The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

If you are like me , you probably have had the experience of buying a plant from a catalog or garden center only to find out it wasn’t quite as wonderful as it looked in the picture. Of course, sometimes sellers tweak  photos a bit to highlight the characteristics of a particular plant.

In the case of hostas however, the differences can be very real and not due to photo manipulation.

Many varieties of hostas require a cold period before they reach their full potential. New hostas are often grown in a greenhouse for the first year and may have not gotten enough exposure to cold temperatures. As a result, during the first year in your garden, they can look very different from a mature plant of the same variety.

Leaf color, texture, size and shape can all look different until the second spring. There are some varieties that require a few years growth before all their characteristics are evident.

Hostas are grown for their interesting leaves. The flowers are usually incidental and not showy.

Also, keep in mind that hostas are shade tolerant plants. Even though we see hostas planted in sunny areas all the time, they prefer to grow in areas where they are shaded from the hot afternoon sun. Full morning and evening sun exposure will allow hostas to develop properly.

In a year or two your new hosta will look as good as the one in the picture. I wish I could say the same about the shirts I buy.

Bob

This is the first spring for our Veronica gentianoides, sometimes called Veronica Speedwell or Gentian Speedwell. We planted this perennial last fall and it seems to be very hardy since it survived our winter, even after all of those record-breaking cold days and nights.

Gentian speedwell is one of the earliest flowering perennials. Ours started blooming right after the tulips died back and should last another couple of weeks at least, depending on weather conditions.

Its wonderful light-blue flowers are about one-half inch across and are held by a spike 16 inches tall.

This is not a plant that you would notice driving down a bumpy road at 50 miles an hour, unless it was a naturalized area with a large number of plants. It works best in an area where you can enjoy it up close such as along a sidewalk.

Our stand of Gentian Speedwell will fill in later during the summer.

You may have noticed that Veronica gentionoides has the same first name as Veronica filiformis, the common lawn weed also called speedwell.  That’s because they are closely related. Don’t worry though, Veronica gentianoides will never become a lawn weed.

Like many of us, Veronica’s ancestors immigrated from somewhere else in the world. In this case, they were brought here from the middle east — specifically the Caucasus region around Turkey and Iran.

Gentian Speedwell will tolerate some light shade but prefers full sun. Wild populations in the middle east are found in damp fields, which tells us that the plant will do best if kept watered or is grown in a moist area.

There are cultivated varieties for sale, I’m not sure what variety ours are.

Later in the summer after they’re done flowering, the plants will send out creeping roots that will produce new plants. The new plants eventually form into a mat that makes a good ground cover for filling in bare spots in the garden.

Bob

The tuberoses have been blooming in the garden for a week or so.

When they first started blooming, I actually smelled them before I saw them, which is not surprising since tuberoses are one of the most fragrant flowers you can grow.  They produce so much fragrance that farmers plant fields of them that they sell to perfume makers. The sweet scent is most noticeable in the evening.

Tuberoses don’t tolerate cold temperatures so you have to wait until the soil warms up.  Because it took so long for the soil to get warm this season, I planted mine around the beginning of June.

They require very little care and don’t mind being neglected for a while.

The grassy-looking leaves on tuberoses are not particularly eye-catching so, you can’t count on the foliage to make a dramatic impact in the landscape. It’s all about the flowers and their aroma. They make excellent cut flowers too.

The individual flowers are about one and one-half inches across.

You can save tuberoses by digging the tubers up before frost. Keep them warm in storage –above 50 degrees F — and dry over winter.

By digging and saving your tuberoses each year, you can quickly build up a large number of tubers to use each year in your garden.

Bob

Last Saturday I went on the Ann Arbor Garden Walk.  If you’ve never been on a garden tour like that, I encourage you keep an eye out for one in your area to and check it out. You never know what you might discover. Plus, it’s fun seeing how each gardener approaches garden design in their own way.

Usually, I don’t see plants I’m unfamiliar with. In my many years of professional gardening, I’ve grown umpteen varieties of plants. In this tour, one plant stood out for me, one I’d never grown before — Duranta.

I had to do a little research online to find out some more about them.

Duranta is a perennial shrub that is hardy to zone 10 or so. So, around here we have to grow it either as an annual or in a pot and bring into the greenhouse each fall to over-winter.

This Duranta was in full bloom at the Ann Arbor Garden Walk.

In all my years of gardening, I don’t recall ever seeing Duranta being offered for sale, either as transplants, cuttings or seed.

Discovering this plant on the garden tour was well worth the price of admission.

Bob