Fab Foliage Friday

Clatter Valley may have a tropical flavor-at least for part of the year--but as yet there's very little in the way of that most iconic of tropical plants, the palm tree. Now and then I'll pick up something sold as a houseplant at Lowe's Depot and plunk that in the garden for a palm effect, but I never took them too seriously until I happened on a specimen of silver Mediterranean fan palm (Chamaerops humilis var, cerifera). Wowza! What a foliage plant. A symmetrical dome of fan-shaped silver foliage -each leaf comprised of long splintery, slivers of silver--crowns a knobbly , primeval looking trunk. Those glorious leaves, which glimmer like moonlight, are perched atop long stems lined with hooklike thorns which look like a raptor's claws.

It's a plant brimming with beautiful details: the blades of the rounded, fanlike leaves, the thorns, the knobby trunk, the silvery hue, the overall silhouette--this thing's a keeper. And this native of Morocco's Atlas Mountains is among the hardiest of the already hardy (relatively speaking) fan palm clan. It grows a mile up in those semi arid mountains, where the weather is often cold enough to provide the palm a dusting of snow. Which means I can leave it out in its pot at least until Thanksgiving. And since it is so slow growing, this plant is a great candidate for containers. All it needs is plenty of sun (though color isn't bad even in part shade) and excellent drainage. Once it grows too cold outside here, my silver Mediterranean fan palm will come indoors for the winter to live as a houseplant. It's definitely worth the effort-this one's a keeper.

Beauteous Bulbines

Guess what's odd about Bulbine frutescens. It's got no bulb. Nor does it have a rhizome, corm or tuber. But aside from its ill-chosen name, there's plenty to like about this stellar South African native known to locals as snake flower, cat's tail, or burn jelly plant (yes, it has some medicinal value). Bulbine is actually a succulent, but I know few that flower as freely as this one. I grow bulbine in a pot, where its hummock of rather finely textured grassy foliage looks tidy and well mannered early on. Later in the season, narrow wands rise skyward to erupt with a clown hat of tightly nestled buds which, soon enough, yield delicate orange flowers. When a plant produces 10-15 or more spires at a time, the effect is glorious. There's one drawback: the whole thing is kind of dinky, with the wands reaching, on a good day, maybe 18-24 inches and each flower smaller than a thumbnail. But pretty! And so wonderfully complex. Carefee as any succulent, and easy to overwinter indoors in cool temps and bright light.

The Pause That Refreshes

Oops! I realize a fair amount of time has passed since my last post. I even missed two Fab Foliage Fridays. I guess that means I'm taking a break. Circumstances (but good circumstances!)warrant a brief hiatus. So, I'm outta here. But I'll be back--and so will Fab Foliage Fridays--in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, you can take a gander at my patio, where a dismal garden season actually managed to end with flourish.

Some Way Cool Containers

I'm always on the lookout for hot new plants and stuff I haven't seen before, so I recently took a swing by Loomis Creek Nursery in Hudson, NY. It's full of good stuff, not least of which are the many pots displayed, singly and in clusters, designed by owners Bob Hyland and Andrew Beckman. So, I thought it worth posting a gallery of pix from their place (with a few more over at Gardening Gone Wild). Here goes:

Bob also collaborated with Margaret Roach to design a series of contianers plantings at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens in Stockbridge MA.

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.

Oh So Succulent

One of my recent garden passions is making little dish gardens of cacti and succulents. They're great for tabletops, since it always bugs me when some centerpiece is so big I can't see the person on the other side of it. And since I use mostly rather small plants --anywhere from an inch to less than foot in height--a tabletop provides a good display spot where it's easier to admire them close-up. These mini mash-ups are very low maintenance: they need virtually no trimming or deadheading, no fertilizing, and they don't care much if you skip watering now and then. Plus they take me back to my garden roots-some of the first plants I grew and loved were cacti and succulents, which I admired for their outlandish sculptural shapes and exotic textures, and for their ironclad constitution-even neglect never seemed to threaten their rugged nature.

Color is another fun component for designing these dish gardens, which look, as Thomas Hobbes once remarked, like little pizzas. While in the old days the palette for these botanic wonders was limited, far as I knew, to greens and silvery greens, it's now possible to find beauteous burgundies, awesome orangey or bronzey hues, and even a few with shadings of chartreuse. I'm always in the lookout for these little treasures, and have found all sorts of great players in unlikely locations such as Home Depot. Good candidates include Kalanchoes, Euphorbias, Echeverrias, Aeoniums, Agaves, Sedums, Aloes, and whatever cacti might catch your eye. I'm looking for everything but flowers. I even collect these guys in the dead of winter, the better to have a grand assortment when spring--and pizza time--comes round again.

Drainage and sun are really the only things these plants demand, so I usually need to drill a few extra holes in the bottom of whatever container I'm using. I especially like using saucers, you know the low dishlike things you'd nomally place under a more traditionally shaped pot. For soil, I use my traditional container mix of 1/3 compost, 1/3 good commercial potting soil, and 1/3 bark mulch, but add to that an equal part of pea gravel. So it's half mix, half gravel. I usually mound the soil on the container so the crowns of the plants are above the edge of the saucer or whatever, so they stay high and dry.

When it's design time, I just play around, moving this plant in, that plant out, until I get a good mix of shapes, textures and colors. Then I just mash them into place-since the pots are usually shallow, there's not a lot of room and I just cram it all together. Hey, cram and jam is my preferred garden style anyway. Low growing sedums--'Angelina' is a good one-- make a great groundcover and are often a welcome addition, then sometimes a mulch of fine gravel or a cool looking stone or two provide a finishing touch. As an alternative, you can go more for a one plant/one pot approach and arrange the pots, as in this scene from Chanticleer

Then I'm free to enjoy my creation all season. Since I use a mix of tender and hardy plants, fall's arrival means I usually bring them indoors and try to overwinter the little gardens. In winter's limited light, some stuff gets leggy or otherwise unappealing. So I might try some cuttings of any real favorites, but the idea is to keep at least some of the plants going so the next season I can tear those planters apart and add their contents to my collection of candidates for a new dish of goodies.