Need Something New? How about a Variegated Hydrangea?

Hydrangea ‘Lemon Wave’

 

Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Lemon Wave’

When you have a chartreuse garden, you tend to look for matching plants. This broken stick in a pot was in the year-end discount area of a nursery with a tag showing a yellow variegated hydrangea so I thought, perfect! My friends said that it wouldn’t bloom and would revert. Neither of those things has happened, in fact, it has been fully fabulously variegated with bright yellow to cream splashes every year and sets pale lilac trusses of flowers.

Atami Plum Garden Festival

Two years ago today I was in Japan waiting for the Ume (Mume in the USA) to bloom. Finally, in the last week, I was able to enjoy this lovely walk through an iconic Japanese scene.

From their website: “Atami Plum Garden, famous for Japan’s earliest plum blossoms and latest autumn leaves since it was opened in 1886. It is the site of 454 trees of 60 species including a ancient plum tree more than 100 years old. You can enjoy it year round, not just in the plum blossom season.”

Atami Plum Garden Festival 2014

Gardenia jasminoides ‘Kleim’s Hardy’

This super fragrant gardenia makes a perfect small shrub for my small garden.

Gardenia jasminoides ‘Kleim’s Hardy’

When you grow up in the south, gardenias are second nature to you. Thank goodness for microclimates because I have been able to enjoy this beautifully fragrant gardenia for many years. If there is frost damage, I am careful to remove stems and leaves without losing any healthy flower buds for summer flowers. The shrub is certainly shorter than it could be a couple zones south but it is covered with flowers and glossy attractive foliage is summer nonetheless. Listed for Zones 7 to 11, I’ve been heaping snow all winter trying to cover mine for this extraordinary winter we are having so it will be interesting to see what happens come spring.

Philadelphia Inquirer 2/7/2014

The second page of the article by Virginia Smith showing my photo of Clematis on my front porch and a few thoughts I shared about favorite clematis and rose picks from my garden that have been reliable performers for years.

Philadelphia Inquirer 2/7/2014

Thank you to Virginia Smith for including two of my photos along with quotes in today’s Home and Design cover story. (I’ll post it as two separate pages)

Clematis ‘Mrs. Robert Brydon’

These shrub-type clematis are not so common but this one has been around for a long time and is absolutely worth having. For one thing, it is indestructible. Forget about the confusing pruning regimens, just cut as much or little as you like, even taking it to the ground won’t matter. I like leaving a couple feet of woody stems so it has some buds left in the spring to send it vertically up my porch. Have some twine in your hand when it zooms out because you’ll want to keep tying the stiff stems to the porch where it will set a million flowers in full view. Small, stamen-filled, light blue bells keep blooming for at least a month and the foliage stays perfectly lovely the whole time.

Pick One New Plant to Buy in Spring 2014

The hot plant I saw last year for retail customers to look for this spring was Digitalis ‘Illumination.’ The heavy stalks with masses of two-toned flowers are traffic-stopping gorgeous. It’s no wonder this was the 2012 Plant of the Year at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and, judging by the smiles in photographs, Thomson and Morgan couldn’t be more pleased with the breeding honors. By some miracle, this Digitalis has the genus Isoplexis in its phloem so it is sterile which translates to very long-blooming, lush displays of this exotically-colored foxglove. It will be in my front planters this year and I know everyone who walks by will be drooling.

Here it is with my friend Barbara Katz, London Landscapes LLC, as we visit in the hotel lobby. She had the attention of everyone who passed by.