clear: calm: 74ºF

We arrived as a twenty-foot high balloon in the shape of a ripe, red tomato was being inflated. Later this morning, the tomatoes judged prized by their growers will be judged by others less biased. The grower of the best tomato wins $5000.

People have strong feelings about cannas. To some they are too tall, too brassy, too gaudy, too red, too vulgar, and too old-fashioned. On top of that, their faded flowers won’t shrivel-up and drop off to make way for new blooms and their leaves often are riddled with insect holes. To others, cannas are ideal plants because they are easy to grow, long lasting, and they come in a variety of colors and sizes. From being fashionable in Victorian times to being loathed for most of the 1900s, cannas have become fashionable again as Northern gardeners begin to use them to mimic the look and the bold colors of the tropics.

Cannas are on the upswing at this botanical garden too. Some are used as tall center pieces. Some serve as accents in beds of short, brightly colored annuals. Among the cannas used as accents, my favorite is a variety called ‘Pretoria’ or ‘Bengal Tiger.’ I can’t even remember what color the flowers are on the ‘Pretorias.’ The leaves are what count. They are marked with undulating stripes of greens and creams. Each leaf is also edged with a thin border of maroon. I noticed that the border color is clearest and deepest when the newly emerging leaves still are curled into a spiral. The ‘Pretoria’ cannas planted in full sun are at least eight-feet tall and still growing.

In another spot in the garden I found a stand of ‘Pretoria’ cannas planted in semi-shade. They were shorter there – less than three feet tall – and were being used as a backdrop for patch of Persian Shields (Strobilanthes dyerianus). Their complementary leaf shape coupled with the sharp contrast of their colors—creams and greens with iridescent purples—is stunning. But, since nothing is taller than two or three feet, the combination is tame enough to use in a container planter or in a partly shaded space in a home landscape. Exotic doesn't come cheap though. I priced the cannas at about $10 per rhizome and the Persian Shields at about $7 per pot

I just finished reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Book reviewer call attention to a suspense-filled story of a father and daughter’s search for Count Dracula’s tomb. It is that, but there’s more. Kostova tells the fascinating story of a time when the Ottoman Empire was expanding into the Byzantine lands around the Black Sea. Just as I was becoming intrigued by Ottoman culture (I even checked out the PBS special on Islam: Empire of Faith from the library), I read that this botanical garden has started work on a Ottoman garden. The new garden will be in the open space between the Japanese Garden and the Kemper Home Gardens. The new garden is the gift of a local real estate developer who has been working on the design, visiting Ottoman Gardens, and collecting authentic materials for more than a decade. The plan is have the new garden mimic the Ottoman gardens of the 16th Century. I’m looking forward to seeing the choice of plants. An Ottoman Garden around Istanbul would be in the same hardiness zone as the Gulf Coast or mid-Florida. An Ottoman Garden in this area would be two the three zones colder. Figs, palms, dates, and citrus trees look out.

sticky, misty and hazy: calm: 80ºF

The botanical garden looked rejuvenated. Days of easy rain gifted by the remains of Hurricane Dennis washed and watered the plants and flowers and left the grassy places damp and spongy.

There is an Australian Tree Fern (Cyathea cooperi) in the Linnean glasshouse that I’ve watched grow up. When it was at eye level, I took pictures of its crosier–like fronds as they unfolded, and I could touch its leaflets that they stretched out to the walkway. Now the crown of the tree fern reaches the panes at the peak of the glasshouse. As the tree fern has grown, it has left behind a trail of oval scars that mark the spots where each frond formed, grew, and then was sloughed off. This morning the growth and renewal process stopped. The tree fern, now about thirty feet tall is browning and dying. I wonder if the life of an Australian Tree Fern is measured by height, by time, or maybe by a certain lifetime allotment of fronds. The Australian Tree Fern is used widely as an ornamental, so I’ll check the web and my reference books when I get home.

[At home: other than reading that the tree fern was fast growing (something I already knew), I couldn’t find any reference to the tree fern’s longevity.]

Last week the constant heat and lack of rain triggered a premature autumn for some trees. A small crab growing in the bulb garden turned a fair number of its fruits to yellow and then dropped them on the puckered leaves of the hostas planted around its trunk. A scattering of leaves at the ends of the branches of a serviceberry tree turned coral and salmon. Most noticeable though was the treacle-like scent of the katsura trees that normally fills the air after first frost. This morning, after a week of cooler days and long, soaking rains, all of the trees have all regained their sense of time.

Worms (or caterpillars?) with translucent, phlegm-colored bodies are eating the green flesh of the American Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia) leaves in the Woodland Garden. The worms, with their guts showing, eat their way from the fat part of the leaves near the stem to the pointed tips. They eat just the flesh between the veins leaving behind a tan-colored lacey scaffolding.

Most hostas are now blooming. I’ve been looking at the blooms that form along their scapes. The usual pattern of flowering is for the flowers to zigzag their way up the stem, blooming and then dropping. I was looking at the pattern of blooming because I was trying to find a hosta that mimicked a stem I saw on the table in white linen restaurant where we had dinner a couple of weeks ago. The stem in the restaurant had a tight globe of buds that formed at the end of the stem. From that button of buds, just one or two white bell-shaped flowers would open at a time. I asked the server about the stem. He said it came from the floral trade and was called “Star of Bethlehem.” He went on to say that the restaurant uses them because they add elegance to a table and they “last forever.”

I think I found a hosta scape this morning that would work as an elegant cut-flower: a tall, sturdy stock topped by a tight, artichoke-shaped bud cluster with only a few flowers open at one time. The hosta was labeled Hosta decorata. I checked The Hosta Handbook for information about the blooming pattern of Hosta decorata. Nothing was mentioned. I plan to lcome back to decorata in another week to see its scapes elongate and the flowers begin to space themselves along the stems or whether the knob of buds will hold tight at the tip of the stem.

clear: light breeze: 67ºF

We saw a medium-sized black bird make several trips to the concrete ledge around the reflecting ponds outside the Linnaean glasshouse. Each time, it brought a fragment of a bird’s egg or a unborn chick. What the bird was, what the egg shell was, where the bird got the shell, why the bird got it, and why it carried it and left it on that concrete rim, I can’t say. I do know the egg was destroyed and the chicks died or would die.

At the edge of the woodland garden, where the woods meets a manicured lawn, is a stand of viburnum that was unusual enough to make me stop. I know there are fans of viburnum who can recite the good qualities of each of the some 150 species. In a article I read in an old Fine Gardening magazine, the author spared few laudatory adjectives to describe the shrubs. He says they are beautiful, versatile, undemanding, showy, colorful, handsome, healthy, adaptable, floriferous, and rewarding.

With two exceptions, I don’t like viburnums. Most of the ones I’ve had anything to do with are dull-colored, coarse and leathery with a scent that makes me think of sour milk. Some have a habit of holding their droopy leaves no matter how badly the frost and cold have spoiled them. One exception is the early spring viburnums—the Koreanspice (Viburnum carlesii) whose bleached pink flowers soak the air with a scent that rivals the lilacs. The other is the doublefile vibernum (Viburnum tomentosum). On this late spring vibernum, foliage doesn’t matter. It’s the flowers and the arrangement that counts. Large white flowers line the length of the doublefile’s long spreading branches like sandwich fixings on Dagwood’s arm.

The viburnum I saw this morning brings my like list to three. It’s called Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur.' The identifying sign says its common name is a Smooth Witherod. A search of the web comes up with still other names: possum-haw, teaberry, withe-rod, bilberry, nanny-berry, wild raisin, and swamp-haw. I suppose it has so many aliases because it’s a native shrub that seeks out wet, wild places in the all of the Eastern and Southern states.

The dictionary says that “withe” refers to pliable, flexible twigs such as willows. The Smooth Witherod has roots that were once used as rope or twine. Its whip-like branches were prized by school teachers of earlier times as switches. The witerod I saw was a variety developed at the Winterthur Gardens in Delaware. It had already flowered without my notice. Left though were the long yellow-green leaves as glossy and lustrous as a Florida tropical. From a distance, the edges of the oval-shaped leaves, deeply etched by veins, seemed smooth. But, when I put my glasses on for a closer look, I saw edges were as finely serrated as a hacksaw. See this shrub. It will make you overlook the rest of its family.

Apart from the Peace Rose, how many other plants and flowers have a variety named Peace? This morning I spotted a tidy clump of hostas named ‘Peace’ just at the edge of the hosta garden. The Hosta Handbook says it was introduced in 1987 by the legendary hosta grower and maker Paul Aden, aka “Mr. Hosta.” I don’t know if the Peace Hosta and the Peace Rose have any connection at all. No event in 1987 matched the events surrounding the end of WWII. How and why Aden and breeders of other plants name their creations usually is only known to them and God.

I’ve never seen ‘Peace’ in the nurseries or hardware giants around here. Why, who knows? It fits Paul Aden’s three criteria for a hosta that would have commercial appeal: “1) Performance under a wide range of home garden conditions, 2) Identifiable without looking at a label at normal viewing distance, and 3) Class or something you can enjoy and feel proud to live with.” ‘Peace’ has thick, meaty leaves that are unappetizing to leaf eaters. But, best of all, each of its glossy leaves is etched with a green medallion that is framed with a wide rim of cream right out to the edge of the leaf.