Companionable Plants

In the year 2000 I developed an irregular-shaped bed of daylilies at The Green Center in University City, Missouri.  I had promised to mix other perennials in with the daylilies, and in fulfillment of that promise I bought a Crimson Pygmy barberry bush of small size and planted it as a focal point at the rounded end of the bed.  You could call the shape of this part of the bed a "finger" or some other long body part.  I imagined the barberry bush as a background for viewing the daylilies planted all around it.  One of the most effective combinations involved a seedling of mine that I later named PEPPERMINT WIND.

In this picture, the barberry bush makes a "jeweled" background for the daylily blossom.  The picture would be blah without it.

In our back yard I made sure to design a circular bed with a Crimson Pygmy barberry in the center of it.  The circle is ten feet across, so there is room for a ring of daylilies at the edge.  I'm using white, pink, rose, and lavender colors in the daylilies.

At this time of year, the hardy geraniums named Rozanne are growing lush and nuzzling up against the barberry, making a most companionable impression on my imagination this morning.

Outside our garage we have mixed perennial beds along the concrete.  At one location, I planted a group of lavender plants -- Hidcote and Munstead.  In March this year I pruned them back, so when they began to grow in spring they grew lush and bushy.  This week they're coming into full bloom along with a raspberry colored Yarrow plant snuggled in close.  I love the look of this snuggling!

I find it hard to put daylilies into companion relationships, though I continue to try various ideas. This is the early daylily Bitsy with an intense garden phlox next to it.  This isn't going to work until the phlox group is thick.  At the moment, there's no backdrop, just a random blurt of color.

 The real success with companionable garden designs are in our two berms, which Kathy manages.  She's working out a scheme to provide continuous color.  A week ago, the pinks were providing the main accent.  There's also the interest of three redbud trees, three Fire Chief arbor vitae bushes, and masses of Russion Sage growing larger day by day.

We also have companionable animals in our lives here.  There are at least two birds' nests attached to the house, humming birds at our feeders outside the kitchen window, and a trio of ducks that our neighbor gave his wife a year ago as an Easter present.  They have adopted or appropriated our back yard as a second home, and they especially like the companionship of the scant shade under one of our smoke trees.

Color at the End of May

I took a few minutes today, just a few, to enjoy the shapes and colors in the garden.  This salutary practice is contrary to the doctrine of "the overwhelmed landscaper," a class of people who tend to bite off more than they can chew and then gripe about it with their mouths full.  Epic yardwork projects are a way of life for the overwhelmed gardener.  Since we're not camping out on a ten-year siege of Troy, and since no bard is available to sing of our anger, feasting, or hideous death by pitiless bronze, we make plans we have little hope of seeing through and then, quite late, and incompletely, see them through on a landscape.

My back aches.

We have designed our gardens to delight us with form and color before the main season of the daylilies, which occupy most of the garden space on this acre and a half.  Just today I noted the beginning of daylily season with the opening of the charming miniature flower named Bitsy.  It was a Father's Day present to me from my late wife back in 1992.  We lived in Hyde Park, Vermont then, and our favorite place to discover and buy plants was the Cady's Falls Nursery in the tiny hamlet adjoining Hyde Park village.  That's where San bought Bitsy for me.  Don Avery was reluctant to carry it because its foliage coming out of winter looked a little ratty.  Ratty looking daylilies don't sell until they grow better leaves. 

So I've grown Bitsy for twenty years.  I hope for twenty more.

Bitsy is sited on the near corner of one of the beds we see down below us while sitting on the deck or looking out the dining room slider as we make breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  It's a lucky break that the garden phlox I planted next to Bitsy also came into bloom this week.

Typical of the driveway of the overwhelmed landscaper is an array of potted plants not yet planted.  The zinnias and yarrows below have been on the driveway for a full week now.

The name of that zinnia is "Inca." 

On the other side of the driveway there are small zinnias to accompany several other yarrows, and they are actually planted!

This past week marked the beginning of our annual poppy season.  Two years ago on May 27, my Wichita friend, Linda Farris posted to the daylily Robin about her annual poppies.  Here is what she said:

"I decided to stay home and play in my own yard this weekend.  Here at Fieldstone Cottage there is always another bed to weed or more plants to set in.  Still blooming strongly are magnificent double pink and red poppies which form huge swaths of coral pink or intense red in whatever bed they rest. These pinks were heritage-bred poppy seed from the Ukraine, brought to this country with Russian Mennonite immigrants some 150 years ago.

"My original seeds years ago were a gift from a Mennonite descendant and thrown out over a December snow-covered flower bed.  Imagine my total surprise when they sprouted in February, grew to enormous mass in April, and bloomed with vigor in May and June. They are a jaw-dropping sight.

"My red poppies were a gift from above.  I'm guessing that a single seed must have come in on a load of compost from our community recycle center, as one year a single red poppy plant appeared in a pink poppy patch that was mulched the previous fall with community compost.  The robust red double poppy plant made tremendous seeds, which I saved and cast out the following winter in its own huge bed.  As they are self seeding, I now have a 30 x 175 foot bed filled every year with these red beauties.

"My pink bed covers a 16 x 40 foot area in front of our
home."

Here is the pink poppy we started last year from seeds Linda sent us.  This one must have germinated last fall, as all the others are much shorter.

The Siberian Irises also bloom with the peonies at the end of may.  This one is Light of Heaven.

Amber White is a Siberian iris we received as a gift from the renowned daylily hybridizer, Mike Huben, when we spoke to the New England Daylily Society in October of 2011.

The smoke bushes at the lakeside are at their most colorful in late May, just as the knockout roses come into bloom.

To the left of that scene, a Crimson Pygmy Barberry bush provides a reddish purple accent in a circular bed of daylily foliage and emerging poppies.

What is overwhelming the landscaper, who feels five weeks behind right now, is the epic project of moving the selected daylily seedlings into a new bed on less sloped ground so that he can rework the terrible soil in the old bed and plant his new daylily seedlings there.  He (me) is digging a hole for each transplant and is mixing two shovelfuls of compost into the dirt of each hole.  The process of transplant entails inspecting each plant for its habit of growth and dividing it if there are a lot of fans growing tightly together.  This is the smallest of three sections of the new bed, and I mulched it this morning.

An important feature of late May for a daylily collector in St. Peters is the coming into bloom of the daylilies that arrived from sellers in the deep south.  I bought over two hundred new daylilies, a record for me and the main reason I'm overwhelmed.  Today, my favorite of the southern bloomers is Cat's Eye by the Mississippi hybridizer, James Townsend.

I took this picture at noon, but the flower was open perfectly after a cool night when I went out at eight this morning.  I love everything about this face!  Just thinking of it makes me stop whining!