enhancing lif e with plants
Botanically Speaking In This Issue Cover Your Shoulders! Upcoming Volunteer Sessions CNPS vs. CSNPC Manion’s Musings The Peanut Gallery
Pictured above, left to right: 1. Chasmanthium latifolium, river oats 2. Carya sp., hickory 3. Rhynchospora colorata, narrowleaf whitetop sedge
August 2011 Volume 2. Issue 6
At this Time of the Year, Cover Your Shoulders!
A
s I have matured as a gardener, I’ve experienced two phenomena that I share with many other native plant aficionados: relaxing my desire to have every plant in its place and having the garden constantly filled with a riot of floral color. I find myself more intrigued by a garden’s serendipity in doing what it wants. I crave less formality and I revel in the countless textures and hues of green. I concentrate more on form and foliage, and their infinite variations, and I appreciate their multi-seasonal presence and beauty. (This is, perhaps, why ferns have become one of my favorite groups of plants.) In spring, there is no shortage of showy and floriferous native plants to dazzle the eye and lift the spirits, but by late May, a period of time begins known in the horticultural world as the “shoulder season.” This starts as spring ephemerals go on summer vacation, well before the summer players have stepped onto stage. After winter, I consider this the most challenging time to bring floral color to the garden. There are a number of plants that come to our aid in filling this niche, two plants - one woody and one herbaceous - are excellent choices and stars of the shoulder season. The first, the herbaceous Stokesia laevis (Stoke’s aster, shown left) has flowers of light-blue/lavender, a color I’ve praised in past issues for its ability to glow in low light: shade, dawn or dusk. In the Kaul Wildflower Garden our focus on plant selection is slanted towards native plants of the southeast that are of known wild provenance. For that reason, we limit our use of cultivars (see Manion’s Musings below) to a select few that are particularly superior to the straight species (non-cultivars). Stokesia laevis ‘Peachie’s Pick’ llustrates this perfectly; it is less lax in stature than its native brethren (a nice way of saying it doesn’t flop over)! Part of my maturation process articulated above includes not being as concerned when some plants don’t stand up straight. continued on page 2.
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