WATER-WISE, PART 2

 

Hose at the ready:
Thanks, Oak Island

            Tim and I have an in-ground irrigation system. I love it for convenience’s sake, because it frees me from dragging hoses and sprinklers around the yard. Or at least it did until our megalomaniacal town government forced The World’s Most Expensive Sewer System down our throats just because they want the 45-foot height restriction lifted so we can become Myrtle Beach.

            Be that as it may, I no longer use the irrigation system except for the drip zone. I’m back to hauling hoses to water the south-side nursery pots and any new planting that isn’t reached by dripline until it stops wilting. The lawn is on its own. Spray zones are inefficient anyway, as they are subject to wind and evaporation issues. Plus, I’m not totally convinced the perfectly manicured lawn—an artificial, high-maintenance monoculture—is such a great idea in the first place. (In Second Nature, Michael Pollan does a hilarious riff on his dad’s refusal to buy into the tyranny of grass in a Long Island suburb in the 1950s. See Good Reads at right.)

Mr. Pollan takes on the POA
in Chapter 1

Nonetheless, irrigation systems relieve the daily tedium of hydrating your landscape—just set the clock and let her go while keeping a weather eye out for, well, the weather. Of course, nothing yet devised by man is without its little hiccups. Lots of things can go wrong, starting with installation. Some installation contractors have a deep understanding of, indeed an affinity for, the hows and whys of irrigation mechanics. Others just stick pipe and wires in the ground and hope for the best.

Even flawlessly installed systems, however, can run into trouble for a number of other reasons. Programmophobia, the unreasoning fear of touching the controller, crops up with alarming frequency. Most clocks offer two or three programs, each of which has three possible start times. It’s important not to overlap start times, because when you do, no water comes out anywhere. You’ll need to know how to set zone run-times and water days for every program you use. It’s also important to know how to run the system manually, both from the clock and at the valves. This is essential because how much and when you’re watering what changes fairly often. Why’s that? you ask. Because water requirements change over time. Well-established lawns and shrubbery need less (or no) supplemental irrigation, especially in cool seasons. For those of you who keep adding plants like I do, drip is pretty much forever. You’ll also need to know how to change the back-up battery that lives inside the clock, which saves your watering program for 24 hours should you lose power for any reason. The battery cannot run the system, however, so get in the habit of checking both the controller and the ground-fault-interrupter outlet it’s plugged into after every thunderstorm and whenever you have to reset your microwave clock.



A few other common irrigation aggravations include:

The Fitzgeralds' Nelson
irrigation computer-clock



·         Rain sensors. These excel at sensing rain and turning the system off but to date have proven lacksidaisical about turning things back on after the rain stops. Glenn, our irrigation guy, assures us they’re getting better. Uh-huh.

·         People operating vibrating plows, trenchers and core aerators. All these pieces of equipment can (and do!) cut through, shatter and/or puncture hard pipe and driplines without anyone’s knowledge until the grass and shrubs start to go brown and crunchy despite the fact that new wetlands seem to be forming out at the front of your property.





Watch out for this guy
with his Dingo trencher



            ·         Thirsty rodents. Squirrels regularly splash all the water out of  the bird bath I installed expressly for their convenience and enjoyment, then gnaw holes in my driplines to get a drink. Flirty-tailed little bastards. And the raccoons are just as bad.

            ·         Summer vacations. If anything is going to go terribly wrong with your irrigation system, it will happen when you’re out of town. Ask someone you trust to check on things inside and out while you’re gallivanting. Especially after thunderstorms.



Dripline,
the most efficient way to water



In irrigation as in life you get what you pay for. An all-drip system—one without any spray heads, even for the lawn—is the most cost-over-time and water-use efficient way to go. It is also the most expensive initially, even assuming you find a contractor who’s heard of all-drip irrigation and knows how to install it. Be aware that quality of materials varies significantly. Heads range from el-cheapo plastic to top-of-the-line brass. Although none of them lasts forever (imagine grains of dirt grinding away at moving parts every time a head pops up, rotates and retracts), the replacement interval for the higher-quality models far exceeds that of bargain-basement specials. The basic system is a sprays-for-grass-and-drip-for-garden-areas array. Insist on a zone dedicated to dripline, for three reasons: 1) many plants, like roses and azaleas, resent overhead watering as this practice promotes fungal growth and sun-scorched foliage; 2) at some point you’re going to be able to drastically reduce the water you give your grass, and where does that leave all those garden areas serviced by the same zone?; and 3) do you really want to make life easier for those weeds in your “natural” areas?

For your information, a turf head—the large, rotating sprayer—spews out about two-and-a-half gallons a minute. Spray heads—the smaller ones that water in a constant arc—throw out four or so gallons a minute. Neither of these figures accounts for evaporation or wind dispersal. If time hangs heavy on your hands, you can count the number and type of heads per zone and multiply by the appropriate gallons-per-minute to determine how much water comes out: divide the number of gallons by the square footage of the area (rough length by approximate width—it’s easier if you make everything a rectangle) to learn how much water you’re providing per square foot per cycle. You’ll probably be appalled.



Turf head spewing
two-and-a-half gallons per minute
while rotating 180 degrees



Spray head (on a riser)
blowing out four gallons per minute
in a fixed arc





Emitters and the special
emitter tool for making holes
in the drip pipe
(the red-top one is an 8 liter,
the green-bottom one a 1 gallon 



Driplines have little button- or spigot-like things stuck into them, called emitters, where the water comes out.  They are calibrated to release two gallons/eight liters per hour or one gallon/four liters per hour. You can tell which ones you have by peering closely at the thing—it has a teeny-tiny 2 or 8, or a 1 or  4 stamped on it somewhere. Emitters should be placed well away from the main stem of the plant but still within the rootball area. How long and how often you run the drip zone depends on the number, placement and output of the emitters, and on your soil type.



While a well may seem an attractive alternative to connecting to municipal sources, the hidden costs of “free” water can be prohibitive. Mainly, you have to worry about the pump. In my neighborhood, irrigation-only wells tend to be shallow, and the pump ends up above-ground, usually in an aesthetically inappropriate place. Pump installation quality varies as much as that of irrigation systems themselves, and for the same reasons. Preventing cracked lines during winter is another headache. Because watering during the cold months in mild-winter areas is essential for newly installed plants and shrubs, you can’t just winterize the pump and turn it off. Anti-freezing devices that involve electricity (heat-tape, light bulbs, etc.) are subject to the vagaries of the power grid. You can also count on dirt getting drawn up with the water, so your driplines will need to be blown out once or twice a year to prevent them from clogging up. (Do this by removing whatever crimps the end of the line, then run the zone for a minute or two.) This is especially true if you use quarter-inch tubing to irrigate your containers—these plug up in no time at all. Emitters at the ends of these "spaghetti" lines may also become obstructed, reducing—or nullifying—their effectiveness.           



An unburied and unmulched
dripline in my back yard



By the way, driplines should never be buried, only covered with mulch. Over time, however, mulch and dead leaves decompose, turning into soil. Tiny surface roots work their way over your dripline and grow into bigger surface roots. My point is that, left to her own devices, nature buries driplines. It’s really to your advantage to keep them up on the surface where you can easily get at them to add or subtract emitters and line extensions.

 That’s all I have to say about computer-controlled irrigation systems. Have additional questions? Totally confused? Leave a comment, or email me, and I’ll try to clarify the murky area.

Oak Island got .34" more rain on Saturday, bringing us up to a half-inch for June. Next time: rain gardens and water harvesting. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy

P.S. – Summer solstice occurs on the 21^st at 1:16 pm EDT. It feels so ironic that the days begin to shorten when it’s so damn hot out, don’t you think?

WATER-WISE, PART 1

            This morning, Oak Island got .16” of rain. It’s the first significant accumulation since May 20th. Today we start a series on watering and water in the garden. 

My rain gauge,
late morning 14 Jun 2011:
Hallelujah!



The two basic ingredients for gardening success are soil and that most precious of natural resources, and the one most Americans take for granted, water. Where I live, we’re awash in it—the Atlantic Ocean, the Intracoastal Waterway, sounds, bays, inlets, river mouths, estuaries, great tidal marshes. Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner has our number, though: most of the surface water is too salty to be potable for people or plants. As local population continues to burgeon, fresh water supplies will become increasingly problematic.

Well, you counter, temperate climates get lots of rain. That’s true, between 30 and 65 inches a year on average (not including the desert Southwest and the Olympic Peninsula’s rainforest). But ask anyone who lives in the Midwest, or Texas, or Florida: you can’t really count on it falling in gentle showers amounting to about an inch a week.

In one fabled week back in 1999, Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd deposited 40-plus inches of rain on southeastern North Carolina. While that number verges on apocryphal, it still serves as an example of how precipitation precipitates out around here. Yearly rainfall totals on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts depend on tropical systems, and they are notoriously unreliable. We haven’t had such a dousing since Floyd. And we've been in drought to some degree or another since then, too. 



Sand all the way to China
on Oak Island
(this is our neighbors' yard,
not the beach)



Even in good years, there’s still the factor of the near-instantaneous drainage of sand: just because 1.37 inches fell into your rain gauge Monday evening doesn’t guarantee your plants will have anything to drink by Wednesday afternoon, particularly in high summer. Aquifer replenishment doesn’t necessarily translate into readily available moisture in the top eight to 12 inches of soil. And, if your yard has one or more mature trees, their extensive root systems commandeer a lot of what water the soil manages to hold on to.

Sandy or not, the type of soil you have matters, because particle size influences how water enters and percolates through plants’ rooting zones. Sandy soils permit water to penetrate and drain away more quickly than fine-particled silts, clays and humic soils, or compacted soils like caliche and swamp muck. (“Caliche” refers to the calcified soils of much of the arid American Southwest.)



Shredded cocoliners recycled
from last fall's hayracks
make great mulch

A garden is by definition a managed environment, so take the trouble to design (or reshuffle) your landscape with efficient water use in mind. Position plants with similar moisture needs together. Keep a two to three-inch layer of organic mulch in all beds and borders to help hold in moisture and keep roots cool(er). Fine-bladed grasses like Bermuda and Zoysia handle drought well. The roots of broader-bladed centipede and St. Augustine grasses survive dry seasons as well as Bermuda and Zoysia; they just look awful on the surface, reacting to drought by turning a dull greeny-grey color and rolling their leaves into what look like tiny cigarettes. “Real” grasses—cool-season fescues, ryes, blue- and bent-grasses—dislike drought intensely, and may experience die-off.  

   



Drought-stressed centipede grass
chez Fitzgerald



Non-drought-stressed centipede grass
chez Fitzgerald





    



A mesic trio:
plumbago (Plumbago auriculata),
black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) &
Texas sage (Salvia greggii)



           Choose plants known to tolerate drought. Once established in the landscape, trees and shrubs like abelia, butterfly bush, crape myrtle, eleagnus, junipers and big- and small-leafed hollies do quite well for long periods without supplemental irrigation. (Berrying hollies won’t set as much fruit after a dry season, though.) Many perennials and annuals—annual vinca, aster, black-eyed Susan, blanket flower, butterfly weed, catmint, coneflower, gazania, globe thistle, ice plant, lantana, liatris, plumbago, salvias, Stokes’ aster, sunflowers; most anything with thick, waxy leaves like sedums and succulents; fuzzy foliage like lamb's ears or artemisia; very tiny or needle-like leaves like Serissa and Amsonia hubrictii—have mesic (requiring moderate amounts of water) or xeric (requiring very little water) qualities: hydric plants require heavy and frequent hydration. Generally speaking, xeriscapes are most often found in arid climates like the Southwest and high-altitude locations. Coastal areas are mesic because we get too much rain to be considered xeric. Thank goodness.



Mesic long-leaf aster
(Aster oblongifolius)



A xeric-once-established trio:
catmint (Nepeta x faassenii),
ice plant (Delosperma cooperi) &
lantana (Lantana montevidensis)





As demands on fresh water sources increase with population growth and the extravagantly wasteful habits of many Americans, planting and maintaining mesic- and xeriscapes become the only reasonable alternatives for sustainability-minded gardeners. 



This droopy coleus alerts me
to low soil-moisture



Learn to recognize early drought-stress symptoms; wilting, caused by transpiration (loss of water through leaves), and marginal leaf burn are the most recognizable and common. I always include “indicator” plants in the gardens we design, ones that provide timely warning of soil dryness. Coleus works especially well in this capacity; so do Shasta daisies and hydrangeas.

Paradoxically, too much water is just as bad as not enough. Without delving too deep into soil science, suffice it to say that both cause imbalances between air and water in the pores between soil particles. That’s why the wilting and leaf damage look exasperatingly alike whether the plant is drowning or gasping for water. Conduct the finger-in-the-ground test recommended below before taking remedial action.

The bottom line of supplemental irrigation is the achievement of a one-to-one ratio between the amount of water a plant needs and what it actually receives. Which brings us at last to the crux of this whole watering issue—even if you have a perfectly installed and vigilantly programmed and maintained irrigation system, you still need to pay attention. 



Tim finger-testing
the soil moisture in our
Tibouchina grandifolia
(the rain barrel in the background
is a teaser for next time) 



Begin by taking the time to understand the drainage properties your yard's soil. Watch the weather. (While it’s always amusing to see someone’s sprinklers running during a cloudburst, it’s not really funny, conservation- or plant health-wise.) Don’t assume that just because fall rolls around you're off the watering hook until April: in southeastern North Carolina, October is statistically the driest month of the year, followed by January. Find out the general water requirements of the plants in your yard, and group those with similar needs together. Most important of all, to ascertain whether or not you need to add water, go outside and stick your finger up to the second knuckle into the ground and check out how moist—or not—it feels. Then act accordingly. Get into the habit of really looking at your plantings and finger-testing your soil: you’ll have a better chance of spotting and addressing water problems before fatalities result.

There’s not a lot of information out there about how to best water lawns on sandy soils. Most sources advocate infrequent deep watering, which sand makes impossible. An inch a week is the rule-of-thumb recommendation; you’re advised to place empty tuna cans at various spots around the yard to measure how much water gets dispensed from the sprinkler or irrigation spray-heads. That’s ’way too much like work for me. I rely on watching the weather, scouting my plants for drought symptoms, and the stick-finger-in-dirt method to ascertain if I’m watering prudently.

A Water-Wise Quiz

1.      Do you keep the tap running while you brush your teeth, shave, or wash the dishes?

2.      Run the dishwasher (the machine, not the person) and/or the washing machine before they're fully loaded?

3.      Shower for longer than five to seven minutes and/or run the water while you’re soaping up and shampooing?

4.      Have dripping faucets inside or hose-bibs outside?

5.      Hose off your sidewalks, patios and driveways instead of sweeping them?

6.      Wash your car often?

7.      Have a leaky or poorly maintained swimming pool?

8.      Turn on the bathroom tap so the spoiled-rotten cat can get a drink but neglect to turn it off as soon as the young prince has finished? Tim? Sally?

9.      For those of you with in-ground irrigation systems: Do your spray heads water the house, driveway or road?

10.  Have you run the irrigation system during or just after statistically significant rain?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, stop doing it/them right now.

Naughty.

Next time: a colloquy on in-ground irrigation systems. Thanks for dropping by. Stay hydrated.

                                                                        Kathy

ENTER FIELD NOTES

            Okay, I admit it. I’m frazzled today. Over the past week and a half, both our air-conditioning unit / heat pump and the refrigerator decided 13 years of non-stop service was enough, and expired. I hate shopping in the first place: shopping for appliances vies with shopping for cars in the race for last place on my shopping continuum. (Groceries rank first.) Nonetheless, it had to be done. And was. Fairly painlessly, too, on the whole (if you don’t count the expenditures).  

            But it wasn’t fun.

            Then the weekly paper reported our town government plans to cut water and sewer rates by 4.8% across the board. In the Bizarro-World that is Oak Island, this more than likely means monthly utility bills will hit the stratosphere. Our state-of-the-art sewer system, the previous administration’s edifice complex and an on-going trend for town employees to outnumber non-town employees are going to impoverish all 6200 of us for generations.

            That’s not fun to contemplate, either.

            Then my friend Sally, editor of American Nurseryman, a trade magazine, needed a pinch-hitter for July’s “Field Notes,” so she asked me to help out. “Field Notes” is a regular feature of the magazine, profiling garden-worthy plants. As I covered the living room floor with reference books and dove into my photo files for pictures, Idea-Man Tim says, “You could start a periodic ‘Field Notes’ blog post too. It would be useful, and you won’t have to write two separate pieces this weekend.”

            I can’t tell you how lucky, and how endlessly grateful I am that this man found me, said yes when I asked him to marry me, and hangs in there despite me not being the very easiest person in the whole world to live with. Not only that, he’s brilliant.

            And that is fun.

            So here it is, the inaugural GFTGU Field Notes post. (If you subscribe to American Nurseryman, you can give its “Field Notes” entry for July a pass.)

 

FIELD NOTES

       Lespedeza thunbergii

           
 As a professional gardener, I’m always on the lookout for under-utilized plants to break the ho-hum factor in landscapes. I especially covet ones that flower. Tell me about an under-utilized, flowering and low-maintenance specimen: even better. Toss in a high level of deer resistance, and I’ve hit the jackpot. I’ve found Lespedeza thunbergii.

            That Lespedeza thunbergii—a.k.a. Thunberg bush-clover—belongs to the family Fabaceae is immediately evident. Smooth, blue-green, trifoliate leaves clothe supple branches that arch gracefully earthward. Six-inch-long racemes of pendant pink, rosy purple or white pea-like blooms appear on the upper portions of shoots, combining to form panicles up to 30 inches in length. Here in southeastern North Carolina, flowering begins in late April or early May. After taking a break during the sultriest weeks of high summer—as does anything with any sense—bloom recommences, peaking in September and continuing well into November.

            It’s a mystery to me why such a lovely, easy-care plant isn’t more common in the trade hereabouts. Introduced to Western gardens from China and Japan in 1837, this herbaceous subshrub dies back to the ground after hard frost, even in Zone 8b. Prune the stems down to six inches in late winter, then stand back: bush-clover can reach a height of over six feet and an equal or greater spread in a single season.



Lespedeza thunbergii 'Pink Cascade'

 

In the four years since I started using L. thunbergii in client gardens, I have observed no disease problems despite summertime round-the-clock oppressive heat and humidity levels, nor any pest damage, not even a sample nibble from the deer herds that plague our area. Thriving in full-sun locations, its form is just as lovely in up to half-day shade, but flowering diminishes. Although it shines brightest in moist, rich soils, it performs nearly as well on hot, dry sites. Propagation couldn’t be simpler: whack a couple suckers off the main plant and pot them up. Transplanted seedlings take readily to life in containers as well.

Lespedeza appears to have no pH preference. It grows equally well for me in the basic sand of coastal North Carolina as in the heavy, acid soils of north Georgia. In the fifth edition of his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, Dr. Michael Dirr describes Thunberg bush-clover as “…really the beauty… of the genus.” (See Good Reads at right. While it's not as thrilling as the latest Caleb Carr, the Manual is a primo reference for tree and shrubs.)   

Two cultivars occasionally come available in the local trade: ‘Pink Cascade,’ with pink flowers and a slightly more compact habit than the species; and ‘Gibraltar,’ with deep rose-hued blooms that Dr. Dirr finds difficult to distinguish from the species. Allegedly, ‘Alba,’ a more upright, white-flowering version, and ‘Variegata,’ with white-streaked foliage and rose-purple blooms, exist out there somewhere.  

In the landscape, Lespedeza thunbergii works as a specimen, in perennial gardens or as part of a shrubbery. I’ve alternated it with pruned Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum ‘Ruby’ to screen a garage, and dotted it along the perimeter of a large corner lot to unify an otherwise eclectic mixed planting. It’s got a beautiful shape, clean blue-green foliage, a long bloom period; it’s low-maintenance, and Bambi doesn’t like it. Who could ask for anything more?



Close-up of Lespedeza thunbergii 'Pink Cascade' flowers and foliage



BOTANICAL NAME:  Lespedeza thunbergii cvv.

COMMON NAME:  Thunberg bush-clover

HARDINESS:  USDA Zones 5/6-11

MATURE HEIGHT:  5-6’

MATURE SPREAD:  to 10’

CLASSIFICATION:  Herbaceous subshrub

LANDSCAPE USE:  Specimen, perennial gardens, mixed shrubberies

ORNAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS:  Smooth, trifoliate blue-green foliage; 6” racemes of pink, rose-purple or white flowers form panicles up to 30” long; graceful, arching habit; ease of maintenance; highly resistant to deer browse

*****

            There. Lespedeza’s one of my all-time favorite plants for all of the reasons listed above. If you simply must have one for your yard and live near Oak Island, Tim and I have nine healthy one-gallon starts available for seven bucks a pop. Contact me by email, or ask about them in the comments section. (As if.) Transplanted Garden on 16^th Street in Wilmington also carries Lespedeza, probably three-gallon ones, but I’m not positive they’re L. thunbergii.  

            Thanks for dropping by. I’m sure I’ll be feeling better by next time.

                                                                                                Kathy

THE HEARTBREAK OF CLEMATIS

            First of all, say CLEM-uh-tiss, not cluh-MATT-iss. Mispronunciation of Clematis ranks up there with POM-pus grass in irritating my ear. (It’s PAM-pus, y’all, after the Argentinean grasslands, not some blowhard of your acquaintance.) Now that’s sorted, I’ll tell my tale of woe.

   

When this star-crossed relationship began, the sum-total of my knowledge of the genus extended only to the large-flowered hybrids. In rapid succession, I planted and killed ‘Henryii,’ ‘Niobe,’ ‘Hagley Hybrid,’ ‘Ville de Lyon,’ ‘Nellie Moser,’ ‘Étoile de Violette’ and ‘Comtesse de Bouchard.’

            Dismayed and discouraged yet not defeated, I boldly ventured into the wonderful world of species clematis, where I’ve enjoyed a few spectacular triumphs (relatively speaking, of course), the usual failures, and one or two draws. In rough order of appearance in my garden, they are:

      ·    C. x jackmanii superba (Jackman’s clematis) This astoundingly hard-to-kill large-flowered survivor throws out a few four-petalled, blue-violet blossoms annually, just to keep me on the hook. As I regularly forget to prune it down to three or four leaf buds in early spring, it gets leggier by the year. This spring it bloomed up in the adjacent live oak, as you can see from the picture. At least it flowered. I take my victories where I find them.

     ·   C. paniculata. Or C. terniflora. Or C. maximowicziana. Unsurprisingly, taxonomists seem at odds over this. (Autumn clematis) An unqualified success. Masses of small, white, fragrant blossoms smother my ‘New Dawn’ rose—with which it is interplanted—in mid- to late August for two to three weeks. The foliage mostly dies back after the first hard frost, leaving a brown and crunchy mess for me to pull out from among the thorns of the rose, but I don’t care: as Dr. Frankenstein famously observed, “It’s [still] alive!”

·         C. armandii (Spring clematis) Large, pure-white, five-petalled flowers appear in April among the leathery, dark green, lanceolate and (allegedly) evergreen foliage. The first of three attempts teased me by blooming two consecutive springs before going crunchy in July of its sophomore year. The second fell victim to squirrels, who, in an unexplained fit of pique, gnawed the poor thing down to a stub in its pot before I ever managed to get it into the ground. The third never recovered from the crunchy blight it suffered during its first summer. This species is becoming more popular in the trade, so I haven’t given up on it entirely. Yet.

      ·  C. x durandii (Blue clematis) Wayside Gardens catalog promised this gorgeously dark-blue flowered scandent little lovely was perfect for my back yard, given a little shade. Wrong. I tried two years in a row: death in both cases was annoyingly swift.

The postcard from the
 Shanagarry Cookery School

·    C. montana (Anemone or mountain clematis) Tim and I swooned at the sight of great pink and white swags of flowers festooning the buildings of the Shanagarry Cookery School in Ballymaloe, Ireland, in May of 2000. Naturally, I had to have one, despite our distinctly non-Irish climate. I admit to having reservations about how something with montana (“mountain”) in its name would do on the coast: but, hey—you never know until you try. I finally found a source (in central Tennessee, which should have told me something) and ordered two pink-blooming C. montana ‘Elizabeth.’ Neither flowered nor survived their second coastal summer. This marks the only time I haven’t felt completely flummoxed by SCD (Sudden Clematis Death, a disease I just made up).

     ·  C. ‘Alionushka’ (Alionushka clematis) According to Hillier’s Manual (see Good Reads at right), she produces rosy pink flared, bell-shaped flowers from mid-spring to fall. I got this one from Tony Avent’s Plant Delights Nursery at one of the fall open houses, and had the highest of hopes. Which were, of course, completely dashed within nine months.



·    C. montevidensis and C. versicolor   Mail-ordered from Woodlanders on the basis of extremely sketchy catalog descriptions, these two species apparently exist nowhere else; at least I’ve not found any corroborating reference to either in my library. From the specific epithets, I have deduced that “versicolor” may refer to variably hued…something; leaves? flowers? stems? The cryptic catalog entry remarked only that it produces lavender to purple flowers, has grey-green foliage and is native to the south-central U.S. It survives as a puny little thing, declining to flower yet clinging to life. “Montevidensis” is harder to figure. Lantana montevidensis has a trailing habit; could this clematis be scandent? Insofar as my garden is concerned, it’s moot: I’ve forgotten where I planted it, and am pretty sure it’s dead now. There’s also the possibility that both are hybrids of C. integrifolia and some other C. that go by other names in other places, just to muddy the taxonomic waters even further. So if anybody knows anything about either of these two, get in touch at your earliest convenience, okay?



C. montevidensis
a.k.a. Old Man's Beard,
according to the Internet



C. versicolor











  



 

'Bonanza'

     ·  C. ‘Evipo031’ and ‘Evipo033’ (Festoon hybrids) ‘Evipo031’ goes by the name “Bonanza.” You can call ‘Evipo033’ “Avant Garde.”  Both have tiny, finely dissected leaves. The tags say both are “…free-flowering mid-summer to fall,” Bonanza’s offerings allegedly mauve-blue, Avant Garde’s reddish with pink stamens. After three years, I spied a couple of blue blooms in June, but that was it. I figured Avant Garde gave up the avant-ghost early on—I planted them together and can’t really tell who’s who from the foliage. Then in May of 2008, a single reddish bloom appeared on all that entwined foliage, an event never to be repeated. So much for “Avant Garde.” “Bonanza” still throws a few flowers in May most seasons. Non-stop bloom, phooey. Non-start bloom is more like it. 

·  C. texensis x reticulata (Leather flower or Texas clematis) Another Woodlanders specimen, my research leads me to believe it may actually be C. pitcheri. (See the second listing down from here.) Straight species texensis is supposed to have smooth, blue-green leaves and reddish-orange (maybe this color made some imaginative soul think of leather?) to scarlet bell-shaped flowers mid-summer to fall. I can’t say from personal experience. Mine half-heartedly climbs two or three feet up its support each spring, but has yet to bloom.

      ·  C. cirrhosa (Winter clematis) A Plant Delights acquisition from 2006’s fall Open House, this three-inch-potted baby remained evergreen and even reached out a tentative tendril toward the welcoming chicken wire, raising my hopes, well into June of the following year. When it went all brown and crunchy, I crossed all my fingers and toes that it might recover from this serious-looking sulk. No dice. From the specific epithet, you’d expect the flowers to be bile yellow, but Hillier says they’re cup-shaped and cream-colored with silky seedheads following the bloom. I’ll just have to take his word for it.

      ·  C. pitcheri (Pitcher’s leather flower) Named for its discoverer, Zina Pitcher. Purple, bell-shaped, pendant blooms are alleged from mid-spring to September. I’ll believe it when I see it. I planted this baby as soon as I got her home from Plant Delights in the fall of 2007, and immediately became a bit worried: the plant growing in her spot mostly resembled a thriving cudweed. I chewed my fingernails all winter. In early March 2008, the distinctive trifoliate leaf of Clematis poked up through what was, in fact, a giant cudweed. Apparently the two were friends, so I prudently left both alone. The latter inexplicably died that summer, but Miss Zina’s clematis clings to life. Maybe it’ll even flower in a decade or two.

·    C. stans x heracleifolia, a bush variety, joined my collection of potential victims in 2008. Planted near the C. pitcheri, it did just fine. Unfortunately, it is the ugliest clematis in foliage and flower I’ve ever slapped eyes on. Even the Internet wouldn't publish a picture of it. After spending two seasons in denial of and disbelief at its weed-like habit and undistinguished blooms, I yanked it out and composted it.

Now I’m eying a $60.00 C. x cartwrightii at my favorite Wilmington garden center (photos of which have also eluded the World Wide Web). Will she or won’t she?  

Well, that’s my tale of woe. To date. Plant Delight’s spring catalog lists a couple more species for me to lose my heart to. I’ve got my hi-liter out. I know there’s a lovely clematis species or cultivar out there somewhere—besides C. paniculata/terniflora/maximowicziana and the Jackman hybrid—that will enjoy living and perhaps even flowering in my garden. If there’s a lesson to take away from this sad story, it’s to never give up. The plant world is vast, frontiers stretching far in all directions, new discoveries made every day. Don’t let a few (dozen) failures get you down. Be of good heart.

            Thanks for dropping by.

    

                                                                                    Kathy