Fab Foliage Friday

Like an arrow pointed to the sky, Alocasia 'Sarian' aims for the heights. And it gets there. This awesome elephant ear reaches anywhere from 4- to 8-feet tall, with the leaves accounting for about half that size. The upright, arrowhead-shaped leaves look a lot like the better-known but harder-to-grow (for me anyway) elephant ear 'African Mask' (Alocasia x amazonica 'African Mask'), only bigger and greener. I grow these guys in a pot, so the dramatic effect they create is a portable one. Anywhere I need a quick blast of drama, it's ready and willing to provide a touch of magic.

Fab Foliage Friday

Do you know 'Bert'? You might want to make his acquaintance. 'Bert' is a flowering maple (Abutilon spp.) with stunning maple-shaped leaves dappled with a splashy yellow variegation. Just the thing for brightening up a dark spot or for shimmering in the sun. This tender perennial cavorts happily in the ground or a pot, in sun or part shade, but 'Bert's best tricks are his flowers-colored a pale moonbeam yellow that matches the brightest sectors of the variegation. It's a color echo all by itself. I got this passalong plant from Sydney Eddison, who got it from Peter Wooster, in whose knock-em-dead Roxbury, CT garden, she adds, it originated.

Field Trip to George and Bob's Spring Fling

Back in May, before our rains of biblical proportions began, I went to give a talk in the Hamptons, and while there visited the garden of Bob Luckey and George Biercuk in nearby Wainscott. Again. And it was even better than the first time I saw it. George is a garden designer, and his display of choice selections of all kinds of plants and, most especially, azaleas and rhodies is a show-stopping tour-de-force in spring. And from all accounts it's sweet in October, when legions of tall fuchsia 'Gartenmeister Bonstedt' preside over the garden from one end to the other. I'm looking forward to seeing it then. But in the meantime, let's cut to the chase: pictures. Enjoy 'em.

A network of twisting, turning paths radiates out from the house to weave throughout the garden.

Burgundy Japanese maples--especially the low, mounding cutleaf types- always make stellar backdrops for more delicate plants.

A naturalistic swimming pool lies at the garden's heart.


Love the tawny oranges of this Acer shirasawanum 'Autumn Moon' echo with the orange azalea, rhody, whatever.

A Perfect Pair

My visit a while back to White Flower Farm to check out Fergus Garrett's border is in no way meant to suggest that his opus is the only thing worth seeing at the Litchfield, CT mecca. Beauteous display gardens abound, and serve as a showcase for WFF's mail-order and onsite plants. One combination that really caught my eye is this smoldering duo of Centaurea montana 'Gold Bullion' and Huechera 'Rave On.' The dangling blades of some iris (?) sharpen the edge of this showy combination.

One Hail Of A Storm

Clatter Valley got hammered. Friday afternoon the sky got black as night, lightning flashed and driving rain and pounding hail, big as marbles, came crashing out of the sky. There was a tornado not far away. No electricity here for several days. What does all this mean for a garden that is comprised primarily of foliage, especially big bold foliage? Nothing good. Looks like Dick Cheney was hunting in the backyard. The leaves are blasted, the succulents are covered with divots--it's ugly. Clean-up, I'm afraid, will require little more than a machete and and a weed whacker. Much of what didn't get perforated got flattened, so either way its going to get cut down. Guess it will be interesting to see what bounces back, but at the moment it does not look promising.

Fab Foliage Friday

Oh yeah! Gold feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium 'Aureum') glows like there's no tomorrow. Old herbalists believed, and still do, that feverfew is a good remedy for fever and for headaches. Well, if your headache comes from wondering how to brighten up the garden, this variety will have you feeling better in no time. For me (here in Zone 6a), gold feverfew is a short-lived perennial but it does self sow. Unwanted seedlings are easy to pluck, but better still is a plan to give the plants a shearing before--or when--their little, yellow-centered white daisylike blooms appear. As I've mentioned, I'm not fond of white except in specific circumstances, and where I like gold feverfew is rarely included in those instances. So I shear my gold feverfew down by about half or even a bit more and soon bright new growth comes up to keep it vigorous looking for the remainder of the season. I do let a few flower, so I can collect the seed--which I just scatter--to establish new colonies.

Clatter Valley In The News

Among the things that have been occupying my time of late are some stories I've done for our local paper, the Hartford Courant. I forgot to post about them. I did one on sheds, and another on using veggies in ornamental gardens.

Pots In The News

Good container gardening story by New York Times garden writer Anne Raver in today's paper. It's largely about succulents, but she also talks to Bob Hyland, one of the owners of Loomis Creek, a worth-the-detour nursery in Hudson NY. Hyland, along with Margaret Roach, also participated in a container challenge of sorts at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens. Their efforts will be on display this summer. I plan to go up and see them a bit later; I want to wait for the plantings to ripen and fill out a bit. Look for a future post on the topic. Thanks to photog Stewart Cairns for the NYT pix.