C'mon... not one thing named for The Ramones???

Here's your top 10 plants found in a punk rock garden! Oi!

1. Coleus 'fishnet'
   
2. Burkwood Viburnum 'Mohawk'
   
3. Miniature Dwarf Bearded Iris 'punk'
   
4. Hemerocallis 'Sid & Hosta 'Nancy'
   
5. Pulmonaria 'leopard'
   
6. Iris 'pogo'
   
7. Triumph Tulip 'tattoo'
   
8. Hemerocallis 'lipstick and leather'
   
9. Bean 'skull face'
   
10. SPIKES!

Indiana: Blue state Me: need a blue garden

I already told you that I had a color scheme in the front yard. The back's "theme" color is blue. I have blue flowers and blue tschotchke acccented with a lot of pink, red and black. Here's what I've got on my plate:

1. Stokesia- I don't know the cultivar, it's not so purple, I swear!

2. Buddleia -somewhat purple

3. Baptisia- Hmmmm, if it's called False Indigo how blue can it be?

4. Clematis 'multi-blue' - I'm going by the name, it's quite purple...

5. Borage- totally and completely blue

6. Nepeta - boring and blue...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

7. Delphinium - so far, so good... should be blue... if they live

8. Elymus arenarius -Blue Dune Grass -super blue, probably because the dunes are within spitting distance?

9. Playcodon 'sentimental blue' - name says it all, but I think it's purple

10. Centaurea montana -my kind of weed! Totally blue...

There's a whole lot else out there... what else do you think I should have?

"I can't believe I gave my panties to a geek" and other favorites...

Sometimes when I'm driving around in my vintage Saab in my vintage clothes I can't help but feel like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. Although the Saab is in the shop... and her car was a totally rad Karmann Ghia and I'm not so much from the wrong side of the tracks... and I'm not in high school. But whatever.



Those John Hughes movies got me through rough adolescent times and now they get me through cold weekend afternoons, when I have time to stop and watch one... seems like there's always one on!

If I had a John Hughes/Molly Ringwald movies themed garden...

1. Clethra '16 candles'

2. Fragaria 'pretty in pink'

3. Lathyrus 'North Shore'

4. Hosta 'Iona'

5. Dahlia 'lucky ducky' (sic)

6. Sedum 'hot stuff' (as in "What's happening, hot stuff?")

7. Hosta 'Molly'

8. Hydrangea 'Samantha"

9. Neoregelia 'Donger'

10. Cucurbita 'Claire'

A Strong Case against Fall Clean-ups

This is just a random person's yard but... if they had already cleaned it up they wouldn't have this awesome Iris blooming in November. I loooove it.

I'e been having a helluva time with my Comcast lately- like for months but especially bad now. So I'm a little behind in my blogging.

So let me squeeze this in.

I am so happy and relieved that Barack Obama was elected, I worked really hard in Indiana to try and do my part but and I was wishing I had done more... but apparently it worked out the way I wanted it to! I am really proud Indiana pulled it off. It was beautiful to see the volunteers coming in by the truckloads, especially the ones that came in form Chicago. Sadly, I've heard a ton of really stupid, racist things sice the election but... whatever, I lived with Bush for 8 years so they can piss off! And we won, so, whatever!

Thanks for being wonderful, thatnks for all your emails and Tweets... and I have some awesome stuff for you as soon as Comcast will let me.

Because they suck.

Dahlia-lovers of the world- unite and take over!

The Dahlias in my back yard are O-V-E-R! The ones in the front still look nice, perhaps a little depressed but still alive and kicking. So I dug the ones in back up, cleaned them off, "labeled" them with some appropriately colored embroidery floss (not butt floss, that was yesterday's posts) and crated them and took them to the scary part of the basement.

Oh yeah, there's a civilized side and a terrifying part of the basement, separated by a door that looks like it holds back a band of killer clowns or something.

Ah, the charm of old homes....

Spin-off: The Chewbacca Flower?

I loved all your Star Wars garden suggestions! Maybe I'll have to go ahead with that! This one sticks out as something I should have known about...
"'It's more werewolf than Chewbacca, but we call it Chewbacca in the horticulture community,' he said."
read all about the Chewbacca Flower here
from the Tuscaloosa News

Trick or Treat! for gardeners!

My costume must be really rad because this red-twigged dogwood was laying in my yard this morning!

Best photos I ever took

I took these 2 years ago at this time of the year, notorious for bad photos, I wanted to make sure you saw these...

Ye Olde Garden Shoppe

A gaquillion years ago when I was working at a posh garden center in Chicago, we got to make the entry container display for the Sheffield Garden Walk- which is pretty posh itself. A nice little multi-zillion dollar garden walk with a garden of a different kind at the end... a Beer Garden, block party style- with bands and food- you name it.


So I'm all excited about the complete honor it is to have containers I make on display at the gates of the damn thing... So I plot and I labor...


We had AWESOME cedar planter boxes made by rehabilitated armless lumberjacks in Maine or something so I got some casters to put on the bottom because we would have to be delivering these the day of the event. Just roll them up the ramp of the box truck, roll the down and POOF! It's a display!


The theme was Victorian Tropical- which is an awesome theme to run with. The centerpiece of all this hulabaloo was a large square box with a Triangle Palm in the center, framed with the tiniest Boxwood hedge EVER and jammed full of Purple Heart (Tradescantia pallida) brimming over the top of the hedge.


I made the hedge by using about 20 1 gallon Boxwoods at about $20 each= $400


The Triangle Palm wasn't cheap... =$125


The Purple Heart was... except I used a LOT of it... 20 @ $6= $180


6 bags of premium potting soil? =$80


The hand hewn, lumberjack crafted box? = $190


Casters=$12





Well, we maybe shoulda spent a little more on the casters. The day of the shindig the casters get caught on the bricks and the whole damn thing disintegrates. Do you know how hard it is to rehabilitate a tiny hedge?


Next to damn impossible.


I labored and plotted and time was out. We got the-shadow-of-its-former-self up there on that box truck and delivered it to the gates of the block party...


Only to have it be used as a trash/cigarette butt receptacle by Chicago's garden elite...

What do "we" think about...

Knock Out Standards?

We had some in our "yard" at work for a while. They were mega skimpy, but I can imagine that in a summer or 2 they could be stunners.

I'm not sure how I feel about Rose standards at all really. I had a customer that had massive ones at each corner of her pool and we had to drag them in to her garage every winter. I enjoyed pruning and shaping them very much but that's like asking me if I enjoy watching gossip Girl. Pruning= Gossip Girl

I have problems, Get over it.

In the north we just aren't supposed to have Rose standards, right???

Gardening Dictionary by Kiss my Aster

Glauca or Glaucus- Often people think this means blue, it doesn't. It's a waxy covering that you can rub off with yor fingers. Think Hostas.
For example, a Dwarf Alberta Spruce (Picea conica glauca) isn't blue, but it's glaucus.
or in a sentence, "I like my paczki extra glaucus"

Plants for my Star Wars garden...

When I worked at my first garden center, one of the Sacred Coventant of Holy Learned Extraordinary Perennials Sages (SCHLEPS) told me of her "faerie garden" that had a tiny house and a little fence and I'm all..."YAWN! Were you talking to me?"
Then she said,"But there aren't faeries in it, I put Stormtroopers all over it like they killed the faeries"
I came home and told my mom I was a flight risk, this lady at work was allllllllllllllllright!

So, for Connie- and naturally Jeanette, Mother of the SCHLEPS... plants I'd have in my Star Wars garden...

1. Hemerocallis 'Princess Leia"
2. Lilium 'starfighter'
3. Magnolia 'Star Wars"
4. Hemerocallis 'wild Wookie (sic)"


What else can you think of?


Darth Martha's galoshes rock!


Garden Wars Episode Two - Click here for more amazing videos

Flashback:Where are they now?

Here's an update on the succulent typewriter.

I beleive it is now indoors, tucked away fro the winter....

Lemon Lime Chocolate Wine

It's true that I prefer a monochromatic garden. I see so many gardens that just look like somebody vomited a rainbow everywhere. I like to keep it a little more mellow...but I don't think anyone would call my style too "matchy-matchy" either...
So, our little rental cottage is painted yellow with sage trim, so in front I've gone all lime and lemon. But with serious punches of chocolate and whine, I mean wine.

for lemon/lime I already have...
1. Alchemilla mollis Ladies Mantle
2. Euphorbias... up the ass
3. Hydrangea 'limelight'
4. Yucca 'color guard'
5. Agastache neon-freaking-yellow
6. Iris aureomarginata
7. Sedum 'Angelina'
8. Lysimachia aurea
9. Hakonechloa grass
10. Clematis tangutica

for chocolate and wine?
1. Ligularia 'Britt-Marie Crawford'
2. Hemerocallis 'American revolution'
3. Chocollate Eupatorium
4. Rodgersia 'chocolate wings'
5. Cimicifuga 'black negligee'
6. Chocolate Cosmos
7. Black Mondo Grass
8. Some mystery Bearded Iris- darkity dark dark!
9. Bronze Fennel- can't get out of bed without it
10. Heuchera 'obsidian'

What am I missing?

If I say "potato" and you say "potatio"...

Nerd alert. I love botanic Latin. It is my gardening gospel and one thing in this crazy world of mine that's real, concrete and I can count on it. Actaea vs. Cimicifuga aside.

I get excited when I see pictures of Linnaeus.

Ok, so you get it.

There are a few hideously mispronounced plant names that drive me crazy. I'm not talking about people just putting the accent on the wrong syllable or anything... I'm talking about people adding syllables and ignoring others... The one on my mind today is Weigela. 9 times out of 10 I hear this pronounced as "Weigeel-EE-a". Where does that come from??? Sound it out people! A guy named Weigel discovered it, they added an "a" to the end of his name.

'nuff said.

But before you think I'm a freak-show (I am so...whatever...) I do think it's cute that a chick at work calls the Filipendula, "flipendula"...

What plant names cheese you off?

photos from Josie

Please click on the images to appreciate them more fully....

The Russian roulette of plant families: Solanum

I have been strangely drawn to the Solanaceae family of late. I'm weeding out the Nightshade, feeding my tomatoes the liquid from my worm bins. waiting for my Datura and Brugmansia to open, watching in wonder as my Pumpkin-on-a-Sticks and Tomatillos develop. I'm Googling the mystery Solanum I got from Ted's Greenhouse...I hope my Nictotiana sylvestris seeds out everywhere and I have 3 trillion of them next year... AND I harvested some of my very own potatoes! These plants, including more- and more you see every day- are all in the same family and some could literally kill you and some go on a nice BLT and become your fries to go with that BLT...
How can this family have such poisons and scumptious yummies in it? Apparently it has to do with the level of alkaloids each plant has in it... which is where I start to lose interest and go pick me some Solanums and sit in front of the TV... where I can be a couch Solanum... You knew it was coming...
Pumpkin on a Stick

Gently Touch the Milkweed!

Dan and I picked this book up from a free table at the fabulous Chesterton European Market (if you came to visit me, it's about the only place I could take you so we'd have something cool to do). "But within the rough, ugly pods there were the soft spun-silver clouds of seeds, and she felt that within her own harsh shell there were also seeds of something beautiful..."

WOW! I can't believe the awesome crap I find sometimes!

But seriously, Milkweed- or Asclepias syriaca if you're a nerd like me, has such awesome flowers the whole premise doesn't make sense. Don't make me read it just to figure out this is some sort of ugly ducking in reverse thing...

Number one- the Larch

From Horticulture Magazine October 15th, 1946

ok, I did grow up in a nature-y sort of way. I learned the names of the weeds while I was young, I understoond that through some magical process the cucumbers we grew in our back yard garden became pickles... but I think one of the first trees I learned to ID is the Larch.

And here's why...

I was the kid who pretended to go to bed on Sunday nights and then turned on my tiny tv to watch British TV on PBS all night. Quelle Nerd!
Made me SUPER popular with the other 7th graders...

Bringing 'em in...

A lot of people I talk to have problems with plants reseeding and growing everywhere and ruining their lives. I think one of the reasons this never happens to me is that I'm a big time cutter. I bring a bouquet everywhere I'm invited all summer long, I have cuts in the house at all times (in season)...

oh, and also I deadhead to an extreme that leads me to deadhead things in the Target parking lot...