Category Archives: flowers

beneficial insects, butterfly plants, cut flowers, edibles, flowers, fragrant plants, gardening with kids, hummingbird plants, organic gardening, pests

Kids & Gardening

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Flame_Skimmer_dragonflyIn the summertime, kids have lots of time to enjoy the great outdoors. What better way to teach them how our planet works than to let them grow something in their own garden. Share your enthusiasm for gardening by getting your kids or the neighbor kids interested, too. You'll find sharing your knowledge with a child particularly rewarding and you will have helped create a fellow gardener for the rest of their life.

It may be July but it's not too late to start. Make it enjoyable for everyone by giving kids their own section of the garden or yard to do as they please. I planted pansies as a child in my special area. I also had a couple of big pots filled with potting soil to start my own seeds. Size doesn't matter as long as you let the child choose what they'd like to grow.

Teach children about beneficial insects like butterflies and lady bugs. Good bugs help plants by pollinating flowers or preying on insect pests. Make your garden a more inviting place for these helpful insects by planting lots of flowers and herbs to attract them. Flowers with umbrella shaped clusters of small flowers such as cosmos, zinnia, black-eyed susan and yarrow are favorites of butterflies.  Lady bugs like a pest free garden and will patrol your plants looking for any tiny insects and their eggs.

I remember when I was little and had my own garden patch how excited I was to see a dragonfly. My father was happy, too, as they are a great way to control mosquitoes and other pests. They're the top predators of the insect world. I was fascinated by their bright colors- some reddish orange, some blue, some purple. By  planting a variety of plants and flowers to attract them they would visit my little garden often. They seemed to find a water source to lay their eggs on their own.  I was amazed at how fast they could fly. I've read they can reach speeds of 30 mph.  They are an important part of my early gardening experience.

Edible flowers are also fun for kids to grow. Some common ones to try are tuberous begonia petals that taste like lemon.  Calendulas are spicy as are carnations and marigolds.  Dianthus are clove-flavored, nasturtiums give a hint of horseradish and violas, pansies, hollyhock, squash blossoms and johnny-jump-ups taste like mild lettuce.   You can also freeze flowers in ice cubes like violas, fuchsias, geranium, stock and thyme. The blossoms of beans and peas can be added to a salad or sandwich or use them to decorate the tops of cupcakes and cookies.

Plant a pizza garden.  Use a hose to form a round garden shape and border it with stones or another type of edging of your choice.  Divide the "pizza" into slices using stakes or one of your plant varieties such as basil.  Add stepping stones for the pepperoni slices and plant each section with one tomato plant and one green bell pepper and fill in with garlic, oregano, chives and basil.  By summers end you'll be harvesting the makings for a delicious home made pizza.
 
Kids, even older ones, like hiding places, so grow one in the garden.  You can plant tall growing sunflowers in a circle, leaving a space for a "door" that kids can crawl through once the flowers have grown.  Or build a simple teepee out of fallen branches or long gardening stakes and plant bean seeds around the outside.  Scarlet runner beans are also good and have tender, young pods like green beans in addition to bright red flowers that attract hummingbirds.  Beans grow fast and soon make a great secret hiding place.
 
Another fun project is growing birdhouse gourds.  This fast growing vine can beautify fences and trellises during the growing season.  In the fall, dry and hollow them out to make birdhouses or gorgeous crafts.  You can burn patterns into the surface and stain the gourds with shoe polish making beautiful objects of art that make great gifts.  
    
Flowers that kids can cut will be interesting for them, too, especially when planted in their own garden.  Cosmos, planted from six packs, provide instant color as well as attracting butterflies.  Zinnias come in a rainbow of colors and are a favorite of swallow-tail butterflies.  Other easy to grow flowers for cutting are snapdragons and who hasn't pinched these to make faces ?

Besides flowers, fragrant plants like lemon basil, lime thyme, orange mint, chives, sage and other herbs engage the senses and can be included in a kid's garden. Lamb's ears are soft and furry.  Get a kid interested in gardening and they'll be happy for a lifetime.
 

flowers, fragrant plants, landscaping history, organic gardening, roses

Roses of Yesterday

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rose_Kathleen_closeup 3Under blue skies on a perfect spring day I sat recently with Colly, my friend, fellow columnist and gardening enthusiast, surrounded by roses, roses and more roses. Next to an old apple tree and a gnarled cherimoya we enjoyed a delicious picnic lunch Colly brought while she shared stories about this rose nursery called Roses of Yesterday.

Back in the 1960's one of Colly's many jobs was to proof read the catalog for Roses of Yesterday and Today as it was then called so she is quite familiar with the history of this rose business located on Brown's Valley Rd. in Corralitos. It's not quite a grand as it was in the old days but the massive old roses growing in the ground were magnificent in size and we admired and rated each one on the fragrance scale.

Roses of Yesterday, one of the oldest antique rose nurseries in the U.S., was established in the 1930's. It has passed through several generations and owners since then. They still use the honor system to sell their old, selected modern, unusual and rare rose varieties. A young father, kids playing in the car, loaded up a collection of potted roses and deposited a check in the cash box before leaving.

Another sign advised that the nursery doesn't spray their roses with fungicides, insecticides, rose_Kathleen_bench 3herbicides or other chemicals and the rose petals can be used for salad, jams, spritzers and teas. I did notice some rose slug damage on some of the roses but it was minimal. We noted the Sally Holmes roses and the rugosa roses had the least pest problems.

The garden contains many huge old roses. The first mammoth plant we encountered, Newport Fairy, was over 15 feet tall and nearly as wide. Covered with hundreds of small pink flowers it provided cover for many small songbirds who hopped inside searching for insects. This hybrid multiflora rose was first bred in1908. Lots of Red Admiral butterflies and Swallowtails found the surroundings to their liking, too.

We walked under a Cecile Brunner– engulfed pergola and then we saw it. Against a fence in filtered light, a spectacular single white rose with stiff, butter yellow stamens shaded an old wooden bench. We searched for the name tag and found, buried among a groundcover of sweet violets, the name Kathleen. This unusual and unforgettable hybrid musk rose from 1922 blooms repeatedly with blossoms richly perfumed. The catalog states the flowers drop cleanly and orange rose hips form along with the new blooms.

Several English lavender plants grew between the rugosa roses. We especially liked a small double magenta one called Rugosa Magnifica as well as a lovely white variety named Rugosa Blanca. Rugosa roses are very old dating back to before 1799 and bloom repeatedly with a marvelous fragrance. Large orange rose hips will form when the disease and pest resistant foliage drops. These edible hips are very high in vitamin C and are also relished by wildlife.  I've been told the crinkly foliage of rugosa roses is deer resistant.
rose_Stretch_Johnson 3
Growing nearby, a burnt orange rose got our attention. This amazing rose with two tone reddish orange petals and a lighter orange to yellow reverse is similar to Hot Coca. Called Stretch Johnson the flowers have the classic fragrance of rose petals and the disease resistant dark green glossy foliage of this floribunda was lovely.

The garden contains roses of all types especially old fashioned single roses as well as ruffly cabbage varieties. One bright pink single rose was especially beautiful. We thought the name tag read Rosa Wichuraiana but it must have been referring to the white groundcover rose nearby. We also loved a bright pink rose called Marguerite Hillig with its sweet fragrance and graceful arching canes.

The 4 inch dusky pink blossoms of Dainty Bess, a hybrid tea climbing rose, decorated one of the fences. rose_Sally_Homes2 3I learned this is a classic variety among hybrid teas since 1925 from the online catalog. The non-stop blooms are exceptionally long lasting on the plant and in bouquets.

From Ballerina to Climbing New Dawn to a huge Heinrich Munch with double pink blossoms covering a rose bush 20 feet across with a foot wide trunk, I enjoyed every inch of this old rose garden and nursery and it was fun to hear personal anecdotes from Colly about Dorothy Stemler,  the rose aficionado who's touch can be still be seen in the gardens of Yesterday and Today.
 

color in the garden, cut flowers, deer resistant bulbs, flowers, fragrant plants

Fragrant Plants for the Garden

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Stargazer_lilyRecently I received a bouquet of Stargazer lilies. The spectacular flowers on each stem open in succession and the display will last for nearly two weeks if I take care of them changing the water regularly and re-cutting the stems.

Wish the lilies in my own garden would hurry up and open. Mine are always a little behind those in warmer spots.  When they do open later in the month they will scent the garden with an unforgettable fragrance. Some flowers are memorable for their beautiful color, some for the hummingbirds they attract and some have it all-vibrant hues, nectar and fragrance. I love them all. Perhaps you want to add a few new ones to your own garden. Try one of these.

Lilies are one of the easiest of bulbs to grow. Stargazers are the most stunning and perhaps the most celebrated of lily varieties. Curious about their origin I discovered a little intrigue among horticultural historians. Seems they don't like seeing history revised. The bottom line is this lily was not first bred in 1974 by Mr. Leslie Woodruff of California but rather by Robert Griesbach of Washington and named in his friends honor. When you have an established clump of Stargazer lilies it doesn't matter who first bred them.

The stems of the Stargazer can reach 3- 6 ft tall and have in excess of 40 flowers each when planted in full sun in loamy or sandy soil and the blooms will last for a month or so. You can still grow beautiful lilies in as little as 6 hours of sun per day so don't be discouraged if you don't have a spot that receives full sun all day long. The sunlight can even be accrued over the course of the day so if your garden get some morning sun then again later in the day it all adds up.

If you are looking for a fragrant vine other than pink jasmine I have two suggestions. The first is Evergreen clematis_armandii3Clematis ( clematis armandii ) Earlier this spring you couldn't miss their fragrance if you were anywhere near a blooming one. Covered with an abundance of highly-scented, star-like flowers in brilliant white clusters, this showy evergreen vine grows fast in partial sun. This vine is perfect as a patio, trellis or arbor cover and makes a great privacy screen. Give this vine support as it grows to 25 feet long and can become quite heavy. If you live among deer, it's a great choice for a fragrant vine.

Fragrant climbing roses trained on an arbor or fence are classic landscape design choices. One of my favorites for gardens I design is Climbing Iceberg because they are disease resistant and have few thorns. It's hard to find a better behaved rose that gives so much in return with no Iceberg_roseeffort on your part. They start blooming early with a lovely sweet rose fragrance and continue until frost. Two climbers planted on each side of a window make a stunning display. It's one of my favorite white roses of all time and grows in sun or partial shade.

If you think violas are only for the winter garden, think again. Viola Etain is a reliable perennial that blooms heavily spring through fall . Soft primrose yellow petals edged in lavender are sweetly scented and bloom easily in sun or bright shade and in containers. If you cut the plants back to 3" tall once in awhile to rejuvenate and top dress with compost they will reward you with 9 months of fragrance and become one of your favorite violas, too.

There are so many fragrant flowers that make great additions to the garden. Freesia, hyacinth and narcissus bulbs are good bets for early fragrance. Then come the nemesia in every color imaginable. Phlox, lilacs, tuberose, star jasmine, stock, citrus blossoms, gardenia, lily-of-the-valley, daphne, carnations– the possibilities are endless. If you have a particular spot you'd like a suggestion for a fragrant plant, email me and I'd be happy to help.

Fragrance in the garden is nature's way of smiling.