Recovery from the record-breaking freeze in early April has begun. The first growth of leaves at the tips of twigs and branches is gone for good, but a fresh surge of green has begun to sprout from nodes further down. The official word from the horticultural folks at this botanical garden is that with time and patience, most plants will recover. They say, “You may notice a slight decline in appearance before your garden looks ‘normal’ again, but this is only a temporary setback.” Wonder if “slight decline” to a botanist is like “slight discomfort” is to a doctor?
I saw a spectacular reminder of the freeze in the formal boxwood garden. The well-coifed boxwoods were topped with a layer of cold-killed leaves that had begun to turn dusty brown. The boxwoods looked as though they had been covered with a thin layer of mulch or cedar fronds. Surprisingly, the sides of the boxwoods were still mostly green. From a distance the effect was like a ribbon of green, lightly pan-seared.
Size does matter. I’ve usually judged alliums (Flowering Onions) by their height and by the size of their balls or more politely, their “umbrels.” The taller their stocks and the bigger their umbrels, the better I like them. Every spring I keep a look-out for Allium giganteum. Like a performing seal, it carries a ten-inch umbrel atop a sturdy stock that juts up a yard or more. I rarely take notice of the leaves at the base of any allium.
This morning though it was the basil leaves I noticed on some alliums yet to bloom or even to send up stocks. The alliums, planted in the new Ottoman Garden, are named Allium karataviense (Turkestan Onion). My garden catalog of spring bulbs says that each of these alliums will form a ball of about four-inches across atop a stock of only four- to ten inches high – not much by giganteum standards. But for this allium, size doesn’t matter. It’s the foliage that counts. Their meaty blue-green leaves are broad and deeply etched with long veins. Then to top that, each leaf is edged with a tracing of a watered-down merlot color that deepens and expands as the leaves mature. Too bad this is an allium instead of a hosta. Then I could enjoy it until frost.
I noticed two new outdoor camellias shrubs in the English Woodland Garden this week. One is named ‘April Dawn;’ the other ‘April Tryst.’ Each is about two-feet tall. These two join the collection of camellias with frost or snow in their names that were planted last fall. None of the fall-planted camellias bloomed much before their buds were zapped by frost, but with the help of a burlap tent and a deep leaf mulch, most did make it through the winter.
I looked up the two Aprils on the web and learned that they are sisters in a family of nine Aprils developed by Camellia Forest Nursery, a specialty nursery outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Both of the Aprils in the garden are spring-blooming camellias. Both are Camellia japonicas. With over 2,000 named varieties of japonicas around, they are the archetypical camellia. Japonicas are the jewels of the camellia display that flowers here in a heated glasshouse in February and March. So what are these pampered beauties doing here in the Missouri outdoors?
Turns out that according to the Camellia Forest Nursery, the April sisters are the most cold-hardy of the japonicas. They are “the best choice for growing outdoors in zone 6, [the home zone of this botanical garden] the coldest area where Camellias can be dependably grown. A protected site is very important when growing Camellias in colder areas and spring planting is highly recommended. The ‘April series’ were selected from thousands of hybrid seedlings and have been named for the time we expect they will bloom in cooler northern areas. The ‘April series’ survived our coldest recorded winter when the temperature dropped to -9°F.”
When it blooms, ‘April Dawn’ will have slashes of color like Rembrandt tulips do – mostly white flowers with unpredictable streaks of pink. ‘April Tryst’
will have bright orange-red petals with pom-pom puffs in their centers. I doubt either of these youngsters will flower this spring, but I can wait.
The summer sculpture show “Chapungu: Nature, Man, and Myth” opened today. Twenty-three pieces of contemporary stone sculptures done by artists from Zimbabwe are scattered throughout the botanical garden. I’ll welcome their company all summer long. A stunning series of photos of these Chapungu pieces taken by cammon, a local professional photographer, is already on the web.
rain, fog: north wind: 39ºF
I wonder why I’m here this morning. No one else is. Even the birds are perched quietly in trees and on benches, feathers fluffed to stay warm. A visit to a botanical garden early on a raw, wet Saturday morning like this one would never top anyone’s “I need-to-do-this-before-I-die” list. That’s especially so because the colors of high spring have been browned and muted by last week’s prolonged freeze.
I checked the climatological information for this area to see whether this April was like any other. I found that the lowest recorded April temperature was 18ºF. That was in 1857. So last Saturday’s low of 23ºF didn’t break the all-time record, but it did break the previous record low of 29ºF set in 1939.
Low temperatures here were at freezing or below for six days in a row -– April 4th though April 9th. On the monthly temperature data I looked at, I saw other years where April lows were in the 20’s for a day or two. But for at least a century, there has never been such a long string of plant punishing days.
The plant people in the media say that all will be well in time. The shriveled and blacked foliage of the Japanese maples, hydrangeas, ginkgos, magnolias, azaleas, hostas, and the like will dry and fall away giving way to a second spring, they say. No blooms of course -- those are gone. But, they say new leaves will return. Be patient; be optimistic, they urge. I hope they’re right.
I wonder how this spring without color will affect revenues at the gate for this garden. Spring to a botanical garden is like Christmas is to a mall. This week the parking lot ought to be full. Busloads of folks escorted by their tour guides ought to be here today to see the reds, oranges, pinks, and whites of azaleas pruned to mimic pincushions. This year will be different though. Except for a few flowers blooming near the base of some of the more protected shrubs, the entire azalea display has been lost. The azaleas still have buds this morning, but they’re brown and papery, drained of color.
After having my fill of mopping over what was lost, I started looking for a tree or shrub that was thriving in spite of the cold. Leafing and blooming as though the hard freeze never happened, I saw shrub named Blackhaw (Viburnum prunifolium) growing in a partly shaded spot in the English Woodland Garden. botanical garden’s website
The Blackhaw is a shrub that I would have passed without seeing in other more abundant Springs. Blackhaw is a viburnum native to the state, the sign alongside the shrub says. Like other viburnums it has clusters of creamy white flowers. Unlike others though, the blooming flower clusters and the buds too were unblemished by the freeze. More amazing still, the glossy green leaves and the young leaves that were unfolding at the tips of the twigs were unscathed. The botanical garden’s website says that the Blackhaw is hardy to Zone 3. That translates to -35º F to -40ºF. No wonder it was indifferent to lows in the mere 20’s.
a bit of sun: windy: 25ºF
Where have all the flowers gone? The visitors too. People around here have long linked Easter weekend with a visit to the botanical garden. Lapsed and jaded gardeners along with folks who would be hard-pressed to tell a tulip from a hyacinth come here to celebrate the return of spring. Not this year though. Unjustly cold temperatures have pushed wind chills into the teens this morning and more of the same will continue at least through Easter. Maybe it’s just as well that visitors are making themselves scarce because Spring cried uncle this morning.
I plan to re-visit the botanical garden later this week after spring promises to return. By then whatever permanent damage these days of cold may have caused should be apparent. This morning’s low of 24 degrees was two degrees colder than the previous record set in 1939, so on Monday, I’ll look at the archives of newspapers published during the first week in April 1939 to see what happened to spring that year.
The television newscasts last night showed footage of employees at garden centers and nurseries covering plants and shrubs and moving others indoors until the cold moves on. What’s a botanical garden to do though? Most of their plantings can’t be moved and they can’t put a plastic bubble over seventy-nine acres. Here are the choices the keepers of this garden made: large, heavy container pots had been covered with white or black woven frost cloth; all of baskets that a week ago had been hanging from the poles and on pergolas had been taken inside; and a few, selected plants had been covered with frost cloth.
I wasn’t familiar with any of the plants the keepers of the garden chose to protect with frost cloth, so I took pictures of their names and then checked the web to try to figure out why they singled out these few to try to save. Three of the pampered were Achlys japonica, Podophyllum pleianthum, and Calanthe ‘Kozu Spice.’
Achlys japonica, according to a Japanese nursery that sells them is a “rare Japanese perennial for cool shade and humus-rich soil.” They say the plant has “attractive lobed leaves that form a carpet as the plant spreads by underground stems. Dense fuzzy spikes of white flowers appear above the leaves.” The Japanese nursery that offers Achlys japonica says they sell “exclusive and rarely-offered plants” that “serve the needs of serious gardeners who have moved beyond the most common offerings, and are looking for garden adventure.” As plain jane as the plant looks from its picture, I understand why the keepers at this botanical garden would see Achlys as a prize.
Covered too are several plants labeled Podophyllum pleianthum. They’re the Asian version of the common Mayapples that grow in sizeable colonies in the English Woodland Garden. The Dunn Gardens in Seattle say the Asian mayapple (should it survive these nights of cold) will have “large dramatic, glossy leaves and stay beautiful looking throughout the season, unlike the east coast variety. Strange, wonderfully bizarre flowers occur in May, with a strange fetid odor that attracts short dogs.”
The most colorful of the plants under wraps is one named Calanthe ‘Kozu Spice.’ It’s a hardy orchid that if it lives will send up a stock filled with fragrant, clove-scented flowers. Plant Delights, a nursery in North Carolina that sells hardy orchids, says that Kozu Spice is suited to zones 7 – 9, but then adds “possibly colder.” Since the botanical garden where I walk is on the cusp of zones 5 and 6, this year should be a good test of “possibly colder.”
In a few weeks, an exhibition of sculpture made by the Shona artists from Zimbabwe will open on the grounds of this botanical garden. The show called “Chapungu: nature, man, and myth” will feature twenty-five stone sculptures depicting the animals, birds, people, and legends of Zimbabwe. Within the past week, sculptures mounted on sections of tree trunks have appeared. They are all wrapped, not because of the cold but to await the show’s official opening on April 28th. This botanical garden last exhibited works from Zimbabwean artists in 2001. Then, there were more works (67 in all) and a good many of them were monolith-sized. Compared with that show, this year’s show seems to be Chapungu-light. These new pieces, scaled for home gardens and patios, seem meant more to sell than to overwhelm.
Recovery from the record-breaking freeze in early April has begun. The first growth of leaves at the tips of twigs and branches is gone for good, but a fresh surge of green has begun to sprout from nodes further down. The official word from the horticultural folks at this botanical garden is that with time and patience, most plants will recover. They say, “You may notice a slight decline in appearance before your garden looks ‘normal’ again, but this is only a temporary setback.” Wonder if “slight decline” to a botanist is like “slight discomfort” is to a doctor?
I saw a spectacular reminder of the freeze in the formal boxwood garden. The well-coifed boxwoods were topped with a layer of cold-killed leaves that had begun to turn dusty brown. The boxwoods looked as though they had been covered with a thin layer of mulch or cedar fronds. Surprisingly, the sides of the boxwoods were still mostly green. From a distance the effect was like a ribbon of green, lightly pan-seared.
This morning though it was the basil leaves I noticed on some alliums yet to bloom or even to send up stocks. The alliums, planted in the new Ottoman Garden, are named Allium karataviense (Turkestan Onion). My garden 
The summer sculpture show “Chapungu: Nature, Man, and Myth” opened today. Twenty-three pieces of contemporary stone sculptures done by artists from Zimbabwe are scattered throughout the botanical garden. I’ll welcome their company all summer long. A stunning 
I wonder why I’m here this morning. No one else is. Even the birds are perched quietly in trees and on benches, feathers fluffed to stay warm. A visit to a botanical garden early on a raw, wet Saturday morning like this one would never top anyone’s “I need-to-do-this-before-I-die” list. That’s especially so because the colors of high spring have been browned and muted by last week’s prolonged freeze.
Where have all the flowers gone? The visitors too. People around here have long linked Easter weekend with a visit to the botanical garden. Lapsed and jaded gardeners along with folks who would be hard-pressed to tell a tulip from a hyacinth come here to celebrate the return of spring. Not this year though. Unjustly cold temperatures have pushed wind chills into the teens this morning and more of the same will continue at least through Easter. Maybe it’s just as well that visitors are making themselves scarce because Spring cried uncle this morning.
I plan to re-visit the botanical garden later this week after spring promises to return. By then whatever permanent damage these days of cold may have caused should be apparent. This morning’s low of 24 degrees was two degrees colder than the previous record set in 1939, so on Monday, I’ll look at the archives of newspapers published during the first week in April 1939 to see what happened to spring that year.
The television newscasts last night showed footage of employees at garden centers and nurseries covering plants and shrubs and moving others indoors until the cold moves on. What’s a botanical garden to do though? Most of their plantings can’t be moved and they can’t put a plastic bubble over seventy-nine acres. Here are the choices the keepers of this garden made: large, heavy container pots had been covered with white or black woven frost cloth; all of baskets that a week ago had been hanging from the poles and on pergolas had been taken inside; and a few, selected plants had been covered with frost cloth.
In a few weeks, an exhibition of sculpture made by the Shona artists from Zimbabwe will open on the grounds of this botanical garden. The show called “Chapungu: nature, man, and myth” will feature twenty-five stone sculptures depicting the animals, birds, people, and legends of Zimbabwe. Within the past week, sculptures mounted on sections of tree trunks have appeared. They are all wrapped, not because of the cold but to await the show’s official opening on April 28th. This botanical garden last exhibited works from Zimbabwean artists in 2001. Then, there were more works (67 in all) and a good many of them were monolith-sized. Compared with that show, this year’s show seems to be Chapungu-light. These new pieces, scaled for home gardens and patios, seem meant more to sell than to overwhelm.