Surprise Return Engagements

I love the surprises that emerge in the spring garden - those plants that I thought I'd said a last goodbye to with the first frost but nonetheless come peeking out of the ground in the spring. We had a weird winter here with too many freezing temps and lots of wind to stir that cold air up. My expectations for winter survivors were pretty low so I was shocked to see these emerge: angelonia augustifolia (maybe AngelMist Plum), a red penta, two acalypha wilkesiana, acalypha pendula, and a caladium. These are all "maybes" in Mt. Pleasant so after a mild winter I would have expected them to survive. But this year, not so much. All of them were in a very exposed, very windy corner of my yard with no overhead protection, no special mulching, no advantage working in their favor.

Being the obsessed gardener that I am, I'm now hovering over them and can't wait to see how quickly they grow. And I'm also on the lookout for other survivors. It is all part of what makes gardening so much fun, isn't it?

The Lowly Azalea

My mother always said that the problem with a lot of Charleston gardeners is that they just stick a slew of azaleas and a handful of camellias in the yard and call it a garden. There truly is an azalea overload around here and hence I vowed to never plant an azalea...way too common for me, I thought. Leave azaleas to the "garden variety gardeners".

Ha, ha, and ha again. It turns out, I'm no more immune to azaleas than the next person. They are just too beautiful and too easy. As spring rolls in, I find myself in the garden centers drooling over all those luscious colors and wanting to take every one home. So I've put myself on an azalea "diet" but when I first saw Elsie Lee, I couldn't resist. This has got to be the most feminine of azaleas: the flowers are ruffled, double, and the color is an absolutely ethereal shade of orchid. Very girly.



My Elsie Lee's started blooming about a week ago and are in full bloom now. I can't wait till they've gained a bit of stature and make a real statement in my frontyard.

Jump Down, Pick a Bale of Cotton

I'm not a fan of winter. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it is a necessity but it curtails the bloomy goings on in my yard and I just can't get beyond a bit of resentment over that. So I take it out on my yard and ignore it for a couple of months. The problem with petulantly turning my back on the garden all winter is that Mother Nature takes up the gardening chores in my absence and we have quite different taste and styles. She tends to like Florida Betony and Chickweed. Me, not so much.

But in anticipation of our average last-frost date just around the corner, I've emerged from semi- hibernation, rubbed my eyes a few times, eaten a few honey-soaked biscuits and marvelled at what a speedy gardener Mother Nature is. The weeds are thick. Some of them I know I will have to spray with herbicide but others I'm trying to handpull and it is overwhelming!

Overwhelming, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Being a bit of history geek and a born southerner, looking at all those weeds made me think of the old song "Jump Down, Pick a Bale of Cotton" (to see a vido of folk musician Lead Belly performing the song click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE9QYkkxyVQ) and that made me think of all the agricultural workers, past and present, black and white and every other color, here and abroad, who've picked bales/buckets/pallets of cotton/whatever day in and day out for years under a hot sun and with meager rations for meager compensation if any.

Yikes, what a wimp I am!

Elephants of Winter

It has been awhile since I have written anything- holidays and computer problems are my excuse. But now it is a new year so lets start with a bang of a plant. This hunk of a plant is called Farfugium japonicum 'Giganteum' or F.reniforme , either way it is one spectacular plant.

It has just finished blooming after a two month season but even without the 30" high yellow daisies the plant is still striking. The foliage is 2' tall, shiny and so large it looks tropical. Those big leaves demand shade and a good supply of water as they will wilt even in winter. Keep the hose handy!

The plant can be divided every spring and soon you too will have a herd of elephants in your garden. They call attention when massed better then any plant in the garden so use them with care. They can easily create a visual barrier that can act like a hedge and hide smaller plants. Plant them so they lead the eye into the distance.

The herd pictured started as one plant six years ago and with careful dividing has grown into a mass of twenty-five plants. Start your herd today!

Okay, So I'm a Bit Obsessed

But it isn't my fault really. Charleston is just such a great laboratory for observing microclimates. Like this tropical hibiscus blooming today in downtown Charleston long after the hibiscus in my yard just across the harbor were killed by the frost. This particular plant bloomed all last winter and never had any frost damage at all and is now reaching for the second floor of the building.

This plant, though, was born with a horticultural silver spoon in its, ah, mouth:

• It is planted up against a heat-retaining brick wall.
• It is located just a few hundred feet from the Charleston Harbor where the heat retained by the water warms the air a bit. The entire penninsula of Charleston is warmer than surrounding areas because the two rivers that flank it provide a slight warming to the air.
• It is located in downtown Charleston which is warmer due to the effects of the urban heat island.

I'm very jealous. The hibiscus in my yard won't bloom until next fall because they will have to come back all the way from the root IF they come back at all. What a difference a few miles can make.

Broms of December

The surprise of tropical color on a gray winters day should be enough to convince anyone in the coastal South to grow bromeliads. I've watched many a woman stop in her tracks and ask me what that beautiful flower is and may she have a piece. Aechmea gamosepala has that effect on people. The blue flowers on a pinkish-purple spathe screams "hello" while the thornless leaves are gardener friendly.

The above picture shows the plant crawling up a live oak trunk providing both the shade and shelter from frost that this plant needs. White frost will damage this plant but I've seen it undamaged by 22f under an evergreen canopy. Just place it at the base of a tree and this plant will make itself at home with a minimum of care. As a small ground cover it is so dense few weeds can penetrate.

Another great one is Aechmea distichantha (above), with its bright pink spathes that remain brilliant for months after the flowers fade. The plant is wickedly thorny and depending on the variety can be huge, with leaves over two feet long tipped with a spine that can penetrate leather.

Easy to grow whether in a crotch of a tree or as a specimen on the ground all the plant requires is part shade and a well drained site as do all broms . Under the canopy of a tree the plant has taken temps down into the upper teens undamaged. There are three different forms on the market that vary in size from 1' tall to a variety that has curved leaves that are 3' long. The bloom season varies but it is always at the darkest time of year.

The Tropics Are Just a Live Oak Away

The tropics are just a live oak away? Okay, maybe not. There are no coconut palm lined beaches magically appearing on the other side of my live oak tree. There is no secret door in the trunk that magically opens to a warmer, sunnier place. But.....there are tropical plants that thrive under the live oak.

Charleston straddles USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Ho-Hum (or 8b), with minimum temperatures of 15-20 degrees, and USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Ooh-La-La (or 9a), with minimum temperatures of 20-25 degrees. What grows in Zone Ooh-La-La? Think tropical hibiscus, some bromeliads, an expanded range of palms, tropical ferns. I want that! So I keep shoving more marginal plants under the protective canopy of my live oak.

The happy little collection of strobilanthes, aechmea, vriesea gigantea "Nova", and monstera in this November 30 photo was unscathed by the scattering of freezing temps that had knocked back other tender plants in exposed areas of my yard. Will they all make it through the winter? Who knows. I have serious doubt about the monstera and even the sturdier plants in that group may die if we have an exceptionally cold weather. In the meantime though, I love having that bit of color hanging on in my yard.

A live oak can help gain those few precious degrees that mean a tropical that would normally die is instead root-hardy (hopefully the case with the monstera) or that a tropical that normally would only be root-hardy is evergreen (for example, the Persian Shield). On a cold night, the closed canopy of the live oak acts like a cozy down blanket by trapping the warmer air radiated up from the ground. That same "blanket" also prevents plant cell damaging frost from settling on leaves and stems.

How much of a difference does it make? Seeing is believing. In a downtown Charleston park, this Persian Shield, lying just a few feet outside the dripline of a Live Oak, was top-killed by freezing temps a few days ago:

But just ten feet away, under the protective cover of the same Live Oak, this Persian Shield is untouched by the cold:

And because it hasn't been killed back in years, it has these great big leaves:

Same story with this groundcover which is also outside the dripline of the Live Oak:

And again just ten feet away, is the same plant, same day:

I have no idea what this little groundcover is. Any suggestions? I do know that under that tree it is perennial.

Of course, it isn't only live oaks that afford some freeze protection. This Blue Daze is sheltered by the lorapetalum in the background but just a few feet away ten more Blue Daze are all top-dead:


If these plants all thrive this winter, my azaleas and holly ferns had better watch out... Zone Ooh-La-La will be moving on in!