GARDENING : Awarding Perennial Favorites
Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Tonys, MVPs. From movies to professional sports, there’s hardly an industry that doesn’t pay tribute to its top performers. Shouldn’t horticulture have the same chance?
If the local nursery trade did have an opportunity to hand out awards to its stars--perhaps they’d call them Bloomies--here’s the plants that would walk off with the honors.
Best Performance in a Dramatic Role:
Digitalis purpurea ‘Apricot’ would be the nominee of Warren Gnas, color manager at Amling’s Nursery in Newport Beach.
“ ‘Apricot’ isn’t a new flower,” he says. “It was one of the favorites of Gertrude Jekyll” a 19th-Century garden designer and writer. But this stately beauty fell out of favor, says Gnas, because modern gardeners didn’t know what to do with a six-foot-tall bloom. He says now that traditional mixed borders are back in style, however, there’s room again for plants with presence.
Besides its superior height--nearly twice the size of ‘Foxy,’ the more commonly found foxglove--’Apricot’ has several other virtues, according to Gnas. It has larger, prettier foliage than most Digitalis (“ ‘Foxy’ tends to get a bit ratty,” he says); it’s a true perennial rather than a biennial like ‘Foxy’; and its offspring are the same buff pink color as the parent plant (most foxgloves aren’t so predictable).
Two other towering beauties Gnas likes are the Pacific Giant Delphiniums ‘Elaine’ and ‘Camelliard,’ both of which can reach seven feet in height. ‘Elaine’ sports bright raspberry pink blooms; ‘Camelliard’ lavender with white centers. Though these two are rather demanding performers requiring plenty of water and fertilizer, their fans aren’t discouraged. “We can’t keep them in stock,” Gnas says.
Verbena bonariensis would be the choice of Mary Lou Heard at Heard’s Country Gardens in Westminster.
“Easy, easy, easy--yet major dramatic,” she says. With large flat clusters of vivid purple flowers at the top of three- to six-foot flower stalks, V. bonariensis adds effortless architectural interest to any garden, says Heard.
This goddess has feet of clay, though. Hide its low-growing, rather homely leaves with a silver foliaged plant, Heard suggests.
Best Supporting Plants:
Just as movies need actors to play supporting roles, a garden needs background plants as foils for its showier stars. Nurseries call these foundation plants.
Gnas at Amling’s thinks all of the needle-leaved, drought-tolerant New Zealand Tea Trees commonly found in the trade ( Leptospermum scoparium ) make wonderful foundation plants. If he has to choose just one, though, it would be ‘Winter Cheer,’ a new cultivar with small, dark red flowers and red-tinted foliage.
“ ‘Winter Cheer’ is very dense and has a nice vertical growth pattern--some Leptospermum are rather rangy,” he says. “It’s also a prolific bloomer.”
One of the favorite foundation plants of Charles Crum at the Flowerdale Nursery in Santa Ana is Viburnum tinus ‘Compactum.’ This would be a great choice for anyone tiring of Rhapiolepsis, he says.
‘Compactum’ has a growth habit like Indian hawthorne and similar dark green, leathery, evergreen leaves, but it produces white flowers rather than pink, preceded by dark raspberry-colored buds and followed by dark blue berries.
Kevin Naughton at the Laguna Garden Nursery would choose Anisodontea hypomandarum , a mallow relative of South African origin which produces small pink flowers like mini-hibiscus nearly year-round.
“It’s one of the best introductions in the nursery business in the last few years,” he says. “It’s drought-tolerant, tough, extremely versatile, and I don’t think it ever quits blooming.”
Best Short Subjects:
New homes are all house, no yard. The square footage of the average home has increased, while its yard has become Lilliputian. The nursery industry has risen to the challenge, however, by cultivating a whole range of dwarf plants that can be shoehorned into these dollhouse-sized gardens.
Two new cultivars in this category liked by Charles Crum at Flowerdale are a variegated boxleaf Euonymus, with dark, green leaves with white edges and Carissa ‘Boxwood Beauty,’ a dwarf natal plum.
Neither plant will exceed two feet in height, he says, and either one would be good choices for permanent interest in a perennial flower bed or as a low-growing, compact hedge. “You don’t even need to own a pruning shears for these two,” he says.
Another cute short subject is Nandina domestica ‘Filamentosa,’ a lace-leafed heavenly bamboo whose foliage turns scarlet in winter, giving it the appearance of a tiny maple tree.
“It’s a neat little accent plant,” says Gnas at Amling’s. “It’s sort of like instant bonsai. It would look nice in a pot, too, for that reason.”
Favorite Shady Ladies:
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t give out Oscars in this category, but perhaps it should since the lady with the dark past is certainly a perennial part. Dappled damsels never go out of style in the garden, either.
Gnas’ favorite shady lady is Campanula portenschlagiana (Dalmatian bellflower). “Campanulas rule the shade,” he says.
“I like this one for its particularly nice foliage (like tiny, bright green ivy) and because it’s dense enough to choke out oxalis, making it a real good ground cover. It also likes it under taller flowers in pots.”
Bluebell of Scotland ( Campanula rotundifolia ) is Heard’s first choice.
“It has dainty blue flowers on the end of each stalk that keep going from July through winter,” she says. “It doesn’t seem to get any bugs. And, though it’s not supposed to be drought tolerant, it never seems to wilt in my garden. It pretty much takes care of itself.”
Lifetime Achievement Awards:
Hollywood hands out special laurels to performers who keep producing season after season. If the horticultural world did the same, the first choice of Heard and Naughton would be Gaura linheimeri .
“It blooms and blooms and blooms, and asks for nothing in return,” says Heard. “It holds the perennial garden together because it’s still going when everything else crashes.”
Naughton agrees. He uses the lacy-looking perennial--which sports small white flowers on four-foot stems above short foliage--in nearly every one of his landscaping projects, and finds it particularly pretty closely planted with other drought-resistant beauties like lavenders, salvia and penstemon.
“Whenever I put in it, it’s the plant that ends up being people’s favorite,” says Naughton. “But here at the nursery I can’t sell Gaura for anything. It just doesn’t look impressive in a pot, I guess.”
Cheiranthus ‘Bowles Mauve’ is another one of those plants, he says.
“I planted this one from a one-gallon size last year, and it hasn’t been out of bloom yet,” says Naughton, pointing to a nearly three-foot mound of pretty gray-blue leaves topped with mauve-purple flowers in a demonstration planter in front of the nursery. “People will come up to it, admire it, ask about it, but they won’t buy it. I don’t understand it.”
Heard has the same problem. “It’s an excellent performer and very easy to care for,” she says. “But I can’t get people interested in it when it’s in a pot.”
Solanum jasminoides (potato vine) is another trouper. “Most vines look real showy for about six weeks, but the rest of the year, nothing,” says Gnas at Amling’s. “But the potato vine blooms about 10 months out of 12, it goes well with both English cottage and more formal French gardens, it takes sun or shade, and it doesn’t require much pruning. It’s the perfect vine.”
California Classics:
If the horticultural trade did give out Bloomies to its best performers, local nurseries would have to create a special category for the native plants which give each region its character.
Naughton’s first choice here would be Salvia clevelandii , a gray-leaved, lavender-blue-flowered sage native to the Cleveland National Forest area.
“This is what California should smell like,” he says, burying his nose in the pungent plant. “And it’s not that hard to use in the garden.”
S. clevelandii is a good foundation plant mixed in with other natives, he says, but is also compatible with Australian, South African and Mediterranean plants. “It’s pretty adaptable and can take some irrigation as long as it’s well drained.”
Romneya coulteri (Matilija poppy) runs a close second, Naughton says. “All the beauty and promise of early California is contained in this plant,” he says. “It looks so rugged, but when you examine it, the foliage is a pretty subtle color (pale jade green) and surprisingly delicate. And the flowers are just magnificent.”
Romneya coulteri is a little moody. It’s best to plant it in the fall and winter, says Naughton, because it wants to put out roots during the cool season. And it does need good drainage.
But it looks wonderful on hillsides and ought to be more frequently used, he says. “I like to plant it near decks that drop off sharply, so that when the plant reaches its full height, those spectacular blooms are at deck height.”
And the winner is. . . .
