Meet the Poppy Family!

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Janet

I’m not sure that all my readers know that my main bit of low-paying work for the past several decades has been ‘stock photography’ of plants, gardens and pollinators. In short, wherever I am – in public or private gardens – I like to photograph plants and label them later with their correct botanical names. Then… maybe… there’s a .00001% chance that some publisher or editor will be looking for JUST what I have and pay me a huge sum to licence it for their book or magazine. (Haha). There aren’t many people in North America doing exactly what I’ve been doing and those who do would tell you that this is not the best way to support yourself in life.

But back to the botanical names. One of my favourite plant families is the Poppy Family, i.e. Papaveraceae. Though most of us know what a “poppy” is with its silky petals, the family is actually very large and diverse with 760 species in 44 genera featuring annuals, perennials, shrubs and small tropical trees. Taxonomists have worked to help us understand how their genealogy fits together, placing the genera into subfamilies, tribes and sub-tribes. DNA sequencing has resulted in many favourites, like bleeding heart, being shuffled from one genus into a new one.

I have been fortunate over the past three decades to photograph many of these plants, including Chinese native noble-flowered birthwort, Corydalis nobilis, below, arching over North American native yellow wood poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum, seen in mid-May in the Shade Garden at Montreal Botanical Garden. I wrote a blog about this fabulous garden.

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FUMARIOIDIAE

Let’s start with the subfamily Fumarioidiae, tribe Fumariae, subtribe Corydalinae. They used to have their own family, Fumariaceae, but they have now been ‘lumped’ by the APG (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group) into Papaveraceae. With their bilaterally symmetrical or zygmomorphic flowers, they don’t look much like poppies, do they? But that’s the thing about DNA. You can have cousins that don’t look anything like you; nevertheless if you go back far enough in the family tree, you share great-great-great-grandparents. To set the mood, below is a little scented nosegay of Corydalis solida, a bulb native to moist, shady woodlands in Europe and Asia. It grows like a bandit beside my garden path and also throughout my ‘lawn’, but it dies down quickly like most spring bulbs.

First up is Adlumia fungosa or Allegheny vine. My friend Marnie Wright, whose Bracebridge, Ontario garden I blogged about years ago, grows this one over a rustic arch.

Capnoides sempervirens or pink corydalis, grows seemingly out of the ancient banded gneiss rock at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto, which is how it got its other common name, rock harlequin.

Corydalis species….. where to start? Let’s go alphabetically with the beautiful Corydalis flexuosa below. I photographed it in the Himalayan garden at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden. In 2020, I wrote a 2-part blog about this fabulous garden in springtime.

Then there is Siberian corydalis or noble-flowered birthwort, Corydalis nobilis. Like many Papaveraceae, it is a spring ephemeral, enjoying moist rich soil in dappled shade, then retreating after its flowers wither.

Corydalis quantmeyerana hails from Sichuan. This cultivar is called ‘Chocolate Stars’ but I couldn’t see much brown colouring in the foliage of the plant, which I photographed at VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver.

In my Toronto side-yard in early spring, the borders beside the path are filled with the bulb Corydalis solida, both the lilac-purple species itself and the pink-flowered cultivar ‘Beth Evans’. They thrive under my tall black walnut (Juglans nigra) – and have also popped up throughout my lawn. I welcome them all for their short stay, before they die down in late spring.

The Dicentra genus (formerly bleeding heart) is now comprised of only North American species. Dicentra canadensis or squirrel corn likes humus-rich soil in shady rock outcrops in deciduous forests of northeast N. America.

I found Dutchman’s breeches, Dicentra cucullaria one April in the native plant woodland at Toronto’s Casa Loma. Both Dutchman’s breeches and squirrel corn are spring ephemerals, dying down soon after blooming.

Dicentra eximia or fringed bleeding heart is native to northeastern N. America from the Appalachian mountains northward. This is the cultivar ‘Luxuriant’.

I photographed the western counterpart, Pacific bleeding heart, Dicentra formosa with sword ferns in the native plants garden at Darts Hill Garden Park outside Vancouver.

Many gardeners still mourn the taxonomic journey of bleeding heart out of the Dicentra genus to the awkwardly-named and monotypic genus Lamprocapnos as L. spectabilis.

I spent many hours at Toronto’s Spadina House gardens, where white bleeding heart, L. spectabilis ‘Alba’, looks lovely in spring with forget-me-nots. (See more of Spadina House at my blog exploring the colour ‘purple’.)

One of the stars of the renowned black-and-gold border at VanDusen Botanical Garden is the chartreuse bleeding heart L. spectabilis ‘Gold Heart’, seen here with Tulipa ‘Queen of Night’.

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Now let’s look at sub-tribe Fumariinae.

Common fumitory or earth smoke, Fumaria officinalis,is considered a weed in many quarters, but it’s rather sweet, especially mixed in with a chartreuse-leaved cranesbill like ‘Ann Folkard’.

Rock fumewort or yellow corydalis used to be… well… a corydalis, C. lutea, but it’s now Pseudofumaria lutea. Native to the European Alps, it is one of those easy-to-grow, graceful plants that looks lovely in light shade. And its name was changed, of course, because of DNA analysis. I learned the word “vicariance” in reading the abstract, meaning “fragmentation of the environment (as by splitting of a tectonic plate) in contrast to dispersal as a factor in promoting biological evolution by division of large populations into isolated subpopulations”.

‘Rock fumewort’, of course, describes the alpine setting to which P. lutea is native, a trait beautifully exploited at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA outside Philadelphia. In June, the gardener here mixes it with scrambling yellow sedums, mountain bluets, various alpine campanulas and the odd perennial geranium. And yes, I wrote a 2-part blog about Chanticleer.

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PAPAVEROIDIAE

There are three tribes in this sub-family, all with radially symmetrical or actinopmorphic flowers. We begin with the Eschscholzieae, and its 3 genera, all from western N. America.

First comes Dendromecon. When I photographed the Channel Island tree poppy near ceanothus at Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria, California (my blog on that lovely garden is here), it was labelled Dendromecon harfordii, below. Three days later at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, I found a taller plant labelled as D. rigida ssp. harfordii. Take your pick.

There are 17 species of Eschscholzia, but California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) are the quintessential floral emblem of the Golden State. One of the great joys of visiting California in spring is seeing them along the road, as in Napa…

…. or with blue ceanothus in an iconic native partnership at the University of California Berkeley Botanic Garden….

…. and with other California natives like western blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. (By the way, I wrote a blog about the meadow at SBBG.)

The final cousin in the Eschscholzieae tribe is the the monotypic genus Hunnemannia, with its sole species, Mexican tulip poppy, Hunnemannia fumariifolia. I found it at Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria, a wonderful nursery and display garden which I featured in a 2014 blog.

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The second tribe in Papaveroidiae is the Chelidoniae.

We begin with that trickster Chelidonium majus, the greater celandine. Why do I say that? Because in eastern N. America, this Eurasian species is often mistaken for our native yellow wood poppy, next. But when it blooms the difference is apparent for Chelidonium has much smaller flowers, as you see below. This is my garden, where it likes to hide in my ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris), that fern proof positive that native species can be every bit as aggressive as exotics.

I took yellow wood poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum, out of alphabetical order to compare it with Chelidonium, above. A denizen of shady, rich, deciduous woodland in northeast North America, it doesn’t have the invasive tendencies of its doppelgänger cousin. I love seeing it in May in the woodland planting at Toronto’s Casa Loma, with Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) and ostrich ferns, below.

Horned poppies (Glaucium spp.) are next in this tribe, perennial plants of the rocky steppe regions of the world. In fact I found the biennial or short-lived perennial red horned poppy Glaucium corniculatum in the Central Asian Steppe Garden at Denver Botanic Garden a few years ago. I wrote a blog about this interesting new garden at DBG.

And the Alpine Garden at Montreal Botanical Garden is where I found an Eastern bumble bee gathering pollen in yellow horned poppy Glaucium flavum. It’s a short-lived perennial or biennial from Europe, N. Africa and elsewhere. I also wrote a blog about this garden, in honour of its former curator René Giguère.

Hylomecon japonica, Japanese woodland poppy, is a rarity. I found it in the Shade Garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden on May 21, 2014.

Macleaya cordata or plume poppy (syn. Bocconia) is a bit of an oddball as the Papavaeraceae go. Native to China, Japan and Taiwan, it is taller at 5-8 ft (1.5-2.4 m) than most of its kin with airy panicles of tiny flowers in mid-late summer. It is recommended for the back of the border but, caveat emptor, it spreads very aggressively via rhizomes.

Our native northeastern bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis, is a favourite early spring wildflower, its shimmering white flower emerging through a protective leaf which unfurls once the flower opens. It is seen below with Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and a skeletonized autumn leaf.

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Skipping over the small Tribe Platystemonae from the Western United States (since I haven’t photographed any), we come to Tribe Papavereae with its more familiar “poppy” flowers with the ring of pollen-rich anthers and prominent ovary. Typical of the reproductive arrangement is Iceland poppy, Papaver nudicaule, below.

Moving alphabetically through Papaverae, we start with Argemone, or prickly poppies. I loved this casual design by Denver Botanic Garden’s plant curator Dan Johnson for his home garden’s ‘hellstrip’ bordering the road in Englewood, Colorado. (I wrote a blog about this colourful plantsman’s garden.) I believe it is native, white-flowered crested prickly poppy, Argemone polyanthemos with California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) for a Papaveraceae double-date.

Way back in 1998 in my Fujichrome slide days, I photographed purple prickly poppy Argemone sanguinea. Not the best image but you get the picture.

If there is a plant genus that deserves the moniker “Holy Grail”, it is Meconopsis, especially the species called “Himalayan Blue Poppy”, Meconopsis baileyi (syn. M. betonicifolia), below. Discovered originally in mountainous Yunnan, China in the 1880s by the French missionary Jean Marie Delavay, it was English botanist and plant collector Frank Kingdon-Ward who brought out seeds and contributed to its great popularity with his 1913 book In the Land of Blue Poppies. Though exceptionally hardy, alas the blue poppy is not for everyone. It has very specific cultivation needs, preferring humus-rich, consistently moist, neutral to slightly acidic soil in a dappled-shade, woodland setting in a region with cool, damp summers. Thus it likes coastal British Columbia, Washington State, Alaska and cooler maritime settings on the East Coast. Plants tend to flower for one or two seasons before dying, but will seed around if conditions are good.

I have photographed blue poppies (usually in the rain) at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden where they grow in the Himalayan Dell beneath towering giant Himalayan lily, Cardiocrinum giganteum. I made this photo May 27, 2013.

They also greet visitors along the main path in the David Lam Asian Garden at UBC Botanical Garden, where I photographed them on May 29, 2013…..

…. and in the lovely Japanese garden at Victoria’s Butchart Gardens when I was there on May 30, 2011.

VanDusen’s collection of Meconopsis species is particularly good. If you go in late May, you might find the lovely pink form of M. baileyi….

…. and the cultivar M. baileyi ‘Hensol Violet’….

The prickly blue poppy, Meconopsis horridula grows at VanDusen in the Himalayan Dell, too. Like many Meconopsis species, it is monocarpic, producing flowers just once before dying.

The satin poppy, Meconopsis napaulensis might be flowering in white or pale pink.

The Himalayan woodland poppy formerly included in Meconopsis has now been moved and is called Cathcartia villosa. I photographed the one below at VanDusen on June 23, 2010 in a particularly cool spring where flowering was late.

Finally, we come to the poppies, the genus Papaver. I’ll begin alphabetically with another species that has been shuffled out of its previous home in Meconopsis, Welsh poppy. Formerly called M. cambrica, it is now Papaver cambricum. This species grows throughout VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, both the yellow form, here with bluebells…

….. and the orange form.

Another recent arrival in the genus is annual wind poppy, Papaver heterophyllum, formerly Stylomecon heterophylla. Native to the coastal mountains from northern California south to Baja California, Mexico, germination of its seed is triggered by wildfires.

The Caucasian scarlet poppy (Papaver commutatum) is an annual native to Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus. The cultivar ‘Ladybird’, below, has particularly vibrant red flowers with prominent black blotches.

Iceland poppy or Papaver nudicaule is a short-lived perennial native to a wide range of boreal regions in Europe and North America. In California, it’s often used for spring bedding; I photographed the plants below at Hearst Castle in San Simeon on March 29, 2014.

For beginning gardeners, Oriental poppy, Papaver orientale, below, is often one of the first perennials to try. Native to Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus, its silken petals and dark stamens add drama to the late spring-early summer garden.

The flattened stigmas of Oriental poppy extend like tentacles across the top of the carpel. This is the black-blotched, white cultivar ‘Royal Wedding’.

Oriental poppies are part of the rich roster of late spring-early summer perennials, such as Siberian iris (I. sibirica), below. Also flowering at that time are peonies, foxgloves, Shasta daisies, yarrow, roses and a host of other possible companions.

Hybridizers have created numerous cultivars of Oriental poppy with white, red, salmon and peach flowers. There is even a double variety called P. orientale var. plena ‘Red Shades’, below.

If you followed my Covid-winter #janetsdailypollinator posts on my Social Media accounts (you can see all 144 on Facebook or Instagram by inserting that hashtag), you might recall me including one of a honey bee dusted with the black pollen of Oriental poppy, below. Though poppies do not produce nectar, many are sources of abundant pollen for bees.

When we participated in an Adventure Canada cruise of the Eastern Arctic, my favourite activity was to scramble around the tundra photographing the plants of Nunavut and Greenland. I found the Arctic poppy, Papaver radicatum, below, at Sylvia Grinnell Park in Iqaluit. I wrote a 10-blog series on that fabulous voyage last year, beginning with Iqaluit.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place.

Canadian army physician Lt.-Col. John McRae’s famous Second World War poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ brings us to European corn poppies, Papaver rhoeas. It was spring in Belgium in 1915 when McRae watched his best friend die in the muddy fields of Ypres, where red poppies with black centres had begun to flower. As the Canada Veterans page says: “The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae’s closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves. Unable to help his friend or any of the others who had died, John McCrae gave them a voice through his poem.”

Corn poppies are used in the gravel garden at Chanticleer near Philadelphia, along with white lace flower (Orlaya grandiflora).

It was the Rev. William Wilkes (1843-1923) in the hamlet of Shirley, south of London, who noticed the first unusual variant in a field of wild red corn poppies, a flower with a white edge. That was the beginning of 20 years of his hybridization work to get the characteristics he wanted with petals ranging from white through palest pink, lilac, cherry pink, apricot, salmon, scarlet, orange and bicolours as well as semi-doubles. They became known as the “Shirley poppies”. This is a montage I made of various strains and colours of P. rhoeas.

I love seeing the little Spanish poppy, Papaver rupifragum var. atlanticum ‘Flore Pleno’ in my travels. Also called Moroccan poppy or double Atlas poppy, there is usually a bee rolling around in the pollen-rich stamens. Despite its Mediterranean origins, it’s quite hardy and easily grown from seed.

Finally we come to the ‘type species’ for Papaver, the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. That common name, of course, refers to the latex derived from certain botanical varieties of opium poppy being grown – either legally by the pharmaceutical industry, or illegally by the illicit drug trade – for naturally-occurring alkaloids such as morphine and codeine, among others. These are the “opiates” whose sedative and painkilling effects can also be highly addictive. “Somniferum”, the Latin epithet for the species means “sleep-inducing”. But most of the 52 botanical varieties of P. somniferum do not produce opiates. Czech blue poppy, though the same species name, is farmed for bread-seed, the little black poppy seeds you find on bagels and cakes. And many varieties were simply bred for ornamental purposes, not for medicinal or illicit drug manufacture. But if you want a history of the Opium Wars, etc., check out the Wiki page.

One beautiful cultivar of P. somniferum is ‘Lauren’s Grape’, below, my photo showing the glaucous, lettuce-like foliage of opium poppy. I photographed this lovely specimen in the Niwot, Colorado garden of Mary and Larry Scripter, which was designed by Lauren herself, Lauren Springer.

‘Cherry Glow’ is another beautiful opium poppy cultivar. I found a little Toxomerus geminatus hoverfly foraging on the pollen-rich stamens.

Sometimes you’ll see seeds offered for “peony-flowered” opium poppies, P. somniferum var. paeoniflorum. The cultivar below is ‘Flemish Antique’ and is quite famous in poppy circles.

And then there is P. somniferum var. laciniatum with its shaggy petals. I photographed the pretty duo below in my son-in-law’s mom’s farm garden in Alberta.

And now, finally, I come to the end of my long, long look at the diverse Poppy Family. With its silky white petals and bright yellow stamens, Romneya coulteri, Coulter’s matilija poppy or California tree poppy, is the tallest poppy family species I’ve photographed, growing up to 8 ft (2.4 m) tall and wide. Though I have seen this species in California, I photographed this one in the public garden in the Queenstown Gardens Park in New Zealand.

Miss Rumphius and the Lupines

Posted on February 6, 2020 by Janet

I have a particular fondness for the award-winning book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney (Viking, 1982). First, it celebrates grandparents. Second, it’s a story about enchanting lupines. Third, it honours the essential gardening impulse to “make the world more beautiful”. If you’d like a little 4-minute bedtime story, have a listen to me reading it to my granddaughter Emma.

Who doesn’t love lupines? Or lupins, if you like. I’ve always added the “e” to mine, given that’s how the North American clan are usually spelled. The British tend to refer to them as lupins. In fact, most of the colourful garden lupines are the offspring of those developed from 1911-1942 by the British horticulturist George Russell (1857-1951). . He planted many lupine species together in his two allotments, including the blue-purple North American species Lupinus polyphyllus – which had been brought back to Britain from the Pacific Northwest by explorer David Douglas in the 1820s – along with yellow bush lupine (L. arboreus), sulphur lupine (L. sulphureus) and others. As for the crosses, he always claimed he let the bees do the breeding work for him, but he selected the best colour combinations, gave them names and saved the seed to sell. There’s a good story on George Russell and his lupine breeding here. In Toronto, I get my June fix of multi-colored Russell Hybrids at the spectacular four-square potager garden behind the Spadina House Museum where they grow with lots of old-fashioned flowers.

In June in Toronto, Spadina’s garden is my favourite place to photograph.

The gardeners there keep the lupines coming back every year, with colours ranging from the deepest purple…..

….. to bubblegum-pink, with many bicolors that feature white, yellow and crimson markings.

They’re arrayed around Spadina’s gardens and bloom near the grape vines with sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis)….

…. and the beautiful bearded irises….

…. and blowsy peonies…..

…. and old-fashioned ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi)…..

…. and yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata).

As the lupine season is winding down, the catmints (Nepeta sp.) make pretty partners.

Bumble bees have the long, strong proboscises necessary to probe through the lower keel to get at the pollen. I’ve done a lot of my bumble bee photography at Spadina House.

The Russell Hybrids have given rise to many of the modern lupines, like the Gallery Series in red….

….. and white.

I’ve been photographing lupines for a long time. The photo workshop I took with Freeman Patterson at his New Brunswick Nature Conservancy property Shamper’s Bluff back in the 90s featured….

…. lots of lupines in his beautiful meadows. Someone caught me intent on capturing dewdrops.

At Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden, native bigleaf lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus subsp. polyphyllus) is planted under silk tassel bush (Garrya elliptica ‘James Roof’).

Lupinus polyphyllus subsp. polyphyllus is the locally indigenous sub-species of bigleaf lupine.

When I was travelling in Sisimiut, Greenland, I came upon this lovely stand of Nootka lupine, Lupinus nootkatensis.

One floriferous California spring (2004), I found this stunning hillside of dwarf lupine (Lupinus nanus) in the Los Padres National Forest.

Ten years later, I photographed arroyo lupine (Lupinus succulentus) in a magnificent meadow at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, along with yellow tidytips (Layia platyglossa) and goldfields (Lasthenia californica).

I came across an amazing meadow containing lupines and hawkweed in Vermont one June, and used it as the dreamy background to some abstract images…..

….. featuring close-ups of lupines. They hang in my kitchen at home.

But back to my own little patch of ground: my meadow at Lake Muskoka. I have to say it wasn’t easy to establish lupines, but after figuring out what they needed to germinate, and where they wanted to grow their first set of leaves, and how to care for them that first season, I enjoyed their beautiful spires each June.

They loved my acidic soil – they do much better in a low pH soil, despite what some cultivation guides say – and…….

…… the overwintering bumble bee queens always found the pollen to furnish their nests.

They emerged with an early cast of characters including blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) and ubiquitous oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), below.

You can see some of wild lupine’s meadow companions in this bouquet I made featuring oxeye daisy, blue false indigo, large-flowered penstemon (P. grandiflorus), blue flag iris (Iris versicolor) and buttercups.

Many years, my lupines sported impressive coats of aphids. If I had the energy I’d try to spray the stems with soapy water, but there were lots of stems…..

And in time, I had my own supply of lupine seeds. But the white and red pines I planted in the meadows have now grown so tall that they shade out the wildflowers and grasses. That was the general idea: to have “in-between meadows” as our hillside healed itself after our construction there. I do miss them in their abundance, but enjoy the few that flower still.

There’s another reason I love Miss Rumphius. It was the subject of the very last weekly gardening column I wrote in 2006 for a certain national newspaper before they cancelled my column “to focus more on real estate”. In truth, they were bleeding money and I was just one more freelance budget item to cut. (At least I hope that was the case!)

Miss Rumphius (Viking, 1982) – written and illustrated by Barbara Cooney.

In any event, the column I wrote detailed how I managed to germinate and grow seed of Lupinus perennis at my cottage, seen in the photos above, and I offer it here in case you want to make the world more beautiful.

ADVENTURES OF A LUPINE LADY (May 2006)

There’s a much-loved children’s book called Miss Rumphius (Puffin,1985).  Written and illustrated by the late Barbara Cooney and first published by Viking in 1982, it won the American Book Award for its renowned Maine author.

Miss Rumphius tells the story of a little girl named Alice who sits on her grandfather’s knee and tells him she wants to be just like him: to travel to far-away places and live in a house by the sea.  Her grandfather says that isn’t enough:  “You must do something to make the world more beautiful”.

Alice grows up to become Miss Rumphius, the librarian.  She travels far and wide, climbs mountains, rides camels and buys a little house by the sea.  But she’s worried because she hasn’t yet made the world a more beautiful place.  Then one spring she spots “a large patch of blue and purple and rose-colored lupines” in flower on a hillside near her home where they’ve spread from plants in her own garden.  Miss Rumphius becomes the Lupine Lady, spreading lupine seeds wherever she goes and, yes, making the world more beautiful.

Like Miss Rumphius, I adore lupines with their bewitching blue and purple flower spires in late spring.  At my cottage,  I’m working on creating my own wild lupine meadow too.  But at the rate my plants are growing, I’ll be an old woman with a cane by the time I’m ready to beautify the rest of the world.  For lupines have very particular needs, both in their germination and ongoing growth.

Growing Wild Lupines

Perennial wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) or sundial lupine is native to eastern Canada and the eastern U.S. where large lupine meadows are a familiar sight in late spring-early summer in the Maritimes and New England.  One of more than 300 lupine species worldwide, it’s the only known host food plant for the endangered Karner Blue butterfly.  Preferring full sun and well-drained, sandy soil with a low pH (acidic), wild lupine grows naturally in sand prairies, open oak woodlands and grassy areas with granite-based soils.  It will not tolerate clay soil, making it a challenge to grow in most gardens.

Nursery-grown lupines often fail because their long tap roots make potted plants notoriously difficult to transplant, so it’s preferable to grow your plants from seed.  If I do the math on my own seed-to-plant success, I estimate it’s about a 10:1 ratio, so a large supply of seeds is needed . Note: L. perennis is a widespread species and available from a large number of seed companies, including Wildflower Farm and Prairie Moon Nursery. (Postscript: But do make sure it’s the right species – my seed turned out to be the west coast species L. polyphyllus or a hybrid of L. perennis and L. polyphyllus. Lovely but not the same thing.)

This spring, I sowed a handful of lupine seeds at my lakeside cottage, observing a ritual I’ve perfected over the past five years.  First, I soak the large seeds overnight in water to soften them.  Then I get down on my hands and knees and carefully press each seed just under the soil surface in what I call my “lupine mud”.  It’s actually a patch of rich, damp, sandy soil behind the house that never dries out because it’s in part shade at the bottom of a hill, thus retaining the moisture that wild lupine seeds need to germinate.  I’ve tried at various times of the year to germinate lupine seeds in situ, but their critical need for moisture immediately after germination has led me to separate my seed bed from the actual growing locations.

A month or so later, when the little plants have several leaves and a small root system, I’ll carefully scoop them up with a large spoon and transplant them into my dry, sunny hillside meadows where I water them regularly the first summer as they put down their tap roots.  Those that survive the first winter seem indestructible and completely drought-tolerant thereafter.  They may not bloom for two, three or four years, but they’re on their way, ever so slowly, to becoming a meadow.

We can’t all be like Miss Rumphius, travelling to far-off places and living in a house by the sea.  But we can, in our own small way, make the world a more beautiful place.

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It’s impossible to find a song about lupines, and not easy to find a song about gardens and children either, I discovered, but I did remember this one written by Dave Mallett in 1975. Personally, I would not use the word “prayer” and instead substitute the word “compost” – but I suppose a lot of people would not object to being prayerful about their garden. So here it is with John Denver and some singing flowers from Sesame Street.

THE GARDEN SONG (Dave Mallett composer, 1975)

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
And inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
Till the rain comes tumbling down

Pulling weeds and picking stones
Man is made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature’s chain
And tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land

And inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
And inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
Till the rain comes tumbling down

And plant your rows straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care
Old crow watching hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree
In my garden I’m as free
As that feathered thief up there

******

This is the eleventh 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:

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
Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens

Please feel free to leave a comment below. I love to read them.

Brown Eyed Girl(s)

Posted on January 30, 2020 by Janet

Let’s stick with Sir Van Morrison in this, the ninth blog of #mysongscapes. The year before he recorded ‘Astral Weeks’ with ‘Madame George’, my favourite song and the subject of my last blog, he had a smash hit with the pop-infused ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ of 1967. As usual with Van, however, the song’s meaning was confusing. He originally wrote it, he has said, with a calypso flavour as ‘Brown Skinned Girl’… “kind of a Jamican song”.. but changed the words to make it more radio-friendly. The lyrics were racy for the time (even though 1967 was the hippie-flavoured summer of love). “Making love in the green grass/behind the stadium with you/My brown-eyed girl” didn’t make it past the censors for a lot of radio stations, who substituted different chorus lyrics when they played it. But it’s still the song that gets entire tables of women of all ages up dancing when it’s played by the deejay at that wedding reception. Because who doesn’t want to be Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl”?

BROWN EYED GIRL

Hey, where did we go?
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow
Playin’ a new game
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin’ and you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl

Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow?
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing
Hiding behind a rainbow’s wall
Slipping and sliding
All along the waterfall, with you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl

Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da
Just like that
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da, la te da

So hard to find my way
Now that I’m all on my own
I saw you just the other day
My, how you have grown
Cast my memory back there, Lord
Sometimes I’m overcome thinking ’bout
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl

Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da, la te da
(Bit by bit, by bit, by bit, by bit, by bit)
(Sha la la la la la la, la te da, la te da
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da, la te da
(La te da, da da da da da da da da)

*********
My Brown-Eyed Girls

Okay… you knew where this was going, didn’t you? Yes, I do love my rudbeckias, whether they’re called black-eyed susans or blackeyed Susans or brown-eyed suzies or coneflowers.. whatever. In fact, at our cottage they were once the only flower I grew. Seriously. In 2002, when we were trying to keep the freshly delivered soil from sliding down the hillside at our newly-built cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, I mixed a few ounces of the tiny seeds of the native Rudbeckia hirta or wild black-eyed susan, into a sack of red fescue (Festuca rubra) seed and raked it in. Because this species is biennial, that first summer the little rosettes of foliage formed. But the following year, they flowered in golden profusion and my hillside looked magical.

Every time I walked down my stairs, it was into a sea of black-eyed susans.

I spent a lot of time crouched down photographing them.

That summer of 2003 was so magical (and I knew it was once-in-a-lifetime) so I did some impressionist stuff like this….

…. and this….

…. and this butterfly. And the following year I had a photography show to celebrate my “black-eyed susan summer”.

I asked my 92-year-old mother-in-law (then still living down the lake shore from us) to hold a little bunch of them in her hands. Ten years later, it became the final image in the slide show at her funeral service.

The black-eyed susans attracted lots of pollinators to the true flowers, the little yellow specks you can hardly see arrayed around the brown eye or cone.

Rudbeckia hirta’s botanical name means “hairy”, and you can see the hairs on the sepals and involucre, below. They also line the stem and leaves.

With so many thousands of black-eyed susans in my meadows, it was fascinating to explore them carefully. Doing so allowed me to see that nature often makes mistakes, like this mutant double flower.

And I was fascinated with the difference in size and vigor between plants grown from seed I had sown in rich, moist soil and those I’d sprinkled in dusty, dry soil near the roots of white pine trees. This phenomenon is not part of the evolutionary journey of the species, but is the result of “phenotypic plasticity”, i.e. the ability of a species to adapt to conditions without any mutational change in its genetic makeup.

As the years passed, the black-eyed susans became just part of the cast of characters in my cottage flora. They looked lovely with butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and pink musk mallow (Malva moschata) …..

….. and hoary vervain (Verbena stricta)……

….. and peeking around the big, fragrant blossoms of the Orienpet lily Lilium ‘Conca d’Or’.

Rudbeckias are part of the massive Asteraceae family of composite species evolved to offer compound inflorescences composed of colourful, insect-attracting ray petals and masses of tiny “true” flowers. In my meadows I grow several of these yellow composite “daisy” flowers, including Rudbeckia hirta and Rudbeckia subtomentosa as well as Heliopsis, Silphium and Ratibida species. Not shown in the tapestry below are Coreopsis and Anthemis, also in my meadows.

For late summer, I love sweet blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa). This species gets its name from the subtle fragrance of the flowers that appear in clusters atop tall stems. Its newly-emerging central cone is truly brown, unlike the very dark cone of Rudbeckia hirta. Later it turns black.

In my meadows, it flowers at the same time as New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis), below and also Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum).

Throughout summer I gather blackeyed susans for bouquets. One year, I photographed a vase in my meadow filled with what was in bloom there in mid-July. Apart from Rudbeckia hirta, there’s pink Monarda fistulosa, lilac Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Fascination’, orange Asclepias tuberosa and yellow Heliopsis helianthoides and Coreopsis lanceolata.

One rainy August day, I lined up some vintage apothecary bottles filled with what I found in bloom or fruit. Black-eyed susans were just a small part of that lovely abundance.

By September, the meadow has fewer species in flower but in the tiny bouquets below, sweet black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia subtomentosa) looked lovely with long-flowering Heliopsis helianthoides, ‘Gold Plate’ yarrow (Achillea filipendulina), goldenrod (Solidago rugosa) and the native asters, including lavender Symphyotrichum azureum, purple New England aster (Symphyotrichum nova-angliae) and white lance-leaved aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum).

Another year, I combined Canada goldenrod with New York ironweed and sweet black-eyed susans for a September bouquet.
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In my front yard pollinator garden in Toronto, I use the ubiquitous, award-winning perennial black-eyed susan Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’. It likes to seize ground so I occasionally pull it out when it wants to invade its less aggressive neighbours…..

…. but I like the rich gold as an easy, long-flowering filler plant with the pinks, blues and purples of echinacea, perovskia, liatris and sedum.

Here it is with late-blooming rough blazing star (Liatris aspera).

‘Goldsturm’ black-eyed susan is a mainstay in my friend Marnie Wright’s beautiful Bracebridge, Ontario garden, along with summer phlox and hydrangeas. (Have a look at this blog I wrote about Marnie’s garden.)

When I travel, I take note of different black-eyed susans used effectively in designs. This is sweet black-eyed susan (R. subtomentosa) in an exuberant display on New York’s High Line.

At the wonderful Legacy Prairie at Niagara Parks Botanical Garden, Rudbeckia hirta is used throughout. Here we see it mixed with wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa)…..

…. and here with a cloud of white mountain mint (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium) and orange butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa).

Here it is with purple dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) at the front, tall vervain (Verbena hastata) in the middle and gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) at right.

Native grasses can be good partners for black-eyed susans. At the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG), I photographed Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’ with little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).

But the TBG has lots of gardens and here we see Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum ‘Gateway’) partnering with ‘Goldsturm’.

Another summer, I photographed ‘Goldsturm’ with tall, pale-yellow Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ behind it and smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria ‘Purpurea’) beside it. The spike seedheads are from ligularia.

Another late-summer perennial at the TBG is great blue lobelia (L. siphilitica), which looks beautiful with R. ‘Goldsturm’.

The TBG also uses a quill-petalled cultivar of Rudbeckia subtomentosa called ‘Henry Eilers’, combining it nicely with rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium).

I adored this lighter-than-air combination of R subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’ matched up perfectly with the dark bottlebrush flowers of Japanese burnet (Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Purpurea’).

But the best design I saw using ‘Henry Eilers’ was at Terra Nova Nurseries in Oregon, where it was combined with the snakeroot Actaea simplex ‘Black Negligee’, its dark foliage accenting those dark cones perfectly.

Breeders continue to work with black-eyed susans, especially at Chicago Botanic Gardens where numerous taxa are assessed in the Bernice E. Lavin Plant Evaluation Garden, below.

There are other species of Rudbeckia native to North America that are often seen in gardens. This is brown-eyed susan (Rudbeckia triloba), below, a short-lived perennial which is often described as weedy or invasive, but its small flowers can be a good addition to a rich, moist meadow.

Rudbeckia nitida or shiny coneflower is tall with reflexed yellow petals, prominent greenish cones. The cultivar ‘Herbstsonne’ is the one most often available (though some experts believe this cultivar is actually a hybrid between R. nitida and R. laciniata).

Rudbeckia laciniata or cutleaf coneflower is usually seen in its old-fashioned double forms, ‘Hortensia’, below, or ‘Goldquelle’.

Among the showiest black-eyed susans are the gloriosa daisies, which are tetraploid versions of Rudbeckia hirta. That means they have twice the normal chromosomes, a condition created by treating them with colchicine (from autumn crocuses) or radiation. Tetraploidy results in larger flowers than normal, and the condition persists in seedlings so gloriosa daisies come true from seed. Like regular R. hirta, gloriosa daisies are usually biennial, but may flower the same year if seeds are sown indoors in winter. Gloriosa daisies exhibit myriad colours or streaks of colour. Or they might have doubled petals.

At the Montreal Botanical Garden (MBG) one summer, I photographed a delightful meadow of gloriosa daisies – a wonderful variety of cultivars mixed with blue cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) and orange cosmos (C. sulphureus).

Along the central strip in MBG’s magnificent perennial garden, they had planted rainbow chard with the dwarf gloriosa daisy ‘Toto’ and a curly carex edging.

At the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario, I liked seeing native bottlebrush grass (Elymus hystrix) interplanted with gloriosa daisies.

I’ll finish my Van Morrison-inspired musings with a few gloriosa beauties. This is ‘Autumn Colors’ (which is a very variable cultivar)…..

…. and ‘Denver Daisy’….

…. and ‘Cherry Brandy’…..

….. and ‘Irish Eyes’ with its lovely green cone.

Speaking of Irish eyes, mine happen to be green. The genetics of eye colour is incredibly complex, but depends on alleles in your parents’ genome and the concentration of melanin in the iris.

I am the only one in my family of six to have green eyes – my parents both had blue eyes, and my children all have blue or greyish-blue eyes. If I wanted to be Van Morrison’s brown-eyed girl – laughing and a running hey hey/skipping and a jumping – I’d have to buy tinted contact lenses, something that makeup artists frequently use in film. I didn’t want to go that far, but I do have Photoshop. What do you think?

*********

This is the ninth 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

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

Sage… Co-Starring Parsley, Rosemary and Thyme

Posted on January 12, 2020 by Janet

Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Who doesn’t know the next line of the lyrics? Who doesn’t begin to hum that familiar, iconic melody, perhaps recalling where they were in October 1966 when they first heard it sung by two fresh-faced New Yorkers named Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel? One of the joys of reaching my age is that the folk songs of the 1960s still seem fresh and somehow relevant. Especially the ones where traditional herbs play a starring role! And no song elevated herbs like the title song of the third Simon and Garfunkel album, which also included Homeward Bound.

But ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme‘ debuted with some controversy since the duo listed themselves as songwriters in adapting this traditional 17^th – 19^th century English folk song (with its many versions) – which would be fine if it was their own arrangement. But it turned out that Paul Simon had first heard English folksinger Martin Carthy (who had first heard it from Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger) sing his own version when he was in England and copyrighted a similar arrangement without crediting Carthy, causing a rift that lasted until 2000 when they sang it on stage together. “Worse”, according to one music critic, “it credited Paul and Artie as if the centuries-old tune had emerged entirely from their imaginations.” (Wiki) On the Simon and Garfunkel website, it says, “the duo used vocal overdubs and instrumentation to weave together a traditional song and anti-war protest to stunning effect.” Although not as overtly political as some of the songs I cited in my recent blog Vietnam – Songs of Protest, the song in its long-verse form does sound like the lament of a far-away lover, perhaps a soldier, asking impossible tasks of his sweetheart at home.

SCARBOROUGH FAIR/CANTICLE* traditional, adapted by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, after Martin Carthy (1966)

Are you going to Scarborough Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without no seam nor needlework
Then she’ll be a true love of mine

Tell her to find me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
Then she’ll be a true love of mine

Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
And to gather it all in a bunch of heather
Then she’ll be a true love of mine

Are you going to Scarborough Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

*The lyrics above do not include the “Canticle” verses, which are part of the official lyrics listed in their database, but they were the lines sung by the duo 15 years later in front of a half-million adoring fans at the September 1981 benefit concert in Central Park (below) to raise funds for the redevelopment and maintenance of the park. By then, Simon and Garfunkel had broken up and reunited a number of times; even their rehearsals for the concert were fraught with tension. Though they were elementary school classmates who had sung together since high school, initially as the duo Tom and Jerry, lyricist and composer Paul Simon was continually frustrated by the wandering attentions of his partner Artie of the sweet choirboy voice, who had ambitions to be an actor and solo performer. The concert represented a short-lived reunion for Simon and Garfunkel and produced a double platinum live album.

********

The Sages, a Photographic Collection

The Scarborough Fair was a popular medieval market fair held in the town in Yorkshire from mid-August throughout September. Though it went on until the 1700s, it was at its height of popularity in the late 1300s. The use of the herbs in the song lyrics recalls their traditional symbolic meanings: parsley for comfort, sage for strength, rosemary for love and thyme for courage. Salvia comes from the Latin word salvus meaning “healthy”. It refers to the European herb Salvia officinalis, an evergreen (where hardy) sub-shrub native to Mediterranean parts of Europe and the Middle East. Its use as a medicinal and culinary herb is recorded in ancient works by Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen. It is a lovely plant for modern herb gardens, and is a favourite of bees too. (And, of course, one of its principal uses is in our stuffing recipes for turkey.)

Salvia officinalis has a number of fancy-leafed forms, including beautiful ‘Icterina’ (often labelled ‘Aurea Variegata’). I loved seeing it a few years ago (far right) in this exquisite design by Paul Zammit at the Toronto Botanical Garden, along with parsley and calabrichoa, heuchera, hakonechloa, pelaragonium and carex.

Another ancient sage (from the French word sauge for the herb) is Greek sage Salvia fruticosa. I photographed the handful of leaves in the Peloponnese in November, during my botanical tour of Greece with Liberto Dario (Eleftherios Dariotis). There it is used, along with sideritis, for making traditional Greek tea.

Another sage is used for an entirely different ‘medicinal’ purpose. When I was at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew some years ago, they had an exhibit devoted to hallucinogenic plants, including ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi). One of the plants was Salvia divinorum, otherwise known by a number of descriptive common names…..

…. including sage of the diviners, ska maría pastora, seer’s sage, yerba de la pastora.

Silver sage (Salvia argentea) comes from southern Europe and northern Africa. A biennial, it is better known for its spectacular, silvery leaves that form as a rosette the first year…..

…. than for its white flowers the following year.

Over the past few decades, I’ve photographed salvia species, hybrids and cultivars around the world – admittedly just a drop in the bucket of some 900 species worldwide. And I’ve grown lots of them in my own gardens, both in the city where the meadow sage Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ (‘May Night’) with its deep-blue spikes graces my pollinator island, attracting lots of bees…….

…. and in the containers on my sundeck at our cottage overlooking Lake Muskoka. There salvias and agastaches are my principal container plants intended to lure ruby-throated hummingbirds each summer. I don’t have a nectar feeder for these graceful little birds, preferring to give them organic sweeteners. (That’s sacred basil on the far right, Ocimum tenuiflorum – a superb bee plant).

The very best lures are the big sages in my hand…..

….. especially the champion – Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’ (also ‘Black and Blue’ in previous summers).

This lusty big Argentine sage is simply the best for bringing in hummingbirds.

Last year for the first time I tried Salvia ‘Amistad’ bred by Argentina’s Rolando Uría, and it was popular with the hummingbirds too.

Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ was a distant third, but still attracted its share of hummers

Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’ is so colourful and a hummingbird favourite.

I did an experimental planting of Salvia ‘Big Swing’ (Salvia macrophylla x S. sagittata) last season. Although the hummingbirds visited it now and again, its strange flowering habit (at least in a container) worked against it.

Annual ‘Mystic Spires’ salvia attracted hummingbirds, too, but not if ‘Black and Blooms’ was in flower.

In my naturalistic borders at the cottage, Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ consorts with a number of self-sown wildflowers (which we now call exotic invasives…..) including musk mallow (Malva moschata).

If you visit the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew outside London in autumn, be sure to find the stunning salvia border there. This was October 25, 2014.

It was at Kew that I first saw Salvia confertiflora from Brazil…..

….. and luscious, deep-red scarlet sage, Salvia splendens ‘Van Houtte’…..

….. and pretty hybrids like ‘Phyllis Fancy’ below, discovered at the University of California Santa Cruz Arboretum and named for Phyllis Norris.

Chanticleer Garden outside Philadelphia in Wayne, PA is my favourite public garden in the United States. I wrote a 2-part blog after my June 2014 visit. Its many gardens change each year in the most creative way, but I think my favourite scene was this confection featuring the deep-indigo spikes of Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ (from Zillmer Nursery in Germany), acting as dark vertical brushstrokes in a riot of cottage garden colour.

The Toronto Botanical Garden features its share of sages. Meadow sage, of course, is a prime player in the various June planting schemes. This is white Salvia nemorosa ‘Snow Hill’ (‘Schneehugel’, an Ernst Pagels introduction) with alliums, catmint, lady’s mantle and peonies.

Catmint, of course, is a beautiful partner for meadow sages, like Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’, here with Salvia x sylvestris ‘Blauhugel’ (‘Blue Hill’), another Ernst Pagels introduction, and a splash of lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis).

In the Piet Oudolf-designed Entry Border at the TBG (I wrote a comprehensive 2-part blog on his design for this border), he incorporated his own introduction, Salvia nemorosa ‘Amethyst’, placing it near a wine-red sanguisorba.

His pretty purple-and-white hybrid sage Salvia ‘Madeline’ is also featured in the border.

And at the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario not far from Toronto, I loved this combination of Piet’s introduction Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’ with creamy-yellow Achillea ‘Anthea’.

When I visited Chicago Botanic Garden in 2018, I was impressed with this mass planting of sky-blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa)…..

….. enlivened by orange dashes of Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Fiesta del Sol’). I wrote an extensive blog about my visit later.

Years earlier, I had been wowed by a themed garden at Chicago Botanic that featured bright-blue gentian sage, Salvia patens, with lots of gloriosa daisies (Rudbeckia hirta).

Speaking of gentian sage, this was one of the happiest combinations ever – a street planting at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden featuring Salvia patens ‘Cambridge Blue’ with Zinnia angustifolia ‘Profusion Orange’, purple Verbena rigida and fuzzy white bunny tail grass (Lagurus ovatus). Isn’t it lovely?

At Lady Bird Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas a few years ago, I was impressed by the meadow plantings of native mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea), a species that has become a popular bedding and container annual in colder regions.

There I was intrigued to see it looking so beautiful with native Texas yellowstar (Lindheimera texana), left, and was reminded of how effective it is with any yellow flowers, like the gloriosa daisies (Rudbeckia hirta) at right.

It’s such an easy sage to use: here it is with a rollicking sea of orange and yellow celosias at the Ottawa Experimental Farm one summer.

And this trio at the Montreal Botanical Garden was impressive: Salvia farinacea ‘Fairy Queen’ and ‘Evolution’ with a massed planting of chartreuse sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas ‘Illusion Emerald Lace’).

This formal knot garden at the New York Botanical Garden was enlivened by a mix of annual sage (Salvia viridis) in pink and purple popping up in the middle of the knots.

In spring, New York’s High Line features early-flowering Salvia ‘Pink Delight’ and ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (both Piet Oudolf hybrid sages) mixed with amsonias. I blogged about that May 2012 visit too.

Last summer, I photographed and blogged about the Denver garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke. In June, their front yard is a sea of blue sage, including Salvia nemorosa and Salvia pratensis.

Even their long hellstrip (that’s Denverese for ‘boulevard’) is an azure avenue of sages, perennial geraniums and onosmas.

On my recent botanical tour of Greece with the North American Rock Garden Society and Liberto Dario (Eleftherios Dariotis), we visited our guide’s “salvia garden” in Paiania outside Athens. Let’s just say there are a few sages growing there, including many whose seeds he offers to customers worldwide.

What else? So many….. When I was in Tucson, Arizona seven years ago, I drove over the mountain pass to the fabulous Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. In its wonderful garden, honey bees were busy gathering nectar from native Salvia apiana. Guess what its Latin name means? Yes, “bee sage”.

At Idaho Botanic Garden a few Septembers ago, native rose sage Salvia pachyphylla was in flower. And of course, I blogged about that lovely visit as well.

At Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, the appropriately named California hummingbird sage (Salvia spathacea) was, naturally, attracting California hummingbirds! This is the sweet little Anna’s hummingbird.

While at Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, I also saw Santa Rosa Island sage (Salvia brandeegii)…..

….. lovely, silvery Salvia leucophylla ‘Amethyst Bluff’, a selection of purple sage by Carol Bornstein.

During my visit to Chile and Argentina last winter on a wine tour, many of the gardens featured Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha). What a great shrub that is for warmer regions!

I can’t remember where I photographed Salvia dorrii.

Salvia mexicana ‘Limelight’ has brilliant chartreuse bracts that are as much a colour feature as the blue flowers.

Biennial clary sage (Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica) is a cottage garden mainstay.

Even my local park’s Victorian ribbon planting took on a festive air when scarlet sage (Salvia splendens) was paired with chartreuse Canna ‘Pretoria’.

All the sages are wonderful pollinator plants and since insects on flowers are a specialty of mine, I always enjoy finding bees on salvias, like this big carpenter bee nectar-robbing from the corolla of Salvia ‘Silke’s Dream’ at Wave Hill in the Bronx (yes, a blog there, too)….

….. or this bumble bee foraging on annual Salvia coccinea ‘Coral Nymph’ on my own cottage deck.

Hmm. I think that’s enough sage wisdom for one blog, don’t you? Except…. what about poor rosemary? It’s having a little identity crisis at the moment because it was known as Rosmarinus officinalis ever since Linnaeus assigned names back in 1753, but then came 2017 and one of those gene-sequencing revelations that turned taxonomy on its head.

Alas, it seems that rosemary is just a needle-leafed sage, now called Salvia rosmarinus. But sssshhh… don’t tell Simon and Garfunkel.

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If you liked this musical blog, the 5^th in #mysongscapes for 2020, be sure to read my blogs on Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’, Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography, Vietnam Songs of Protest and my sentimental take on ‘Galway Bay’.

Evoking the Prairie at Chicago’s Lurie Garden

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Janet

It was with great joy that I stepped into Chicago’s Lurie Garden last August. It didn’t matter that my companions numbered in the hundreds (garden communicators from all over North America at the annual Gardencomm symposium) – as long as they didn’t get in my shot! And it was the perfect time to visit, with the Lurie evoking in a romantic, chaotic way the wildflower-spangled prairie that once stretched across sixty one percent of Illinois (21.6 million acres), before the arrival in the 1830s of homesteaders and the John Deere tractor that broke up the tallgrass sod to plant beans and barley. No, the Lurie Garden is not a prairie recreation, and it’s certainly not ‘country’, given that it occupies five leafy acres of 24.5-acre Millennium Park in the heart of downtown, framed by some of the tallest skyscrapers in North America.

But when you see the artful tumble of some of the tallgrass prairie’s iconic natives, such as spiky rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium)….

…. and towering yellow compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), its common name alluding to the belief of pioneers that its leaves always pointed north and south,…..

…… mixed with other perennials and lush ornamental grasses in the Meadow section of the garden nearest Monroe Street, it certainly feels like walking into an August prairie in the middle of the city.

It was spring 1914 when poet Carl Sandburg wrote his ode to Chicago.
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders

And it was the last line of that first verse and the nickname it lent Chicago – City of Big Shoulders – that landscape architects Gustafson Guthrie Nichol lit on in the late 1990s when they conceptualized the space that would become the Lurie Garden. Those “big shoulders” became the 15-foot high shoulder hedge, an L-shaped living wall separating the garden from the busy footpath to the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Music Pavilion (see the steel roof angles) and Great Lawn in the space beyond.

Comprised of five cultivars of arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) and hedge-friendly hornbeam (Carpinus betulus ‘Fastigiata’) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica), the shoulder hedge also echoes those other big shoulders of the towering skyscrapers behind Millennium Park. By the way, that’s a cultivar of white-flowered prairie native Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) in the foreground with a purple cloud of sea lavender (Limonium latifolium) nearby.

For Dutch superstar designer Piet Oudolf, the Lurie plant design was his first commission in the U.S. and his first big public garden, though later he would design the plantings for the High Line in New York (which I blogged about in June 2014), our own entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden (which I blogged about in March 2017 including the intricate design nuts-and-bolts) and the Delaware Botanic Gardens at Pepper Creek (opening this September), among others. When he became the perennial plant designer of the winning Lurie design team under Seattle-based landscape architects Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd. (GGN) at the turn of the millennium and had his plant list prepared, he travelled to Chicago to meet with nurseryman Roy Diblik, owner of Northwind Perennial Farm in nearby Burlington, Wisconsin. Roy had already read Gardening with Grasses, the book Piet co-authored with Michael King in 1998, one of many design books he has written; it astonished him. As he said in a 2016 interview on The Native Plant Podcast, “It was the first book I’ve ever seen about grasses intermingled with other plants. This book showed communities, how to interplant, playfulness. It was wonderful.”

Roy Diblik, below left, recalls their first meeting in the biographical Oudolf Hummelo – A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life (2015 ) by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury: “I remember how he rolled out a copy of a plan for the Lurie Garden on a workbench. I could see immediately that there had never been anything like this before in the Midwest. We went through the plants, what would work, and not work. He got me involved in producing the plants – 28,000 plants, with no substitutes. We subcontracted the growing of the easier plants and I did the more difficult ones myself.” For his part, Piet had never seen a prairie before and Roy loved the prairie and its plants deeply, so he took his Dutch visitor to visit the Schulenberg Prairie at the Morton Arboretum, a very moving experience for Piet. So it was natural that they became more than design collaborators; they became close friends. The professional collaboration continues today, since every two years the Lurie invites them and the landscape architects to visit the garden, inspect the plants and assess how they’re performing……

Roy Diblik, left, and Piet Oudolf, right. Photo courtesy of Laura Ekasetya

…… in a consultation that includes Director/Head Horticulturist Laura Ekasetya, below, part of the formidable all-woman team at the Lurie.

To place the Lurie in context, you can see below in this amazing July image by Devon Loerop Media the Seam, the Light Plate and Dark Plate and beyond the garden, people sitting on the Great Lawn enjoying a performance at the Pritzker Pavilion under the airy overhead trellis containing the sound system.

Devon Loerop Media courtesy of Lurie Garden

Looking the other way in another image by Devon Loerop Media, you see Renzo Piano’s beautiful Modern Wing of the Chicago Art Institute, whose windows look directly onto the undulating garden, its sloping, prairie-like meadow and gardens and trees like some ever-changing work of modern art.

Devon Loerop Media courtesy of Lurie Garden

On a hot day last August, just beyond the bee-buzzy cloud of white calamint (Calamintha nepeta), there were young visitors cooling their feet in the water course, just out of view, that bisects the Lurie as part of the “Seam”, GGN’s evocative separation of the garden into the Light and Dark Plates. The Light Plate, left, is the sunny prairie-like side; the Dark Plate features a more garden-inspired design with many plants growing in dappled shade under black locust trees (Robinia pseudoacacia). In between on the Dark Plate side is an area called the Transition Zone, with tall plants.

The water course is part of stepped pools underlying the broad ipe wood walkway that carries visitors through the garden. But what exactly did the landscape architects intend to evoke with the Seam? Most of the waders would not understand that this is a sophisticated means of connecting the Lurie with the underlying landscape.

Not the immense parking garage immediately below – since Millennium Park is a massive green roof, the largest in the world. Not the ghost of the old Illinois Central Railway tracks below. Rather, it evokes the swampy marshland in the delta of the Chicago River that once led into Lake Michigan just a few blocks away, atop which young Chicago grew in the early 19^th century. By 1900, the river would be reversed to flow ultimately into the Mississippi River, but it was a muddy beginning for the young city that necessitated a gigantic engineering project and wooden walkways to ensure that the big-shouldered city and its citizens did not sink into the mire. That’s the history conjured up by The Seam.

The Raising of Chicago was undertaken after outbreaks of cholera in 1854 and ’59 killed more than two thousand people. It involved the use of jackscrews to lift entire streets of buildings six feet above ground. Below is an artist’s 1856 rendering of the plan to raise Lake Street. Connecting historic events like this with a contemporary landscape like the Lurie is perhaps the finest interpretation of capturing a ‘sense of place’. Read more about Gustafson Guthrie Nichol’s design rationale for the Light and Dark Plates and the Seam here.

Image – Chicago Historic Society – Edward Mendel

The plants for the wildish front section of the Lurie may evoke the prairie, but Piet prefers to call this the Meadow. As Noel Kingsburgy wrote in Oudolf Hummelo: “At the time Piet created the Lurie Garden, it represented a new level of complexity and sophistication in his design. It drew on a number of elements that had proved successful elsewhere, but it also contained several innovations. The bulk of the planting is formed of like plants clumped together, although there is a small area of innovative intermingled planting at the southern end, known as The Meadow, where species are mixed in a truly naturalistic fashion. Its matrix of ornamental grasses including the native Sporobolus heterolepis, is broken at intervals by a number of perennial species that rise up above the grasses….” The matrix system would inspire Piet a few years later in his design for the High Line. Many of the plants in the Meadow are native prairie plants, but not all. The lovely white coneflower below is Echinacea ‘Virgin’, one of Piet Oudolf’s own introductions.

Grasses are chosen for their hardiness, beauty and architectural durability, regardless of whether they’re native species, non-natives or selected cultivars. Here is the Meadow’s matrix grass, the lovely tallgrass native prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis).

Award-winning ‘Blonde Ambition’ blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), below, has striking pennant-like flowers and grassy, blue-gray foliage.

Autumn moor grass (Sesleria autumnalis), on the other hand, is a European grass that Piet knew well from previous designs. In June, it’s the soft, chartreuse framework for the Lurie’s spectacular purple-blue “salvia river”, and in summer, it enhances purple coneflowers and cloudlike, white-flowered prairie spurge (Euphorbia corollata).

Here is autumn moor grass nestling the tallgrass prairie forb wild petunia (Ruellia humilis).

Grasses also frame another typical prairie denizen, nodding onion (Allium cernuum).

‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora) may be the most commonly-seen ornamental grass in North America now, but it creates the perfect vertical accent below. It is named for the renowned Germany nurseryman and plant breeder Karl Foerster (1874-1970) who in turn was the teacher of Piet’s own friend, the late nurseryman and plant breeder Ernst Pagels (1913-2007). Pagels introduced many plants we see in Oudolf gardens, including Salvia nemorosa ‘Amethyst’ ‘Blauhügel’ and other sages; Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’; Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Diane; Astilbe chinensis var. taquetii ‘Purpurlanze’; and, in honour of Piet, award-winning Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’.

One of the paradoxes of the surge in popularity of American native plants and their selections is that much of the work was done in Germany and Holland. ‘Shenandoah’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum), below, with its rich red foliage, was selected by another of Piet’s friends, German plantsman Hans Simon. Here it is with the ferny foliage of Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii) and Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’, a superb hybrid of North American anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) and Korean Agastache rugosa, bred and selected by Gert Fortgens at Rotterdam’s Arboretum Trompenberg.

The ‘Blue Fortune’ anise hyssop was attracting hordes of monarch butterflies the day I was there, and the photographers in the crowd were vying for the perfect shot.

Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Cassian’ is an excellent, hardy fountain grass named for Piet’s friend, Cassian Schmidt, director of the renowned German garden Hermannshof.

A signature plant in Piet’s gardens is airy sea lavender (Limonium latifolium), seen here with a tiny sprig of prairie spurge (Euphorbia corollata).

Nearby was a drift of early-blooming pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida), their pink flowers now bronzed with age. Seedheads and senescing plants, of course, are a vital part of the four-season design that Piet has promoted in his gardens, adding structure to plantings and an evocative, almost metaphorically human sense of “a life well lived” . As he told a New York Times writer more than a decade ago: “You accept death. You don’t take the plants out, because they still look good. And brown is also a color.”

The seedheads of Allium lusitanicum ‘Summer Beauty’, a Roy Diblik plant introduction, still looked wonderful, especially framing Echinacea ‘Pixie Meadowbrite’.

Wild quinine (Parthenium integrifolium) is a tallgrass prairie perennial whose flowerheads were slowly turning tawny.

Under the trees in the Dark Plate, the brown seedheads of Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’ added a strong note of verticality.

Touring visitors through the Lurie, as Laura Ekasetya was doing here, often means explaining Piet’s philosophy, since people don’t always appreciate the beauty of plants once the flowers fade. Birds do, of course, and seeds of many perennials offer nourishment to songbirds long after summer ends.

And even without their purple flowers, the tall spikes of prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya) are simply spectacular, and will be prominent well into winter.

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But the liatris season is long, and the knobby flowers of rough blazing star (Liatris aspera) were just opening……

….. bringing native insects to nectar. This is the two-spotted longhorn bee.

The Lurie attracts a diverse roster of insects to forage on the flowers. Native skullcap (Scutellaria incana) was being visited by a lumbering carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica), while…..

….. tall ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum) was entertaining monarchs, as was….

….. the ‘Diane’ Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).

In fact, monarch butterflies were even mating on the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) that had been left in a few spots in the garden to ensure enough food for the monarch’s larval caterpillars.

Although I’m a prairie girl at heart, I finally dragged myself away from the sunny Light Plate into the shade-dappled Dark Plate. Here, the planting is less meadow-like and more refined, much as you would find in garden borders.

And I loved the chickadees that were flitting through the trees. Here’s a little taste….

The perennials in this section appreciate richer soil and a little more moisture, too. Below is Heuchera villosa ‘Autumn Bride’ with Aruncus ‘Horatio’ having formed seedheads behind. Pink Japanese anemones are at the rear.

I could smell the perfume of the summer phlox (Phlox paniculata) even before I arrived at the spot where it was flowering. In every possible shade of pink, it was paired perfectly with Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium spp.).

Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) made a good companion to the phlox. Summer phlox is one of those native North American perennials that enjoyed early cosmopolitan success in the 18^th century when plants were collected in the “new world” and shipped to Europe. It was John Bartram who found it growing near Pennsylvania’s Brandywine River in 1732, and sent it to England, where it soon found its way into estate borders and cottage gardens throughout Europe. Though it is occasionally susceptible to disease (and voracious groundhogs in my own Toronto garden, where I haven’t seen a bloom in years), it is such a lovely mid-late summer perennial and romantically ebullient and perfumed.

In fact, it was in this part of the garden where Piet Oudolf and Roy Diblik noticed a phlox, below, that had seeded from the original planting of a named variety. It was clear pink and exhibited excellent characteristics. After watching it for a few years, they had it dug up in 2016 and taken to Brent Horvath of Instrinsic Perennial Gardens (IPG) in nearby Hebron, one of the midwest’s finest wholesale perennial growers. In honour of the Lurie’s Director and Head Horticulturist, Piet named it ‘Sweet Laura.’ And as Laura Ekasetya says, “He is including this plant in the new edition of (his book) Dream Plants for the Natural Garden.” IPG propagated cuttings in 2017 and 2018 and it is now sold locally and at the Lurie Garden’s May plant sale.

Courtesy Intrinsic Perennial Garden

As I was reluctantly leaving the garden to return to the symposium at the over-air-conditioned convention centre, I saw a honey bee landing on Geranium soboliferum, Japanese cranebill, below. It cheered me up as I was planning to return on my own later that day to meet someone special at the Lurie.

IT WAS 2011 WHEN I proposed a story on urban beekeeping to Organic Gardening magazine, which has sadly since folded. The story featured three expert beekeepers and their shared wisdom about the ancient art and science of beekeeping. One was Michael Thompson, beekeeper for the hives on the rooftop of Chicago City Hall and also the Lurie Garden. But beekeeping (read this Edible Chicago article on Michael and his history with honey bees) and being co-founder and director of the Chicago Honey Co-op is just one of Michael’s journeys in life; he also works with urban agriculture (including an urban orchard project), especially in parts of the city where organically-grown vegetables and neighbourhood involvement are a departure from the norm. When I was making my plans to travel to Chicago, I contacted Michael to ask if there was a chance we could meet in person. We agreed on a time and I made my way back to the Lurie that afternoon. After arriving on his bike in sweltering temperatures, Michael donned his veil and began inspecting the hives.

Brood and honey looked good for August, a product of the Lurie’s abundance of nectar- and pollen-rich plants (not to mention urban street trees throughout Grant Park and downtown).

Among the plants I’d noticed earlier with honey bees were Japanese anemones (pollen only, which bumble bees also collect)….

…. Knautia macedonica, which yields magenta-pink pollen…..

…. Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Diane’), which is a superb plant for native pollinators too….

…. calamint (Nepeta calamintha), which honey bees adore…..

…. and mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum), which attracts honey bees and other pollinators in droves.

But apart from seeing the beehive inspection, I wanted to meet Michael in the flesh here at the Lurie, to cement one more personal connection in this wonderful world of flora that we all cherish.

And after receiving my gift of Chicago Co-op honey….

…I went back into the Lurie, now comparatively empty of people. And I thought of the friends I was with on this symposium, people I’ve come to know in the thirty years I’ve been immersed in gardens, like Helen Battersby, who co-produces with her sister an award-winning blog called Toronto Gardens…..

…. and Washington state photographer Mark Turner, who has captured with his lens every native plant in his beautiful part of the world….

….. and Theresa Forte, who writes a column for the St. Catharine’s Standard (and is a proud grandmother like me). Behind her is Portlander Kate Bryant, who generously drove me around her fair city visiting gardens last year, not long after our Lurie visit.

I’d shared a Lurie stone wall at lunch with horticulturist Anne Marie Van Nest, a longtime friend who gardens at Niagara Parks and Quebec’s Larry Hodgson, who writes, photographs and leads tours en Français to gardens throughout the world.

I thought of the people who grow all the plants and tend all the gardens, like Intrinsic’s Brent Horvath and his partner, Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lisa Hilgenberg, who manages the edible gardens there. I would meet them at the symposium dinner later that week.

And I thought of people directly related to this very garden’s design ethos, and a fun dinner in 2016 hosted by the New Perennialist himself, Tony Spencer, standing left, with me, plantsman David Leeman, special guest Roy Diblik and nurseryman Jeff Mason of Mason House Gardens. Tony also began the Facebook group Dutch Dreams, and has become a good friend of Piet Oudolf over the years.

Those are just a few of the many hundreds of people I’ve met and become friends with in three decades. As I walked through the Meadow again, looking up at the compass plants giving the nearby skyscrapers a run for their money,……

….. I thought about spring 1999, when I’d visited Hummelo and photographed Piet Oudolf on the eve of the new millennium. He would begin the Lurie design process just a year or so later. And of this garden, about which he said in a Tom Rossiter video recently, “The Lurie Garden created a moment in my life where I stepped over a threshold and came into another idea of design. For sure it has affected my work. And it has done a lot of good in my personal experience and it’s done a lot of good in my designs, in particular to touch people’s emotions.”

If there are big shoulders in cities, there are big shouldered people in the world of gardening and design as well. We stand on their shoulders and learn from them, and they sometimes learn from us. It is a rarified world rendered infinitely interesting by the changing of the seasons and by the way it touches our emotions. And we are all so very fortunate to live (and work) here.

Happy 15th anniversary, Lurie Gardens and Millennium Park.

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Please leave a comment. I’d love to know what you think of the Lurie, too!

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Category Archives: Perennials

Meet the Poppy Family!

Miss Rumphius and the Lupines

The Russell Hybrids have given rise to many of the modern lupines, like the Gallery Series in red….

Brown Eyed Girl(s)

Sage… Co-Starring Parsley, Rosemary and Thyme

Evoking the Prairie at Chicago’s Lurie Garden

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The Russell Hybrids have given rise to many of the modern lupines, like the Gallery Series in red….

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