Category Archives: Right Plant Right Place

Anisodontea capensis ‘El Rayo’: A Closer Look at Jimi’s Beautiful Obsession and the Growing Conditions in South Africa

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This is from the catalog of Andre Brian a nursery in France as once again this particular variety is not very common in the trade here.

Another Choice Plant From Jimi Blake’s NPA Seattle Study Weekend Presentation

‘El Rayo’, in english is, ‘Lightning’!  One should expect something pretty spectacular, flashy even, with this plant…or not.  ‘El Rayo’ in Portland is a taqueria!…in Portland, ME that is.  I would hope that the name of either doesn’t over sell their product!  Does anybody know? About the tacos I mean?  Gardeners should always be wary of cultivar names.  While they serve as identifiers of a particular, and allegedly unique form or clone, and sometimes as a helpful and memorable descriptor, they can too often tread across the line into misleading hyperbole!  Names are often assigned to a plant that have been in the trade for some time under other names.  These ‘new’ and unique names are then ‘trademarked’, legally protected, as the nursery heavily markets the plant.  The gardening public then comes to recognize and associate this protected name with the plant and begin to ask for it by that name.  Unlicensed growers cannot supply the plant by that name and so some nursery producers carve out a larger share of the market.   After experience we may come to recognize these marketing ploys…or not.  Oft times a little celebration or indulgence is called for. Continue reading →

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A Closer Look at Jimi’s ‘Beautiful Obsession’, A Review of Chosen Plants From his Presentation, Part 2

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I think it’s safe to say that the longer that I garden, the more plants that I grow and learn about, the deeper my appreciation for all plants and the living world becomes. Life itself takes on a more ‘miraculous’ quality and I am both humbled by this and saddened by the indiffference and wide spread disregard and destruction that dominates the relationship of so much of the human population with regards to the green world. (sigh) How, I sometimes wonder, can so many people not ‘see’ what is around them, the beauty and the miraculousness of it?  Having said that, I dive back into another installment of Jimi’s ‘Obsession’!

Impatiens omeiana ‘Sango’

Everyone has grown Impatiens, right!  It’s one of those ubiquitous bedding annuals even many non-gardeners know that they might put in a pot on their shady porch. I used to grow these by the hundreds when I put together display beds for Parks as they were one of the few freely flowering options available from the bedding plant industry that could ‘produce’ on shade sites. It’s so well known that its common and genus name are the same, a relatively rare occurence in the plant world. As they tend to do, hybridizers pushed the limits on these and, over the years, have developed a good number of cultivars that are tolerant of direct sun, probably increasing their popularity while at the same time teaching an unhelpful message to the general public, that it isn’t really necessary to pay attention to a plant’s requirements…ours are what matters, but that is an entirely different issue than what I want to cover here. Continue reading →

A Closer Look at Jimi’s Beautiful Obsession, A Review of Chosen Plants From his Presentation, Part 1

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It would seem that gardeners are a difficult lot!  For those of us intent on gardening with ornamental plants we are continuously drawn to the exotic and novel, sated less and less by the plants in yesterdays’ garden…at least until those have had suitable time to have fallen out of fashion and are rediscovered. For most of us it is the plants we’ve never grown, or even seen before, that draw us.  This is as true when we ourselves are novices as it is many years later.  Sure, we all have more than a few long term relationships with particular plants, but we seem forever subject to the seductive calls of the unknown (to us)!  For many of us this is at no time more true than when nurserymen, on the ‘cutting edge’, and plant explorers come to town, especially if they come bearing pretty pictures…Even mores so when paired with the opportunity to acquire them.  Instant gratification.  It is a conspiracy you know. Continue reading →

On Choosing Salvias for My Garden

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Salvia confertiflora in the San Francisco Botanical Garden, October

I can’t get Jimi Blake’s HuntingBrook Garden out of my head…that’s a good thing, though a little odd since I’ve never been there. The images and ideas, the energy that both Jimi and his sister, June, who gardens nearby, projected at the NPA Study Weekend was infectious and inspiring. Their gardens are both beautiful and, obviously, central to each of their lives. They are dynamic, like the minds of each of them, endlessly creative and curious…botanical dabblers of the highest order. Apparently, their gardens don’t stand still.  No plant or bed is ‘safe’ from revision, in part or from wholesale revision.  I have no pictures, their’s, however were gorgeous and seductive. I have to rely on the few they have posted to their websites. Please, go to them.  (Jimi’s HuntingBrook Garden.)

Of the two, Jimi spoke first, his topic, Salvias, those that he’s found to be worthy of a place in his garden.  With such a relatively large garden he can ‘trial’ many plants, and, if you’re like Jimi, evaluate them in terms of both aesthetics and performance.  He loves Salvia…there are nearly 1,000 species and who knows how many hybrids and selections!  He grows many from seed, others he’s rooted from cuttings, like minded Salvia-philes gift him with treasures and Jimi works them into his beds, artfully.  You won’t see any sterile lab like rows, he trials them in mixed borders and beds.  In Seattle he presented his ‘winners’, 33 different species, hybrids and selections.  The list is comprised primarily of plants ‘durable’ enough for his conditions with long bloom periods…with a few exceptions, late bloomers, and those of short duration…need not apply. Continue reading →

On Being a Defacto Pteridophile (fern lover)

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This is the NW corner of my garden where I’ve tried many of my ferns. Palms, the fence, our bamboo and steel pagoda and a large Mahonia x media provide more shade than most of the garden ‘enjoys’.  Some of the ‘squirrel tails’ of my Sanguisorba hakusanensis hangs in the foreground.

How many different species and cultivars of a particular plant group do you ‘need’ to grow before you can be said to have a serious problem? I am not an ‘Agave-holic’! Isn’t a statement like this, one of the surest signs of such an affliction? I know other people who grow a lot more of these! What does it mean when you persist in growing a group of plants in spite of the fact that many of them die? And what constitutes too many? It can’t be a set number. If a group comprises comparatively few plants when compared to Orchids say, a group of over 20,000 species, growing a 100 plants might seem obsessive, while in the Orchid world it may not be. My name is Lance and I grow ferns…in a garden that suggests I should grow something else.

The one healthy frond left on my ‘rescued’ Woodwordia unigemmata.  This single leaf is almost 3′ long.

While at the NWPA’s Seattle Study Weekend, I noticed a couple of ferns in particular that I have in my own garden, only growing much better, apparently vigorous and ‘carefree’, including Woodwardia unigemmata and a couple of different forms of Asplenium. One of the first things I did on my return home was to dig my own Woodwardia unigemmata. freeing it from the thirsty roots of my neighbors Kwanzan Cherry. I did the same for a Dryopteris wallachiana which had also been struggling with too little water, only it was under my own large Parrotia persica and Actinidia kolomikta.

Asplenium scolopendrium ‘Furcatum’ happy near the gate growing with Asarum splendens. Aspidistra, more Acorus and an Astrantia also grow in this bed, but other genera, whose names start with a letter other than ‘A’ also abide in it.

Asplenium scolopendrium ‘Furcatum, the Fork Crested Hart’s Tongue Fern, pfeeew, whaat a name!,  is another very nice form of a beautiful species.  I saw various forms of this at the study weekend, all of them looking vibrant and neat.  The first of these I’d bought several years ago was the straight species and was devastated by root weevils notching its leaves.  With that exception, it has grown well for me. Continue reading →