Grandfather’s Garden : Delphiniums Were His Pride, and It Seems That I’ve Inherited His Passion
My grandfather might not have been impressed, but he certainly would have been pleased to see my delphiniums. His delphiniums, like his rhododendrons, tuberous begonias and fuchsias, were of the kind that you could proudly pose beside. In the fading Kodachromes, the rhododendron trusses are as large as his hatted head, the tuberous begonias not much smaller. And the delphiniums? They tower above like New England church steeples, but brilliantly colored, as though painted by Portuguese fishermen.
My grandfather was a close friend of Frank Reinelt, the creator of modern delphiniums. Both were schooled in horticulture in Czechoslovakia, in the European tradition, and both apprenticed in the gardens of queens--in Reinelt’s case Queen Marie of Romania. Lured by the legend of Luther Burbank, Reinelt and my grandfather came to California in the early 1900s. My grandfather designed landscapes for the Spreckels and other wealthy San Francisco families, and Reinelt designed flowers by hybridizing and selecting, creating the first dinner-plate tuberous begonias, the Pacific strain of primroses and the Pacific strain of delphiniums--all of which are still the standard of perfection.
These delphiniums were the first to rival the developments of the great European hybridizers, primarily because there were so many blues--brilliant blues, sky blues, robin’s-egg blues, blues as dark and clear as sapphires. Many had a contrasting “bee” at their center, either as black as a carpenter bee (which it neatly conceals, to my occasional surprise) or pure white. There was nothing purplish about these flowers. They were blue.
Brian Langdon, a grandson of the great delphinium hybridizers and nurserymen Blackmore and Langdon, said of the Pacific strain that they were popular “on account of the high proportion of brilliant blues . . . though the vigor and perenniality of some of the plants left something to be desired.”
The Pacific series, sometimes called Pacific Giants, is a “strain,” and although the concept of a seed strain is a little confusing, it distinguishes how we in California grow delphiniums from how they are grown in Europe and on our own East Coast. There, delphiniums are almost permanent plants. Named kinds are propagated from divisions and persist in the garden for years, becoming ever larger clumps until they must be divided and then replanted. In California, Reinelt discovered, delphiniums don’t persist, even though they are perennial plants. So he developed strains that could be grown almost like annuals--sow the seed, move the young plants into the garden and they bloom. When they’re finished, pull them out and start over again. A strain is born after much crossing, when the progeny of each generation become enough alike to be called similar. Plants grown from a seed strain are not identical, but they are supposed to be nearly so. In Reinelt’s case, the Pacific strains were near perfect--identical in height, color and form. Developed between 1938 and 1940, these strains received Best of Show gold medal at the 1939 Oakland Spring Flower Show, the West Coast show of its time, a measure of their importance and popularity.
Most of these strains are still with us, although they have deteriorated somewhat through the years. It is the nature of strains that they must be carefully and laboriously recrossed periodically to keep them strong and uniform, and that has not happened.
The true blue strains were the Bluejay series (a “clear medium to dark blue,” according to the 1940 catalogue description, “very intense and alive, with dark, contrasting bee”) and Summer Skies series (“the blue of a summer sky, with white bees representing fleecy clouds”). Other less-blue, or outright purple, strains had names chosen from Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” including the King Arthur series (“rich royal purple with a velvety texture and large white bee”), Guinevere (“pink-lavender with white bee”), Galahad (“giant whites”), Lancelot (“pure lilac with white bee”), Black Knight (“the darkest of them all”) and the Round Table series (all of the colors--from some 300 crosses).
The Pacific strains grew to a height of at least six feet, and it is not difficult to find photographs of Pacific Giants growing eight feet tall. And they were usually used in a big way. I have a fading blueprint, of my grandfather’s, of a Hillsborough estate in Northern California that contains a delightful double border on either side of an ample path that leads to a formal rose garden. (The path terminates in a simple bird bath, not in the more customary fountain or statue. The owners obviously were enthusiastic gardeners, not concerned with pretense.) The borders are full of California plants, a delightful mix that I plan to copy someday.
The borders are big, the reason for my delay in imitating them. They are each 100 feet in length and 8 feet wide, and there is a separate foot-wide border of ageratum, aubrieta, iberis and petunia ‘Rosey Morn’ in front of the main border. The borders are so big that there is a tiny paved path behind each for access. The delphiniums are toward the back, and each of the five plantings occupies an area of about four by seven feet.
In this grand scheme, the importance of a big, strapping strain of delphiniums is evident. The delphiniums are planted in pockets between flowering fruit trees, which were “underplanted” with daffodils, for spring bloom, and then with chrysanthemums, “grown on and transplanted” for fall bloom. The beds of delphiniums balanced the weight of the fruit trees. Behind the delphiniums are plantings of watsonia, which would have bloomed while the delphiniums were yet small, just a bushy foreground. As the bulbs faded, the growing delphiniums would have hidden the drying watsonia foliage.
To either side of the delphiniums in one planting are nicotiana and a phlox named ‘Elizabeth Campbell,’ and nearby are plantings of scabiosa--another fine blue flower--and iris, presumably blue. In another planting, the companions are Salvia pitcheri , trachelium and Penstemon barbatus . In another, it is the carmine-flowered Lilium speciosum ‘Rubrum’ and Phlox ‘Miss Lingard’ beside a flowering peach, and in still another anthemis, doronicum and day lilies.
The colors of the delphiniums are not specified, nor how many were to be planted, but a dozen plants in each pocket is probably close, and each planting probably contained but one color, since mad mixes were not the fashion. A clever gardener could probably guess the color of the delphiniums by the colors of the plants nearby, but in general it seems that most were blue contrasting with pink and red, or purple next to soft yellows.
That is how my grandfather used delphiniums professionally, but at his own modest bungalow in nearby Burlingame, he grew them in narrow beds just outside a sunny breakfast nook where I remember toast with apricot jam. In that, his own garden, the delphiniums and other plants were not so much a composition as they were a display--like the exhibitions at the flower shows he judged. He cared not that they were completely out of scale with the house. He was more concerned with size and perfection. He grew everything big and without blemish.
In my garden, the delphiniums don’t exactly tower. For many years, my modern sensibilities kept me from growing delphiniums at all, because they simply seemed too big for the space at hand, until the advent of the Blue Fountains strain.
This strain of short delphiniums was depicted as uniform, at about three to four feet tall, and, of course, the blue-flowered sorts were prominently pictured in seed catalogues. I suppose that I should have known better, but so far they have been anything but uniform. In fact, every plant is a complete surprise. Some grow two feet tall, some six feet. Some have stems as thick as a giant sequoia; some are as delicate as the wild Delphinium cardinale that grows in our chaparral. Some have fat spikes of closely set flowers; others are airy, much like the annual larkspurs.
They are not at all formal flowers but have more the effect of a country-cottage garden. They would not have won anything but a polite nod from the judges of the 1939 Oakland Spring Show, but I don’t believe that it’s my fault. It’s just not a very good strain by Reinelt standards.
There is also a newer strain, which reportedly is shorter still at 30 inches. It’s named Blue Springs, but it hasn’t shown up on the market yet.
Still, I’m delighted with my delphiniums. Passers-by compliment me on my garden, even though I know that they are staring only at the delphiniums, and my English neighbors call it an English garden simply, I suspect, because the delphiniums are there.
Blue Fountains, although far from perfect, is a useful strain because the plants fit into a modern, small flower bed. I can squeeze a dozen Blue Fountains between the roses and my modest collection of perennials. Although very few have turned out to be a true blue, they are blue enough, and the many purples are quite handsome with the purple Salvia farinacea and the lilac veronica. The few blues make for a dramatic background for the pink dianthus and the pink and red roses.
I do wish there were more true- blue flowers in the strain. I did get a lovely gray-blue that would have been the perfect color to choose for a painting of the sky over Malibu, and one bright robin’s-egg blue, but most were purple, and there is no shortage of purple flowers in my garden, since so many plants have come from the garden of a friend who is quite fond of the color.
I’ve grown the Blue Fountains strain of delphiniums for several years now and have developed a “method.” I plant them only a foot apart in clusters of several. The soil is laboriously prepared in advance, dug to a foot or more, with peat moss and Gromulch mixed in, so that a handful of the soil, after being squeezed into a fist, crumbles apart on its own. A small fistful of Osmocote fertilizer is thrown into the bottom of each hole. That fertilizer, which looks like fish eggs, releases nutrients slowly so that the plants’ appetites are looked after for most of spring and summer. Planted in that fashion, the results are stupendous; plants simply shoot up. If you had the time, you could probably watch them grow. They seem to bloom within days of planting, although my garden notebook says that they were planted in late January and that the first buds opened on April 5. After the main spikes flower, secondary spikes last into another season. The main spikes catch the roses, veronicas, dianthus and other spring flowers, and the secondary spikes bloom along with the early summer flowers, including agapanthus.
For my Westside garden, I buy the plants in quart pots as early in winter as I can find them, usually in February. Inland, where summers are hot, fall plantings of delphiniums are often more successful, although they are difficult to find at nurseries at that time of year.
I do not grow them from seed, although that is the best way to start delphiniums. In the cultural directions in the Vetterle & Reinelt catalogue of 1940, it is suggested that seed sown from June into September will produce early spring flowers; seed sown in December and January, midsummer flowers; and seed sown February to April, fall flowers. That would make an interesting experiment if you wanted delphiniums nearly year round. There is much more on growing delphiniums from seed, and if you are interested and send us a stamped envelope addressed to yourself, we will forward a photocopy of these prewar hints.
The cultural description continues with how to get a second set of blooms, and there is no mystery here, much to my disappointment. I thought I had discovered a trick, a bit of garden sorcery, in an old book on delphiniums from that golden era of California gardening before World War II. It suggested cutting back the flower spikes so that only a single leaf remained at the base. Aha!--just a single leaf--so that’s the trick. I tried it and it worked perfectly. Within two months the delphiniums were again in full bloom--in the middle of summer.
A year or two later and in a lazier mood, I simply cut the spikes off above the leaves so that quite a few leaves remained, and, of course, the plants rebloomed just as well--maybe even better. In Reinelt’s catalogue, this is what he suggests: Simply cut off the spikes, leaving all the leaves at the base. He goes on to suggest keeping the plants on the dry side, immediately and for two to three weeks afterward, so that they are forced to rest. When new shoots appear above ground, cut off the remainder of the old spike. Then sprinkle a teaspoon of ammonium phosphate around the base of each plant, rake it into the soil and water thoroughly. He further suggests removing all but two or three of the strongest new shoots from each clump so that they will grow stronger, but I have found that an impossible task, and I rather like the airy quality of the many-spiked second bloom. As a result of my reluctance to thin out the many flower spikes, this second coming of the delphiniums is less eventful--although the flowers do seem to last longer, perhaps because there are so many. This second bloom comes in midsummer, usually in early August.
In my maturity, perhaps I will gain the resolve to cut off all but the strongest spikes, realizing that quality is better than quantity. Perhaps I will even decide that proportion is solely in the eye of the beholder and try my hand at those Pacific Giants that made my grandfather proud. Although he and Frank Reinelt are gone, the Pacific strain survives still.
