July-August 2014: High Summer in Garden and Meadow: 2.Clematis

First flower on a first-year plant of Clematis fusca. This is a dwarf form of the species, a treasure from Silver Star Vinery

An unnnamed seedling from Debbie at Silver Star Vinery, like our other seedling, fitting in the Viticella Group

A (named) Viticella Group clematis, C. 'Little Bas'. With its violet nodding flowers this looks much like   the species C. viticella.

Clematis 'Odoriba' with Shirley poppies, Papaver rhoeas

July bouquet of Clematis 'Odoriba' and C. 'Minuet'

Clematis 'Princess Diana'

Clematis integrifolia 'Rose Colored Glasses'

An unknown white integrifolia-type clematis, possibly C. 'Hakuree'.  Acquired as C. 'Pangbourne Pink', but it's clearly not that.

Clematis x durandii blooms and blooms.

So does Clematis  'Roguchi'.

A cluster of Clematis 'Roguchi' in early August. It may bloom even into October.

July-August 2014: High Summer in Garden and Meadow: 1.Hot and Cool

Hemerocallis 'Dark Star' starts July, and our our daylily season, in earnest in the fenced garden (beyond David are the small yellow flowers of Hemerocallis 'Corky', which begins flowering around the same time.)  In the foreground, black-eyed, flagrantly magenta Geranium 'Anne Thomson' picks up and modulates the daylily's red tone-- on a much louder note.

Geranium 'Anne Thomson' is similar in ancestry and appearance to the better known G. 'Ann Folkard'-- magenta flowers flaunted against chartreuse young foliage for most of the summer, on weaving stems. G.'Ann Folkard' dies here in summer heat or winter cold, but we have grown G. 'Anne  Thomson' for many years.

More hot summer colors: the extraordinary deep claret of Knautia macedonica, paired in the entry courtyard with brilliant orange Asclepias tuberosa, butterflyweed.

Ascelpias tuberosa, planted originally in the meadow, has seeded itself around and is almost always welcome; here it is in the big island bed, cooled by nearby blues from nepetas and tradescantias.

Ascepias tuberosa with Verbascum chaixii 'Album'

Home grown chance hybrid coneflowers (hybrids between Echinacea purpurea and E. tennesseensis) began to bloom in June, but continue through July-- here with the orange of Asclepias tuberosa as a backdrop.

The warm apricot colors of Gladiolus 'Boone' are like nothing else in the garden. This glad is more or less hardy here, left in the ground over numerous winters. In our fenced garden voles pose a greater hazard than cold. Here it is flanked by Geranium 'Orkney Cherry' and Papaver rhoeas.

   

Delosperma 'Topaz' achieves its shimmering color by shading peachy yellow with a touch of magenta. We hope this new plant will winter in the gravel of the east garden steps.

 

Allium flavum 'Blue Leaf' (aka 'Glaucum') lights its yellow firecrackers under the pool terrace bench, which faces south and catches the sun.

   

The clear, soft lavendar blue flowers of Tradescantia subaspera 'LSS Lazy Blue' cool us through most of the summer. It is less of a thug than other tradescantias here. Those include self-sown apparent crosses between it and T. 'Concord Grape', which was pretty much sterile when it was our lone spiderwort.

Volunteer seedling crosses between Tradescantia subaspera and T. 'Concord Grape' have crowded out what we planted as a second group of T. subaspera 'LSS Lazy Blue'. The purples of the seedlings are more or less welcome in this part of the big island bed, backed by Clematis x durandii and the oddly chartreuse-toned early summer foliage of Cornus 'Midwinter Fire'. Late bracts of Euphorbia griffithii 'Fireglow' add sparks of orange, Malva alcea fastigiata a little of pink, and Verbascum chaixii 'Album' short spires of white.

A slightly later companion to those tradescantias is Euphorbia schillingii, typically spurge-chartreuse but atypically tall and late blooming. The tall. pale lavender spikes are Veronicastrum 'Lavendelturm'.

Euphorbia seguieriana var. niciciana is another summer-blooming spurge (this one for many weeks). Its chartreuse floral bracts cool neighboring colors (even, here, the red garage roof). It self sows freely, especially in gravel. Here it has crossed a path to establish outposts among short grasses and sedges in the meadow.

 

Euphorbia myrsinites bears chartreuse bracts in early spring, with blue-green foliage impersonating a big-leafed sedum for the rest of the season, even persisting through winter.  Here it softens the stone and gravel of our renovated west steps.

Stone replaced locust log steps through the meadow on the west side of the house this spring, and still look a little raw.

More cool glaucous foliage, from Hosta 'Blue Mouse Ears' in the partial shade of the fenced garden bench (with the yellow flowers of Sedum rupestre-- which also has glaucous, blue-green foliage.

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The blue-gray-green foliage of leadplant, Amorpha canescens is also coated, at least early in the season, with a whitish bloom. A drought tolerant legume, leadplant is one of the few plants to do well on the upper slopes of our meadow, increasingly impoverished by expanding tree roots from the woodland edge.

 

A close view of leadplant's purple flowers reveals their orange anthers; from farther off those add complexity or sparkle.

Iris season can never last long enough! This is Iris 'Currier McEwen', a hybrid between an Iris ensata cultivar (a Japanese iris) and the American blue flag, Iris versicolor; it helps to extend the season.

June into July 2014: Non-vining clematis

Looking across the big island bed on a foggy morning, with Clematis x durandii clambering through its new support in the foreground

I have long been intrigued by herbaceous, non-vining clematis-- species and cultivars that lack the twisting petioles by which most clematis cling to their hosts. Many of these clematis are shorter than the big vines, but lacking their equipment for hoisting themselves, the non-vining types tend to rise straight up a way. Then they flop, and manage to rise again from the tips. The habit is politely described as "decumbent", but in the garden, it's promising… and then it's a mess. With the two or three sorts we had long grown I'd tried the usual prescriptions, guiding them through or over neighboring plants or supporting them with peasticks (brushy, much-branched stakes). I still had a mess, and often, flowers near ground level-- disfigured by earwigs and slugs.  Upside-down tomato cages seem to solve the problem, at least once we add some sort of finial to what were meant to be the legs (which if left exposed threaten the limbs and eyes of the gardener). We're using grape vine spheres, and  also the terra cotta finials meant for holding together bamboo stake obelisks. The bases of the cages need firm anchoring with long staples, the sort meant for landscape fabric. These upside-down tomato cages (I found the idea at the blog or website of a public garden I've since forgotten and can't locate via Google) seem to suit the former vegetable garden air of our fenced garden; a couple seem comfortable outside it. Caging has let me get more out of the non-vining clematis we had-- and to add a lot more kinds.

Clematis 'Gazelle' in an inverted tomato cage support, and planted just last fall. By next year the plant will be taller and should fill the cage with more stems.

Clematis x durandii in the big island bed. It's been in its spot for years, but never showed well until we gave it better support-- along with plenty of fertilizer and water.

Clematis x durandii flowers, like some other clematis, are perhaps as beautiful seen from the back.

Clematis SAPHYRA DOUBLE ROSE 'Cleminov29', first flower. The name in all-caps is a trademark name; the name in single quotes is what should be an invalid cultivar name...

Clematis SAPHYRA INDIGO 'Cleminov51' opening its first flowers on young plants. The flowers slowly open further, flatter, and paler.

Clematis SAPHYRA INDIGO 'Cleminov51'. Plant Delights Nursery has published the name as Clematis 'Sapphire Indigo', using the trademark name in place of the patently invalid putative cultivar name. Good for Tony Avent.

Clematis BLUE PIROUETTE 'Zoeblupi'.  We got this as a small plant from Plant Delights Nursery eight years ago (as just Clematis 'Zoebluepi'!) Small clematis plants can be hard to establish. This one was more or less lost in the jungle and failing to rise through a symphoricarpus shrub for all that time. I may have found it and given it a bit of fertilizer last fall or this spring-- but was still surprised to see its first flowers after all that time.

Clematis 'Juuli', planted last fall in the fenced garden.

Clematis 'Juuli'

Rosa 'Sharifa Asma', one of David Austin's English Roses, in front of Clematis 'Aliononuska' in its first year with us.  At one time the fenced garden was largely roses and their companions.

Clematis 'Aliononuska'

Clematis 'Aliononuska'

Clematis 'Pamiat Serdtsa', another first year plant, and another Ukrainian name-- both clematis were bred in what was, at least at the time, part of Ukraine.

Clematis 'Arabella',  Barry Fretwell's big hit in breeding non-vining clematis. He has written of regretting not having been able to secure plant breeder's rights on what has become a widely sold plant. We were able to get both 'Arabella' and 'Alionushka' from local nurseries.

Clematis 'Arabella'

Clematis 'Arabella' with the red and chartreuse of spigelia.