Fairy Crown #4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Janet

In my garden, the month of May brings the familiar song of the cardinal high up in my black walnut tree, the flurry of house sparrows making nests in the cedar hedge and the buzz of queen bumble bees emerging from their winter nests to forage for pollen. Most of the early bulbs have now faded away and it is prima donna season for shimmering white daffodils and tulips in a rainbow of warm hues. My fairy crown for early May is a celebration of mid-spring abundance featuring tulips in peach, pink and lilac; ‘Geranium’, ‘Stainless’ and ‘Thalia’ daffodils; peachy ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinth still in flower; blue-and-white grape hyacinths (Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’); wine-red snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris); a truss of magenta ‘PJM’ rhododendron; the delicate red blossoms of my Japanese maple (Acer palmatum); and the first tiny, blue flowers of perennial Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).

Now is also the time when I rummage through my cupboards searching out small vases, shot glasses, votive candle holders and favorite mugs to hold these long-awaited blossoms to bring the joy and fragrance of spring indoors.

My front garden flanks the city sidewalk – no fence, no obstacles for neighbours and passersby who wish to stop and gaze or capture the flowers with their cell phone. And it’s never more popular than now, when the bulbs bloom in riotous profusion in what will be a towering prairie months later – no single-color blocks for me!

I’ve never understood gardeners who turn down their noses at tulips. Yes, they’re gaudy! Isn’t that the point? We need color after a long winter.

The ‘Shogun’ tulips continue to open while the big Fosteriana tulip ‘Orange Emperor’ starts to flower as well. I mentioned how much I love orange, right?

Each autumn, I add to the assortment, but old favourites include the big Darwin Hybrids ‘Pink Impression’….

… and ‘Apricot Impression’…

…. and the elegant lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’.

Other tulips in my spring repertoire that have hung around for more than a few seasons are the luscious double ‘Lilac Perfection’….

…. and the double fringed tulip ‘Crispion Sweet’.

Fragrance in daffodils is important to me, as are longevity and a tendency to multiply. I love the spicy scent of the old Tazetta cultivar ‘Geranium’, with its clustered, shimmering-white flowers with orange cups, like a hardy paperwhite.

And the Triandus hybrid daffodil ‘Thalia’ – sometimes called the orchid narcissus – is another winner. Its dainty, white flowers with their reflexed petals are lovely in spring nosegays, especially with blue grape hyacinths.

Here is ‘Thalia’ in the garden; you can see how it multiplies. And you can also see my favourite little Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ still in bloom behind.

I do have a fondness for white daffodils (as well as ‘Golden Echo’), and I love those with salmon-pink trumpets, like ‘Pink Charm’, below.

Finally, there’s the Large Cup daffodil ‘Stainless’ with pure white flowers, on the left below.

The hyacinths from my last fairy crown fade in colour but stay in flower for a long period. Because I love plant combinations of blue and orange, I mix the bulbs of peach-orange ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinth and blue-and-white grape hyacinth Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’ together with delightful results!

That little grape hyacinth is a stunner in tiny bouquets, too. Here it is with Narcissus ‘Thalia’, Muscari latifolium and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Snake’s head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagaris) is an elegant dark horse in the mid-spring garden with its pendulous, checkered, wine-red flowers. The specific ephithet meleagris means “spotted like a guinea fowl” so another common name is the guinea hen flower.

Though it’s not featured in my crown, another bulb blooming in my garden at this time is summer snowflake, Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’ (which, despite its name, is a spring-bloomer). I don’t have nearly enough of these elegant flowers.

We often think of Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) primarily as specimen trees, but stand near one in flower on a sunny day in spring….

…. and try to count the native bees buzzing around the tiny, pendulous, red blossoms, like this spring-active Andrena bee. That’s the little dangling red jewel over my right eye in the fairy crown.

My old tree is planted in a south-facing site in front of our living room windows where it is protected from the cold, north wind – and serves as my leafy curtain from May through November. Here it is outside my 2^nd-floor window (and that’s my husband strolling out in a spring shower.)

Heading into my back garden, we find the tiny blue flowers of Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla), a frothy groundcover perennial under spring bulbs. It thrives in part shade and is low-maintenance, ultra-hardy, long-flowering and unbothered by pests or disease. There are many variegated-leaf cultivars, but I am partial to the regular species with its lush green leaves. Here it is growing with rhubarb and European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum).

My back garden has a thriving population of ostrich ferns, which is a nice way of saying they’re very successful invaders. Growing amidst them are lots of mid-season tulips whose names I’ve long forgotten, but I believe the magenta-pink one is ‘Don Quichotte’. Aren’t they pretty?

Not all plants in a garden last indefinitely. Some barely hang on, others fight disease, some struggle with winter temperatures – and that’s the case with my Mezitt-hybrid Rhododendron ‘PJM’. At one time, I had three of these hardy, small-flowered shrubs near my lily pond, but over the years they declined, leaving just one to greet spring with its clusters of outrageously brilliant magenta flowers – and a place of honor in my fairy crown.

Speaking of my crown, I’ll leave with a little bouquet of my deconstructed Fairy Crown #4. What could be prettier than these lovely May flowers?

********

Want to see more of my Fairy Crowns?

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths

My Spring Nosegays

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Janet

According to etymology online, a “nosegay” was historically a “small bunch of flowers used to delight the sense of smell”. The word arose in the late 15^th century when ‘gay’ was a noun (now obsolete) meaning ‘a gay or bright thing’. Nosegays gave rise to the tussie-mussie, a handheld bouquet in an ornate, cone-shaped, metallic vase popular in late 19^th century Victorian times that became a kind of fashion accessory (plus mobile air freshener in those pre-deodorant days.) My spring nosegays are different from the summer bouquets I make at the cottage with my meadow flowers…..

…. or the bouquets I make for the living room mantel, like this one with boughs of cherry blossoms and peonies…..

….. or the ones I’d make in hollowed out cabbages and pumpkins! This was autumn 2002.

I think of my nosegays as tiny bouquets that indeed often delight my sense of smell, especially because the spring blossoms I include are often growing too low for me to bend in order to smell their perfume. That is definitely the case with fragrant snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), which I adorned with a small rhyme one spring after a long, snowy winter.

Snowdrops in a shot glass
How apt, I think.
I could get drunk in these
 tiny, nodding blossoms..
Savoring, after a long sober winter
The first intoxicating sip of spring

Snowdrops flower very early, often persisting under spring snow, along with crocuses, Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ and fragrant viburnum (V. farreri), so they make lovely companions. This tiny bouquet from March 25^th this year had such a sweet scent. Speaking of ‘this year’, spring flowers emerged early, were buried in snow a few weeks later, and have enjoyed the cool temperatures, allowing them to last longer – something that doesn’t happen often in Toronto,

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There is such a delicacy about these early bloomers, best appreciated up close. I photographed this on April 19, 2020.

Way back on March 20, 2012, a record warm and early spring, I needed three little vases to showcase my spring bulbs. From left we have blue and white Siberian squill (S. siberica and S. siberica ‘Alba’) with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), Dutch hybrid crocuses (C. verna), and Greek windflower (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) with Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.

This was April 6, 2020. I liked the little dash of orange from the Crocus x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’, along with the ice blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and pink ‘Beth Evans’ corydalis (C. solida).

When the Dutch crocuses are at their prime, sometimes it’s fun just to showcase those silken purple petals. This was from April 12, 2014.

Similarly, I sometimes like to pick just one perfect spring bloom, like this Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’ on April 9, 2012, and give it the spotlight.

On April 23, 2013, I selected just a few stems of ‘Violet Beauty’ glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii) to photograph. Interestingly, this cultivar has not persisted in my garden, unlike the parent species.

We have a set of antique crystal shot glasses just the right size for a nosegay of spring bulbs. This was April 18, 2019, and featured the usual suspects.

Pastels flowering at the same time, on April 10, 2020, included light pink Viburnum farreri (which I blogged about recently), pink Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’ and ice-blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides).

These two little bulbs grow together in my garden and look just as lovely in a votive candle holder. Blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’. These would normally be finished by now, but our cool 2021 spring kept them in good shape for my April 25^th photo.

I adore grape hyacinths and wanted an early one in sky-blue. So last autumn I planted loads of Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Blue’ and I am delighted. They’re at the front of this little nosegay, along with pure-white Narcissus ‘Thalia’, broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium) with its navy-and-royal blue florets and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Last April 29th, I combined Muscari latifolium with the wonderful Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Last week I plucked just a few flowers from my garden to place in my green Irish mug. Included were three daffodils, ‘Thalia’, ‘Stainless’ and little ‘Golden Echo’, which has become such a favourite that I wrote a blog in its honour. As well, I added a stem of peachy-orange Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ which wafted its scent in my kitchen. Behind are two tulips, T. fosteriana ‘Orange Emperor’, left, and T. praestans ‘Shogun’, right.

This little nosegay had a bit of everything! It was May 4, 2020, so I was able to partner white Narcissus ‘Thalia’ with (clockwise from front) a sprig of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with a stem of magenta Rhododendron ‘PJM’ right behind it; lilac-purple Corydalis solida; Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’; broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium); and wine-purple snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) at right.

I love bright, sunny colours and this little nosegay in a bud vase brightened up my kitchen on May 13, 2020. Along with spice-scented Narcissus ‘Geranium’, front, I used the orange, lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’; Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ (which lasts a long time because of its sequential blooming); and a few sprigs of forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) and forsythia.

As May arrives, other parts of my garden wake up. Spring 2019 was quite cool, so the Greek windflowers (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) and Corydalis solida were still in flower when my masses of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) started flowering. I celebrated these “little blue flowers” on May 22, 2019, including common grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) and Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).

One of my biggest garden problems here at home in Toronto is the steady advance of lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) through plantings. In my case, it was here when we bought our old house 38 years ago and my mistake, had I known what was coming, was not to eradicate it immediately. Now it is the tough groundcover for most of my front garden and a lot of the back. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to deter the native, prairie perennials that emerge through it for summer. I have had fun with lily-of-the valley, turning it into a fragrant chapeau for a garden party, which I detailed in a blog. And I also add a few stems to whatever is in bloom, including grape hyacinths, Siberian bugloss and forget-me-nots, like the nosegay below from May 22, 2020.

My lawn contains lots of native Confederate violet (Viola sororia var. priceana) and I’ve included them in the odd nosegay with forget-me-nots and grape hyacinths. This was April 22^nd in the record-warm spring of 2012.

In my final photo, made May 23, 2020, I’ve used the green shot glasses and flask from a vintage ‘gentleman’s travelling bar set’ that my late father-in-law gave my husband. Rather than whiskey, it includes the first perfumed blossoms of Burkwood’s viburnum (V. x burkwoodii) along with blue camassia (C. leichtlinii ‘Caerulea’), the final flowers of Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, lily-of-the-valley, and common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum). And that’s a wrap for my spring nosegays!

Raindrops

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Janet

Have I told you lately that I love you? Oh, never mind. That’s a different Van Morrison song. Just thought I’d throw it in here, for all the folks who’ve patiently travelled this #mysongscapes road with me thus far. And it’s not a ‘Van the Man’ song today like my last two blogs, but an older guy who’s no longer with us. We’ll get to him later. In the meantime, can we talk about rain? As in….

Soon-it’s-gonna-rain-I-can-feel-it

Raindrops-keep-falling-on-my-head

Here-comes-the-rain-again

Rain… Feel it on my fingertips

Someone left the cake out in the rain

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Let’s talk about rain and photography! Because depending on how you look at rain, your glass is either half-empty or half-full. And I’m definitely in the latter camp, as you can see by my smiling face as I stride down the High Line under my umbrella. (Thanks to my photographer pal Ginny Weiler for the photo.)

Unless it’s pouring down (and I’ve been in some of those rains carrying three cameras in a big garden far from shelter), an overcast sky and drizzle is far easier to deal with than the bright sunshine of mid-day. Look at the beautiful Magnolia ashei I photographed that May day on the High Line….

….. and the prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) beside the rain-spattered sign….

….. and the pretty heuchera leaf turned over under raindrops to show its lovely purple reverse.

Apart from the gentle light for photography, in a place like the High Line there are far fewer visitors when it’s drizzling.

When I visit Vancouver, I make sure I take an umbrella to photograph plants at my two favourite haunts, the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Van Dusen Botanical Garden. In fact, the wettest I’ve ever been in was at UBC on May 29, 2013 – and the raindrops in the pond below just got more serious as I moved through the garden.

But when I’ve got the day booked for plant photography, I hate to give up because of a little downpour…..

…. especially when the Himalayan poppies, below, are in perfect bloom in the David Lam Asian Garden. The raindrops just add to the enchantment – and I have never sprayed a blossom with water to make it more “picturesque”, when nature does it for me for free! (By the way, I wrote a blog on the exquisite David Lam garden in May.)

The redvein enkianthus (E. campanulatus) looked lovely in the drizzle……

….. and across Marine Drive, the Garry Oak Meadow was gorgeous that rainy day. Imagine how terrible this tapestry would have looked in full sun!

In UBC’s herb garden, bees were still foraging on the Angelica archangelica, despite the weather.

The downward-facing flowers of Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum) acted like umbrellas for this bumble bee, though her fur-like hairs were beginning to mat down in the rain.

Though it hails from the hot, dry Drakensberg Range in South Africa, the Moraea robusta in UBC’s wonderful rock garden wore its sunshine yellow with raindrops that day.

A few weeks later in early June, I was back at my “home garden”, the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG) on a rainy June morning with no one else around. Though the paving stones were wet on the Westview Terrace where the Indigofera kirolowii was in full flower….

….. and at the entrance to the Floral Hall Courtyard where the Bowman’s root (Porteranthus trifoliatus previously Gillenia) was a cloud of white…..

…..my raindrop close-ups from that day, like the Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’, below, were lovely.

Peonies were just opening that day in June, too…..

…. and the lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) wore its many rain-spattered, folded capes.

Even the eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) sported its raindrops nicely.

Though I’m usually alone at the TBG on a rainy day, I occasionally catch sight of a pretty umbrella held by another intrepid garden visitor.

On June 8, 2015, I visited the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington Ontario with a group of fellow bloggers. We drove there through a massive rainstorm, so when we arrived at the famous Iris Collection….

….. all the bearded irises were delightfully adorned with raindrops. This is ‘Florentine Silk’.

There were so many, I wanted to capture them in one gorgeous photographic memory.

In Manhattan one hot, humid August afternoon, I braved an uptown subway train with no air-conditioning and waited out a thunderstorm and all the people running out of the beautiful Conservatory Garden at Central Park so I could be almost all alone there.

But it didn’t take long for a few people with umbrellas to return to enjoy the spectacular, Lynden Miller-designed borders. I blogged about that August afternoon in the garden.

When I visited Monet’s garden at Giverny in France in April 2008, a spring shower meant the other visitors carried their umbrellas over his famous Japanese bridge on the lily pond…..

…. but all the flowers enjoyed the rain. I blogged about the spring lessons from Giverny as well.

The majority of my rainy photo shoots were in spring, as you might expect “when April showers bring May flowers”. But May has its share of rainy flowers too. This was on May 5, 2014 at the Horticultural Centre of the Pacific just outside Victoria, B.C. Bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) and Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’ looked enchanting to me…..

…. and the trumpets of the little gentians were laden with raindrops.

The skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) was happy to be in its preferred damp state that day.

And of course spring at Vancouver’s wonderful Van Dusen Botanical Garden means there will be lots of west coast rain to make the various Himalayan poppies (Meconopsis)….

….. in the Himalayan Dell just that much lovelier.

While staying with friends in Sun Valley, Idaho in September 2016, we took a walk through a wild meadow just as big rainclouds appeared behind the mountains.

Though we didn’t make it home before getting soaked, I was happy to have had my camera with me to capture the intricacy of the rain drops on the meadow grass seedheads. (And I will refrain from mentioning the irony of rain in Sun Valley….)

More recently, if you read my massive blog about Botanizing Greece with Liberto in November 2019, you might recall the day we stopped at a serpentine outcrop near Smokovo in the pouring rain…..

….. to look for tiny Crocus cancellatus subsp. mazziaricus, which we did find, but they were as soaked as I was.

We also found our first Sternbergia lutea that morning, but they refused to open in the inclement weather (which is an obvious evolutionary adaptation to keep the reproductive parts dry).

A few redbud (Cercis siliquastrum) flowers still hung on to the trees and they did look pretty in the rain….

….. as did the wild flowers in the meadow (even as my shoes were squishing in the grasses).

In the fall of 2015, I visited Costa Rica with my hiking group. Though we did manage some hiking, that particular one-week period had more rain than the Osa Peninsula had seen in the entire rainy season. I blogged about my time at El Remanso Lodge, but here’s a little video of what real rain is like in a tropical rainforest…..

In my own Ontario gardens, as you might expect, my camera is never far away when the rain stops. At the cottage on Lake Muskoka one June, I found my wild lupines spangled with raindrops…..

…. and the palmate leaves with their small hairs seemed to trap perfect raindrops like mercury quicksilver.

When a big rainstorm hits the cottage on a summer day, it’s often so spectacular in its onset that I grab my camera and set it to video. Have a look (and try to pick up the distant thunder in the first few seconds) ……

At home in Toronto, rainy May days are welcomed because summer is often hot and dry and our urban tree canopy needs all the help it can get. Especially lovely are spring bulbs – this is Tulipa ‘Ballade’, one of my favourites…

….. and this is ‘Angelique’ looking like ballerina tutus hung on a line to dry.

A few years ago, I stood under my umbrella photographing my grandson Oliver doing a little jaunt on the stepping-stone path through the spring bulbs in my front yard while rain poured down and thunder boomed in the distance. Doesn’t he look proud of himself? I snapped a still photo at the end.

But since this is #mysongscapes, we do need a song to finish up this blog, so let’s take a rainy day tour of my entire Toronto garden, as I found it under my umbrella on June 24, 2018. And we’ll be serenaded by Dee Clark with his famous Raindrops song from 1961.

*******

This is the tenth blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading, have a look at the others beginning with

Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans

And please do feel free to leave a comment below. I love to read them.

The Siberian Squill and the Cellophane Bee

Posted on April 22, 2017 by Janet

My front garden in Toronto is filled at the moment with hundreds of native cellophane bees, Colletes inaequalis. Sometimes called Eastern plasterer bees or polyester bees (and grouped generally with mining bees), they get their common name for the viscous, waterproof, transparent substance (sometimes compared to plastic wrap) that the females secrete to line and seal the brood cells they burrow in the ground. Their species name means “unequal”, and refers to the unequal segments of the right and left antennae. They’re one of the earliest bees to emerge in spring and can often be seen on April-flowering native red maples (Acer rubrum), like the one below in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery…..

…. and pussy willows (Salix discolor), also in the cemetery.

My front garden is also filled with the little blue flowers of the non-native, spring-flowering bulb Siberian squill, Scilla siberica.

They’ve been slowly spreading there for at least 20 years, probably much longer, since we’ve been in our house for 33 years and it was soon after I saw the “blue lawns” in our neighbourhood that I decided to plant a few of the little bulbs. Needless to say, the scilla likes our slightly alkaline clay. Quite a lot! Though considered invasive, they are not listed as a serous threat, like Japanese knotweed and dog-strangling vine, since they occupy fairly specific niches and disappear after the foliage ripens. In my garden, they emerge with the crocuses…..

….. and stay in bloom for the fragrant hyacinths…

….. and windflowers (Anemone blanda)….

And Corydalis solida ‘George Baker’

There are thousands enough that my little granddaughter is free to pick handfuls of them.

Later, my front garden will be filled with daffodils, tulips and the bottlebrush flowers of Fothergilla gardenii.….

….and later still, sun-loving North American (not necessarily Ontario) prairie natives like echinacea, rudbeckia, liatris, vernonia and aster, chosen for their appeal to native pollinators.

I also grow many non-native plants like meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa), catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and Knautia macedonica and sedums, also chosen for their appeal to native pollinators….

…. like the little native metallic sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens), here on knautia….

….and ‘Mainacht’ meadow sage…

….and native bumble bees of all kinds, here on knautia….

….and catmint….
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….. and later in the season on echinacea…

In late summer and autumn, there’s a mix of non-native sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and native obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana).

Monarch butterflies congregating in Toronto before the long flight over Lake Ontario as they migrate to Mexico adore the sedums (as do bumble bees and honey bees)…..

….. and native carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica) do some clever nectar-robbing to get at the nectar in the corollas of the obedient plant.

The final chapter in my front garden consists of native goldenrod and rich purple New England aster, below, both valuable to native pollinators.

***************

But back to my garden in April. The little blue Siberian squill is why the native bees are there. Cellophane bees are a vernal species. As noted in this excellent bee brochure from the City of Toronto , “As soon as the weather becomes warm enough in late March or April, Common Eastern Plasterer Bees start emerging from their overwintering burrows in the ground. Males cluster around virgin females that are digging upwards to reach the soil surface and the mayhem that ensues can sometimes result in some bees being killed in the crush. Once they have mated, the female excavates a burrow in the ground, showing a preference for nesting in patches of bare, or sparsely vegetated, soil.”

Colletes inaequalis is a polylectic species, or a polylege, meaning it gathers pollen from a variety of native and non-native plants from early spring to mid-summer, when their life cycle ends. According to observers, the plants it has been observed using include Aesculus (buckeye, horsechestnut), Amelanchier (serviceberry), Anemone, Anemonella, Arctostaphylus, Aronia (chokeberry), Cercis (redbud), Claytonia, Crataegus (hawthorn), Dentaria, Dirca, Erythronium, Hepatica, Prunus (cherry), Ptelea, Pyrus (pear), Rhamnus (buckthorn), Rhus (sumac), Ribes (gooseberry, currant), Rubus (blackberry, raspberry), Salix (willow), Spiraea, Staphylea, Stellaria, Taraxacum (dandelion), Vaccinium (blueberry, huckleberry, myrtleberry, cranberry), Viburnum and Zizia. And in my garden, the unequal cellophane bee is the principal visitor to my thousands of non-native Siberian squill.

My abundant blue squill also attracts other native spring bees, including the lovely Andrena dunningi, below.

I also have a large fragrant viburnum (V. farreri) in my back garden. Native to northern China, it bursts into bloom with the first warmth of spring.

As soon as the scented flowers open, my viburnum is literally buzzing with native bees and butterflies, including mourning cloaks (Nymphalis antiopis) that have overwintered nearby…..

…and the odd overwintering red admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta).

The existential problem (not for me, but for some rigid native plant proponents) is that the alien floral nectar and pollen is making life possible for these native bees. In fact, since nobody else on my street has much in bloom at the moment and there are precious few red maples or native spring wildflowers in bloom, I am 99% sure that these bees nest in my own garden in order to attack this non-native nectar feast in early spring, as they emerge from their overwintering places.

I live in a city – in fact, the fourth largest city in North America – in which sun-loving plant species are largely all native elsewhere. As the Toronto bee brochure cited above notes: “Much of the native landscape in our region was originally forested, with the Carolinian and Mixed Forest Zones being the ecological land classifications for the area. Forests are generally not good habitats for bees, although bumble bee queens and a few early spring bees can be found foraging on the early spring flowers that are in bloom before bud burst.” My ‘native’ forest (including the maples, birches and willows on which my spring bees might have foraged) was mostly cleared, beginning more than 200 years ago, leaving a grid of streets and roads and buildings and an urban forest very much of the “planned” variety (boulevards and parks), save for our wonderful and extensive natural ravines. Though there would have been patches of meadow and bits of relict, sunny black oak savannah near High Park, most Toronto-specific native wildflowers would have been shade-lovers.

As the city’s bee brochure makes clear: “In comparison to native forests, an urban environment with patches of parkland, ravine, and large numbers of urban gardens, provides an abundance of floral and nest-site resources for bees. An evergreen forest may have no bees at all, a deciduous forest very few. But within our city there may be over 300 bee species and the average backyard garden will likely contain over 50 species, with some nesting and foraging there, and others visiting for pollen and nectar while nesting on a neighbour’s property.”

Pollination ecology is a complicated subject. Douglas Tallamy, in his excellent Bringing Nature Home: How You can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, writes that: “There are subtle chemical differences in nectar among plant species, but by and large, nectar from alien plants is the same as nectar from native plants.” That seems fairly clear and, extrapolating to the physical needs of Homo sapiens, carbohydrates are carbohydrates; it makes little difference whether they come from local maple syrup or granulated sugar or fructose, we will be hypoglycemic if we don’t ingest sufficient amounts. (Interestingly, “deep ecologists” separate humans from the rest of the evolved animal world – and assign us the shame of interacting in any way that benefits us above other creatures. But that’s a big and thorny subject for another day.) Tallamy goes on to say: “That said, there is growing evidence that our native bees, the andrenids, halictids, colletids, anthophorids, and megachilids, prefer native flowers to alien flowers.” He then cites the thesis findings of U of Delaware student Nicole Cerqueira, who compared visits of native bees to native and alien plants and found evidence that they showed a statistical preference for native plants in 31 instances. I’m not sure my garden is comparable, given what I’ve said about Toronto and its “native” plants, but I would be interested in seeing if quantity, i.e. massed plantings of bee-friendly alien plants, might play a spoiler role in what native bees like andrenids and colletids prefer……

In the meantime, do garden organically and do plant lots of plants for pollinators from spring to fall.

Orange: Three Fruits & a Fish – Part One

Posted on October 23, 2016 by Janet

Well, it’s now October and I resolved back on January 1^st to devote my Paintbox blog this month to the colour orange. Or, as I’ve called it in my title, ‘three fruits and a fish’, which pokes a little fun at the way the English language learned to describe colours, long before Isaac Newton first focused a prism on sunlight and conjured up the ‘visible light’ spectral rainbow in his college room.

“Three fruits and a fish” is not a balanced diet, but a plateful of related colour: orange, peach, apricot and salmon. (And in the interest of trivia, did you know that the fruit orange is classified as a hesperidium or modified berry? I thought not! Peaches and apricots, of course, are drupes or simple stone fruits. You’re welcome.) We all know what a naval orange or sockeye salmon flesh looks like, but what distinguishes peaches and apricots? Well, Wiki defines apricot as a “pale, yellowish-orange color” (or, as I say, halfway from orange to gold), and peach as a “light moderate to strong yellowish-pink to light orange colour” (my emphasis on the pink here, but without sufficient blue pigment to tip it completely into that candyfloss hue).

And what colour is salmon? Wiki says it’s “a range of pale pinkish-orange to light pink colors, named after the color of salmon flesh.” I would disagree with the “pale” part, unless you’re talking about spring salmon J. (Then again, Wiki has this painful, hair-splitting dissertation further down the page: “The color light-salmon is displayed at right. This is a color that resembles the color salmon, but is lighter, not to be confused with dark salmon, which resembles salmon pink but is darker than salmon pink and much darker than light salmon.” Confused yet?) I think of salmon as being a rich colour, as shown in the tropical plants Acalypha wilkesiana and Abutilon, below, in a container at the Toronto Botanical Garden…

Placing my colour arrays together, below you can see more clearly the difference in (clockwise from top left): orange, salmon, peach and apricot.

Orange Array: Tulipa ‘Ballerina’; Florist’s ranunculus (Ranunculus asiaticus); ‘Red Chief’ California poppies (Eschscholzia californica); Iceland poppy (Papaver nudicaule); ‘Tokajer’ blanket flower(Gaillardia x grandiflora); quince (Chaenomeles x superba); Potentilla ‘William Rollson’; butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa); ‘Bonfire’ begonia (Begonia boliviensis); Dahlia ‘Pooh’; Helenium autumnale ‘Rubinzwerg’; Canna ‘Phaison’
Salmon Array: Tulipa ‘Mariette’; ‘Bowles Red’ lungwort (Pulmonaria); ‘Spicy Lights’ azalea (Rhododendron); ‘Venus’ opium poppy (Papaver somniferum); ‘Pardon Me’ daylily (Hemerocallis); ‘Coral Reef’ beebalm (Monarda didyma); Calibrachoa ‘Superbells Coralberry Punch’; Rosa ‘Carefree Celebration‘; Echinacea ‘Secret Lust’; Diascia ‘Darla Apricot’; Zinnia elegans ‘Benary’s Giant Salmon Rose‘; Dahlia ‘Bodacious’
Peach Array: Tulipa ‘Angelique’; Hyacinth ‘Gipsy Queen’; Itoh Peony ‘Kopper Kettle’ (Paeonia); Oriental poppy ‘Victoria Louise’ (Papaver orientale); Heuchera ‘Marmalade’; Dutch honeysuckle (Lonicera periclyneum ‘Serotina’); Rosa ‘Marilyn Monroe’; Lilium ‘Visa Versa’; ‘Comanche’ waterlily (Nymphaea); Chrysanthemum ‘Sheffield Pink’ (Dendranthema ); daylily ‘Designer Jeans’ (Hemerocallis); Alstroemeria
Apricot Array: Narcissus ‘Fidelity’; Tulipa ‘Cairo’; Pansy ‘Imperial Antique Shades Apricot’; Iris ‘Sunny Dawn’: Heuchera ‘Caramel’; Calibrachoa ‘Superbells Peach’; Rose ‘Honey Perfume’; Nasturtium ‘Whirlybird Series‘ (Tropaeolum majus); Dahlia ‘Sunshine’; Gerbera; Sedum rubrotinctum ‘Aurora’; African daisy (Osteospermum ‘Symphony Series Orange‘)

Looking at the artist’s colour wheel, below, which is essentially a rainbow curved into a circle to illustrate in a visual way the relationships between spectral colours, we see 6 hues marked with a letter. The three marked “P” are defined as primary colours: red, yellow, blue. By combining equal parts of those primary colours with their neighbouring primary colour, we come up with the secondary colours shown and labelled “s”. It is more complicated than that (and of course there are tertiary colours and darker shades and lighter tints) but the point I’m making is that if our gardens were paintings, the visually pleasing ‘complementary contrast’ to the secondary colour orange is the primary colour blue. Keeping in mind that that artist’s colour wheel is just one of several ways of ‘organizing’ colour (the primary colours of light are an entirely different subject), on my power point slide below, orange wallflowers (Erysimum) are perfectly paired with deep blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica).

And that’s not to say that orange ‘Beauty of Apeldoorn’ tulips, below, wouldn’t look as lovely with yellow or dark pink flowers as neighbours, but the relationship of the colours blue and orange is inherently a pleasing one to our eyes. And from long observation, I’d add that orange flowers also look good paired with violet, purple and lavender blossoms as well.

Because I love the colour orange and have spent a lot of time observing this colour in gardens and nature, I’ve collected photos of myriad plants with orange flowers (and colour companions for those), as well as plants with orange berries and orange fall leaf colour. (Read my blog on orange autumn leaves here.) I’ve even assigned orange-coloured plants to their growth type and seasons, below.

Spring Bulbs

So let’s explore orange in the garden beginning with some of my favourite spring blossoms, then hardy summer bulbs and perennials. In my next colour blog, I’ll talk about orange-flowered and orange-leafed roses, shrubs, tropicals and annuals. And let’s begin – as the flowering year does – with crocuses. Who doesn’t love a good apricot-orange crocus, like C. x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’? Honey bees do, I can assure you.

I’m a sucker for perfumed hyacinths (Hyacinthus orientalis) – I buy a few dozen every couple of years, and love them even better when their form relaxes in years 2 and 3. (But don’t count on them hanging around forever.) If I were planting hyacinths with little blue bulbs like striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), I’d definitely choose peach-orange ‘Gipsy Queen’, below.

Then there are daffodils. Have you grown any split-corona or butterfly types? One of the most spectacular is also one of the most pronounced “orange” daffs. Meet ‘Orangery’.

Since I’m a gardener who enjoys naturalistic, meadow-style gardening, I can’t say I’ve ever been a great fan of the big crown imperial fritillaries – a bit too stiff for me. But you must admit that Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra Maxima’ would make a splash, especially in a formal garden.

Orange tulips like lovely ‘Beauty of Apeldoorn’ pictured above are fairly common, and personally, I love planting them with pink tulips, because winter is just too long and cold not to celebrate with a riot of warm colour in spring. Here are some of my other orange favourites: 1 – Orange Emperor, 2 – Daydream, 3 – Irene Parrot, 4 – El Niño, 5 – General deWet, and 6 – Ballerina.

The lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’ deserves special mention. It really is a wonderful dancer.

And I cannot leave tulips without paying tribute to one of the peacocks of the spring bulb world: the parrot tulip. This is ‘Salmon Parrot’. It won’t last long – it’s definitely not a ‘perennializer’ – but if you’re this stunning, you don’t need to hang around forever.

Hardy Bulbs

Hardy lilies (Lilium) in shades of orange are a dime-a-dozen too, and I’ve gathered a few combinations featuring purplish perennials. There’s old fashioned speckled tiger-lily (Lilium lancifolium), here consorting fetchingly with ‘Fascination’ Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).

And one of my newest favourites, Lilium henryi, shown here with hoary skullcap (Scutellaria incana) in the Piet Oudolf-designed Seasonal Border at the New York Botanical Garden.

Should you desire some knock ‘em dead perfume in the summer garden, you can always plant a few ‘African Queen’ trumpet lilies. Mmmm…..

But for the world’s most delicate, elegant lilies, you need a martagon or two, especially in conditions of light shade. On the left, below, is ‘Sing Out’, on the right ‘Burnt Orange’.

Where it’s hardy (Zone 6), Crocosmia ‘Emily McKenzie’, a corm that is planted in early spring, is a wonderful deep-orange hit for the garden. And like all crocosmias, it’s a hummingbird favourite. I loved the double-header below at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens with ‘Emily McKenzie’ in the foreground and an orange Helenium autumnale (perhaps ‘Rubinzwerg’) in the rear, sandwiching a white echinacea.

Stately foxtail lilies (Eremurus), though considered a ‘fleshy root’ rather than a bulb, are nonetheless often sold in autumn along with bulbs. They can be orange, white, yellow and peach and add a gorgeous vertical note to early summer plantings (plus bees adore them). I thought this joyous planting of Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’ with corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) in a mixed meadow planting of annuals and perennials at Chanticleer Gardens in Wayne, PA was one of the prettiest combinations I’ve seen.

Here it is again, showing the entire Rock Ledge Garden at Chanticleer. That’s dark purple Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ at the bottom.

Perennials

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While on one of my late spring visits to Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens, I was wowed by this mass waterside planting of Euphorbia griffithi ‘Fireglow’.

And there are beautiful orange primulas for damp places in spring. Look for Primula bulleyana, below….

… and the rich orange form of cowslip (Primula veris).

The best peonies can do in the orange department is coral, which is just a teensy bit redder than salmon. But there are some beauties, including the four below, clockwise from upper left: ‘Constance Spry’, ‘Coral Sunset’, ‘Coral Supreme’ and ‘Lorelei’.

There are some luscious peaches in the Itoh Peony group (hybrids between tree peony and herbaceous peony), including ‘Kopper Kettle’, below, with Salvia nemorosa ‘May Night’.

The genus Papaver boasts many orange-flowered species, but none are more flamboyant than old-fashioned Oriental poppy. This is Papaver orientale ‘Prince of Orange’.

And you will always find bees and hoverflies on wonderful little Moroccan poppy (Papaver atlanticum ‘Flore-Pleno), which is surprisingly hardy (USDA Zone 5) and easy to grow in all soils.

Bearded irises are the prima donnas of the early summer garden, and you can find them in the most wonderful shades of peach, bronze and clear orange, like the tall bearded ‘Orange Impact’, below.

I was intrigued to find beautiful copper iris (Iris fulva) growing on New York’s High Line. Honey bees had found it too, but its natural pollinators in the Mississippi Valley are hummingbirds. This orange-flowered member of the Louisiana Iris group likes damp (even wet), slightly acidic soil and is supposedly hardy to USDA Zone 5.

Verbascums can be found in apricot-orange (‘Helen Johnson’ among others), but this delicate June pairing in pale peach caught my eye at Toronto’s Casa Loma: Verbascum ‘Southern Charm’ and Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum, formerly Nectaroscordum).

One genus that’s seen a lot of hybridizing in recent decades is red-hot poker or torch lily (Kniphofia). Since they grow naturally in hues of orange or yellow, there is an abundance of choice here. I loved this fun mingling of Allium ‘Lucille Ball’ and Kniphofia ‘Flamenco’ at Chanticleer, in Wayne, PA.

And don’t forget about heucheras; they’re a treasure trove of peach and bronze-orange foliage possibilities. Here’s Heuchera ‘Caramel’ with dwarf Kniphofia ‘Mango Popsicle’.

Daylilies, of course, offer a motherlode of orange choices, not just in orange, shown in a few samples below (Clockwise from top left: Hemerocallis fulva ‘Kwanso’, Kansas, Challenger, Lady Lucille, Rosalind, Furnaces of Babylon)….

…. but there are loads of peach (left) and apricot (right) cultivars, below, too. And note that in the daylily world, “lavender” is often (peachy) wishful thinking. (Top, left to right: Uptown Girl, Strawberry Candy, Chicago Peach, Second Glance; Middle: Empress Josephine, Designer Jeans, Scatterbrain, Ellen Christine; Bottom: Lavender Illusion, Lavender Patina, Brookwood Double Precious, Fan Dancer).

Daylilies are so prolific and varied in colour, they can be forgiven their need for constant deadheading and propensity to browning foliage in late summer, etc. So they’re best paired with other plants, like this duo at the New York Botanical Garden: Hemerocallis ‘Poinsettia’ with balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorum).

The vast daylily collection at Montreal Botanical Garden offers lots of brilliant ideas for partnering, including this bronze-orange ‘Chelsey’ helenium (Helenium autumnale) with lovely Hemerocallis ‘Cherokee Pass’.

One of the best perennials for dry gardens is hybrid blanket flower (Gaillardia x grandiflora). Provided you keep it deadheaded, it will flower from early summer well into autumn, and the bees will thank you. Though most are bicoloured red-yellow or red, I have grown a beautiful orange one: G. x grandiflora ‘Tokajer’. It lasted for three years or so, and I missed it terribly when it didn’t come back one spring, possibly after a winter without sufficient snow cover.

I’ve written before about my favourite orange-flowered perennial, butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), which is simply unparalleled for attracting pollinators (including the monarch butterfly, which uses it as a larval food).

And it’s fun if you want to create a little heat, colour-wise, as I’ve done below, pairing it at my cottage with bright-red ‘Firebird’ echinacea.

Speaking of heat, orange flowers are often the backbone of hot-coloured schemes in the garden, whether paired with reds and golds, as with Echinacea ‘Tangerine Dream’ and ‘Secret Glow’, below….

… or with hot-pinks, below. On the left is butterfly milkweed with the pink ‘Orienpet’ lily ‘Robina’, on the right is the double daylily Hemerocallis ‘Kwanso’, with a bright pink summer phlox.

That’s a good first look at hardy orange bulbs and perennials. Next time, we’ll explore orange-flowered shrubs, annuals and tropicals, and a few design touches to add a little orange punch to your garden.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: spring bulbs

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Orange: Three Fruits & a Fish – Part One

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