanked me for bringing it as we waked out as if to go back to the dorms. I was puzzled. As we walked, Brent explained that he only needed the bag, and confirmed that it really was as empty as I suspected. I was even more puzzled. I asked why he woke me up in the middle of the night to deliver an empty bag across campus. Well, in the few minutes it took for us to get this far into the conversation, we had arrived at the bed of pink iris. You can imagine what happened next.

Yes. Brent dropped the bag on the ground and began to stuff it full of all the bloomed-out iris rhizomes he could grab! Suddenly, I was very awake, and protested. He explained that now that the iris had finished blooming, they would be dug up and disposed of. What else could I do? I knew he was correct. I did not want to waste the iris. I also realized that panic would only draw attention, and that delaying the process would only increase the likelihood of getting busted. I pulled up as many rhizomes as I could hastily grab as well, and stuffed the bag until it was full. Brent was feeling rather satisfied as we walked back to the dorms. I was mortified.

The rhizomes got split and groomed, and eventually went into our mothers’ gardens. We each got about half. The following late winter and early spring, Brent would check in on his when he would go south for the weekend. I would check on mine when I would go north. They grew well, and fattened up to bloom. The stalks came up. The buds swelled. Then, finally, and with much anticipation, they bloomed! They were magnificent! They were glorious! They were spectacular! They were purple and yellow! WHAT?!?! Where was the pink? What happened? This is NOT FAIR! Wait a minute, . . . Could it be karma?

Thirty years later, we still grow these two bearded iris. They are known simply as ‘Karma Purple’ and ‘Karma Yellow’. We do not know their real names. A few years ago, they were joined by a nice tall ‘Karma White’, which was supposed to be a rusty red that I ‘borrowed’ from a neighbor. Neither Brent nor I have ever grown a pink iris.

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Roots

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In the lower right corner of this picture, next to the fenced garden gate, and just beyond the mown grass and what appears to be a walkway, there is a small clump of bearded iris foliage. No one knows where these iris came from, or for how long they had been there when this picture was taken in the summer of 1969. They were growing in the garden of my great grandmother, in Hoot Owl Creek, just south of Red Oak in Latimer County of Oklahoma. It is unlikely that my great grandmother purchased such non-utilitarian plant from a nursery. It was probably acquired from a friend or neighbor sometime during the half century that she tended the garden prior to 1969. It could have been around even earlier, since my great grandfather’s family first developed the farm as Oklahoma became a territory.

The flowers are an alluringly soft lavender blue, on elegantly tall and lean stems. They are relatively small for bearded iris, and lack any fancy frills or ruffles. In fact, they are quite neatly tailored, with a simple sweet and fruity fragrance that resembles that of grape pop. This iris is probably one of the prehistoric specie of iris that was used to breed modern cultivars. Some of these sorts of iris were known affectionately as ‘grape pop’ iris, but it is impossible to know if or how this particular iris is related.

Many years ago, probably in the early 1980s, my grandmother brought some of these iris back to her home garden in Santa Clara in California. They proliferated enough to share with friends and neighbors. A few went to my mother’s garden, where they also proliferated and were shared with friends and neighbors. Now, my mother’s great granddaughters play in a garden where these same iris will bloom next spring; only a few months from now, but at least six generations from that well outfitted homestead garden in Hoot Owl Creek.

Where will these iris go from here? It is impossible to say. Younger generations are not very interested in horticulture. However, I really doubt that my great grandmother could have imagined that they would have gotten this far. What is funny is that these iris are probably more interesting now to current generations than they were to my great grandmother when she planted them.

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Fernleaf Yarrow

70830‘Moonshine’ is probably the epitome of fernleaf yarrow, Achillea filipendulina, even though it is technically a hybrid. From the middle to the end of summer, its three inch wide corymbs (flat-topped trusses) of tiny bright yellow flowers stand as high as three feet above ferny and gray basal foliage. Bloom is best in full sun and warm exposure. Established plants do not need too much water.
Most varieties of fernleaf yarrow also bloom with bright yellow or gold flowers. Some might bloom with pale yellow, rosy pink, pale pink, reddish, white or pink and white flowers. All are good cut flowers, and can be dried. Some varieties are more compact. The most compact varieties work nicely in planters of mixed perennials. Butterflies and hummingbirds find them wherever they are.
Pruning out deteriorating blooms may promote sporadic subsequent bloom until autumn. However, some plants may bloom all at once, and then not bloom again until the following summer. Large blooms on the most vigorous plants may need to be staked. New plants can be propagated by division from mature plants. ‘Moonshine’ and many other cultivars are sterile. Others might self sow.

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Flowers Might Be Getting Scarce

70830thumbIt makes sense for flowers to bloom in spring. Winter is too cool, windy and damp for both flowers and the insects that pollinate many of them. By summer, successfully pollinated flowers have faded, are busy making seed to disperse in autumn. Some plants produce fruit to get birds and other animals to disperse their seed. There are certain advantages to blooming early in the spring.
Native plants that are endemic to chaparral climates are quicker with bloom, so that they finish before the air gets too arid. Desert plants might bloom for less than a week. Some tropical plants might bloom whenever they want to because they do not understand the concept of seasons, but they are not the prominent plants in our gardens. Therefore, flowers get scarce this time of year.
Besides the few perennials and annuals that bloom as long as the weather stays warm, there are not many plants that bloom reliably so late in summer. Belladonna lily, which is also known as naked lady, might be one of the flashiest, as its bright pink flowers bloom on top of bare stalks before the low basal foliage develops. It was actually dormant through the warmest part of summer.
Billowy and bold pampas grass flowers bloom this time of year, but are uncommon. The boldest type of pampas grass is too big and difficult to manage for home gardens. The smaller type has dingy tan flowers, and is so invasive and weedy that it is unavailable in nurseries. Those of us who have it in our gardens did not plant it. Other grasses with nice late flowers are not very colorful.
Russian sage has become one of the more popular late blooming perennials. More traditional Japanese anemone, goldenrod, lion’s tail and showy stonecrop all seem to have lost popularity over the years. Mexican blue sage should bloom best late in summer, but often finishes sooner than expected. Yarrow often blooms later than expected, until summer ends. Marigold, blanket flower and some sunflowers bloom until frost. Chrysanthemums, whether grown as annuals or perennials, are just beginning late in summer.