prop house

One of the most enjoyable things that I do in the garden is taking cuttings. I can’t help myself. If I prune something, I almost always end up making cuttings from the prunings, whether or not (and usually not) I need more plants. It’s irresistible. I’ve always found the propagation of plants to be exciting, a celebration of life that is almost more thrilling than seeing a plant bloom (another act of procreation).

Beginning as a child, I delighted in starting seeds, watching the cotyledons poke out of the soil. Later, I learned about division, ground layering, air layering, root cuttings, hardwood cuttings, semi-hardwood cuttings, and softwood cuttings, leaf cuttings, grafting. I find each of these to be a joy, except grafting, which seems to sacrifice one life for another, and the making of one (the rootstock) the slave of another. There’s not much joy in that.

I still find the emergence of seedlings to be wondrous. It is even more pronounced by the waiting imposed by the necessity of stratification of some seeds. After waiting three months with penstemon seeds in the refrigerator, they sprang to life on the windowsill (only to be eaten by birds when I tried to harden the seedlings off, but that’s another story).

I have recently considered that taking cuttings may have surpassed starting seeds in fun. When I have to prune back a plant that is growing enthusiastically, those lush shoots are just the perfect size and frequently the perfect stage for a cutting. How can I deny them a chance at life? Some plants, of course, are much more amenable to cuttings, although that doesn’t stop me from trying the harder ones. But the easy ones are thoroughly satisfying. The American Horticultural Society book Plant Propagation is one of the most read book on my shelf even if I don’t actually do the propagation.

There are some plants that are particularly fun for me to take cuttings. It’s usually because they root quickly.

Salvia ‘Indigo Spires’ is one that I can’t resist. It roots so fast from a tip cutting that it seems to put down roots almost as soon as the cutting is struck. Once, when I first planted ‘Indigo Spires’ something came along and chewed off the stems at the bottom. By the time I found it, lying in the sun, the leaves were beyond wilted - they were crispy on the edges. Still, I had to try, and I trimmed the dry bottoms, and threw them in a glass of water. Amazingly, the two pieces perked up, despite the dried leaf edges, and I struck them as cuttings. A week or two later, and roots were coming out of the drainage holes. It’s also satisfying to grow since ‘Indigo Spires’ grows into a large plant, 3-4 feet in height and diameter, with 2-foot flowering spikes.

Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ (shown above, left) also seems to grow roots faster than you can imagine. Taking a young non-flowering shoot a few inches long, plucking off the lower leaves and throwing it into a pot of dirt is all it takes. A week or two later and new leaves are sprouting and roots are coming out of the drainage holes.

It was surprising to find how easily rosemary roots from 2-inch tip cuttings. It does take a few weeks, and it is best to take cuttings from shoots that seem too young to succeed. Still, they work better than the winter-hardened stems. A little rooting hormone seems helpful, but if I did a comparison study, I bet it wouldn't make a difference.

I tried to grow Ceanothus cuttings for years. I tried heel cuttings, tip cuttings, softwood cuttings, hardwood cuttings, in the spring, summer, fall and even winter but to no avail. A couple of years ago, I was successful with my prized Ceanothus caeruleus, taking spring cuttings and using a liquid rooting hormone. I tried again this spring, and every one of the heel cuttings failed, but the tip cuttings look as if they have succeeded. Lesson learned. There's nothing as satisfying as success.

Dianthus (above, right) is known for its ease of propagation. Some books say to grab a bunch of stems, twist them together, and plant them. Watered and shaded, they will root. This is probably why they are so popular in cottage gardens, which is known for the hand-me-down plants. I find that dianthus takes a few weeks to root, so is less immediately satisfying, but nearly every cutting will root.

Similarly, tip cuttings of the ground-cover Veronica also root easily and reliably, which is exciting since I find the plants to be such a treasure. Similar also is culinary sage, if a young non-flowering shoot is chosen. It’s just as easy to divide sage, though, as it self-layers.

I take cuttings of almost every plant in my garden, just to see what will happen, but other plants are less satisfying for whatever reason. Sedum is too easy, when every bit left in the garden roots and grows. Lavender takes a few months to root and it takes a season or two before the plants seem to build up enough strength. Because of this, I find it’s worth it to buy plants. Euphorbia characias cuttings seem to need to be taken at exactly the right time of the year, when they are easy, but wait too long and I find it is a struggle.

inverness floral center

The Echium was gloriously blue.


I want to emulate this pocket herb garden at some point. Except I don't usually like yellow. Maybe I'll have to make an exception.


A very modernistic portion of the garden was this "meadow" garden.


Heather garden, showing some of the many colors of various cultivars of heather.


Why don't my borders look like this?

mantis

I disturbed this fellow when I was pruning my desert willow. He/she's a bit pissed off...but still cute. Perhaps not the best photo, but at least he was posing.

zausch

When I planted a strip of Zauschneria garrettii 'Mountain Flame', I expected a cardinal red flower. I also expected that it would need very little water and have bushy gray foliage. I was wrong on all counts. To my eye, the "scarlet" flowers are orange, and the flowers never seem to really open up at the end like the flowers of Z. arizonica do, but stay tubular rather than trumpet-like. The plants are rather sparsely branched, not more than a few stems to the plant, lending to a spare or scraggly appearance even after several years. The foliage is green, and tends to have brown tips even when irrigated. Without irrigation, the plants are very small, and die back by summer, with few if any flowers. I took them out. Like other Zauschneria's, however, this plant suckers, making underground stems. This piece survived, next to a drip head.

I can't say that I dislike this plant, otherwise I would have taken the bits out as soon as they appeared. It's just not what I had expected or planned for. The hummingbirds like it (there's a reason the common name is Hummingbird Fuschia). It has grown on me, and now I don't think I can remove it.

rbg

The Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh is a beautiful work. Amazingly, it is free, as are the museums in Scotland. There is so much to see, and of course the photos don't do it justice. I don't think these were actually rock gardens, but they were wonderful collections of plants. Strangely, some of the plants, coddled in gravel, were from my part of the world.


This border is backed by a beech hedge 23 feet high.

The trees were enormous. New Mexico trees are barely shrubs compared to the plants here. Despite the size of the trees, they didn't protect us much from the heavy rainstorm. Fortunately it passed after about an hour (of getting soaked).


The 23 foot high hedge again, from the other side, with smaller gardens separated by shorter hedges of holly.

There's a reason no one is sitting on the benches. It's been pouring rain. This photo taken during a lull. Interestingly, the roads drain pretty well.


Gorgeous glowing rose hips.
Penstemon linarioides growing in a trough garden. Did I go all the way to Scotland to see New Mexico plants?

Meconopsis, demonstrating that Scotland's climate is just about as far from New Mexico as possible.
Cardiocrinum, the giant himalayan lily, about 9 feet tall in this instance.

Origanum sipleum

This is the third time that I'm trying Origanum sipleum (not sure of the spelling), a Turkish oregano. Each time I am enticed by the moody, dusky purple bracts of the fall plants at Agua Fria nursery. The first time, I planted a couple plants in my (relatively) protected courtyard, and the plants had severe winter damage by the following spring. They recovered acceptably by summer, and produced a nice crop of bracts, which were green, not purple. The following winter resulted in severe winter damage and the plants were removed. I bought another plant, of the darkest, duskiest purple I could find, planted it in a similar spot, and a similar thing happened. Green bracts, winter damage. This last time, a plant was planted in a pot on the north side of the house - harsher conditions yet. I expected complete death of the plant, but was surprised to find no winter damage. Many bracts have appeared, which although more colorful than the plants of previous years, are still not the dusky purple that I purchased. Maybe with cooler weather the bracts will color more. Or maybe the plants need even more drought stress. Or maybe the weather difference between here and Santa Fe makes the difference.

castle gardens: 2

Cawdor Castle (above) and Armadale Castle (below). I won't describe these like a travelogue or guidebook. You'll just have to go and see for yourself. Photos don't do them justice anyway.

Looking at these photos, I am reminded that the beauty of these gardens is that they celebrate Scotland's climate. I am sure that after a long and dreary winter, people are eager for plant growth and color. Fortunately the climate allows for this. The lesson, I think, for me in Albuquerque, is not to try to duplicate these gardens (as much as I would like to), but to find that celebration of locale in my own space. It's not likely that it will look like these gardens, and in fact, should not. My task then, is to observe carefully, to garden with awareness, and to discover that kernel of truth in the process that is the making of a garden.

castle gardens: 1

At the bookstore shortly before I left for Scotland, I was browsing through a book magnanimously titled: 1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die. I was surprised to see the number of gardens in Scotland. Upon visiting, I concluded that as a gardener, Scotland is an fantastic place to visit. The weather in Scotland makes for amazing plant growth: steady moisture, long summer days (it was dark only from 11pm to 4:30am when I was there), cool summer temperatures (so that flowers last longer as well as being able to grow things like Himalayan blue poppy), and mild, if chilly and dark, winters (mild enough that plants like Phormium and Alstroemeria do fine).

I am certainly not an expert on Scottish gardens, and I'm sure I didn't visit more than a couple of places in the book. But even in my limited time there, I visited more places and saw more gardens than can be placed in a single post. I'm limiting myself to castle gardens (or big houses or such), and in order on in that these were the order in which I visited them. I'm also trying not to focus on individual flowers, although some were very impressive.

Two for today. Edinburgh castle (first three images above) and Abbotsford house (below), the house of Sir Walter Scott. I can't consider it a "house" myself. I really consider it a castle. It's a shame that the grass looks so brown in the photos. I did not see that at all when I was there, but I was preoccupied by the magnanimous borders, and the amazingly plump and tempting raspberries.

exuberant vs. overgrown

Before.


After.

In my garden, there is a fine line between exuberant and overgrown. As I was away on vacation, my garden went way over the line into unkempt. If my neighbors didn’t know that I was away, they might have thought that my house was abandoned or worse. Spent blooms and seed stalks were everywhere, plants had overgrown paths, and the artemesia and ‘Helen Von Stein’ lamb’s ears had bolted. What was an interesting and orderly combination of forms and textures had degraded in just over a week, into a riot. Who knew that spurge grew that quickly? Somehow the automatic watering system had failed and there had been no rain during my absence, whereas the monsoons were occuring when I left.

Unfortunately, I returned from Europe with the flu and all I could manage was to barely lift my head off the sofa and remember those glorious borders in Scotland and see how dramatically they differed from what I had (of course they have full-time gardeners to dead-head and tidy, but I ignored that fact). Today was the first day that I was able to stand upright for any time, and one of the first things I had to do was to do something about the garden.

Now there’s two things that can be done when the garden has gotten out of hands (well, three, if you count ignoring it). One option is to get out the Felco #8’s and do some cutting back and deadheading. That’s my first option and all I had energy for today. Another option is to break out the shovel. I usually wait for fall or spring to do this, since at this time of year, transplanting is not an option (the heat will kill anything not established, unless I am very careful about watering - not too much, not too little, cutting back, and shading). We are talking removal. I prune back to keep things under control until then.

Once things were trimmed back, I felt much better. Things were back into some sort of balance. The artemesia was given back some form and I had caught it before the allergen producing flowers had opened. The deadheading was accomplished (except for the ones I am saving for seed). The nepeta was pruned back. The stachys was made orderly.

Now it can be said that sometimes I am a bit too orderly. Sometimes I catch myself looking at a plant in full bloom (especially my orchids), and thinking, almost simultaneously as appreciating the flowers, that I can’t wait to trim off the flowers and deal with the dividing and repotting, or whatever else needs to be done, but can’t be done because the plant is in bloom. How sick is that? That’s the good thing about the plants I grow primarily for foliage, I suppose.

There are some people who have mastered the art of the casual garden. Their plants go to seed, they get sprawly and flop untidily, plants randomly die, leaves turn brown, fallen flowers remain unswept, and still their garden looks charmingly relaxed. They have mastered the art of Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese philosophy of finding the perfect in the imperfect. I am clearly not one of these people. Maybe one day.

castles, gardens, and monsters. oh my.

I've just returned after about 40 hours travel, returning from Scotland. It should have been about 22 hours, but let's just say that I'm not very happy about United Airlines right now. It's been an incredible 10 days, and about 800 photos. There are, of course, too many impressions and experiences to put into words, but let me be trite and just say that it was incredibly gorgeous. I'm not going to post much right now, since I'm 8 hours jet-lagged. I'll have to post more photos in the future.

Yes, that is my photo of Eilean Donan Castle (above), claimed to be the most photographed castle in the world. Yes, it was as striking as the photo shows, except of course, more so in person. And quite chilly. I wore two layers of fleece and a wool hat.

I haven't read much about the gardens in Scotland. It doesn't seem like the gardening world looks at Scotland, but focuses on England. But let me tell you that there are many, many fine gardens in Scotland. The flower borders at Cawdor Castle (below) were just like the borders seen in the photos of English borders. The natural landscape in Scotland is just as striking, with lushly green mountains and valleys.


Of course Scotland is known for the Loch Ness monster (which I think is rather silly, since there is so much more to recommend Scotland).


Here's my photo out the window of the boat, with a shot of nessie (a decal on the window of the boat). Even without the mystical nessie, the loch is amazing, and during our cruise, one end was shrouded in layers of fog, bringing to mind the book The Mists of Avalon. I wanted to stand on the prow of the boat and bring the mists down as in the book, so that we could dock in Avalon. But of course everyone would think I was truly crazy, even for an American, standing on the prow of the boat flapping my arms around.

And one word about kilts...yum.