The uncommonly cultivated cobweb flower (Platycrater arguta) is one of many rare Asian woodland species grown in the Azalea Garden. A hydrangea relative, this species is native to southern Japan, as well as a small range in eastern China, where it is considered threatened.
This deciduous shrub reaches about 3-4’ feet high and wide and is sure to stump many a horticulturalist with its lovely, unique blooms. Four-petaled white flowers form a balloon shape before opening to display abundant, large yellow stamens. Floral bracts persist into fall, adding texture while the leaves fade to yellow.
If you can find this plant at a nursery, it might be a perfect addition for a partial shaded, well-drained spot in your garden. At the center of the Azalea Garden you’ll find this lovely, well-behaved species in bloom right near the overlook.
Don Gabel is NYBG’s Director of Plant Health. He monitors, diagnoses, and prescribes treatments for all the plants growing on the grounds, as well as in NYBG’s beautiful gardens and glass houses. Don educates and provides horticultural advice to the staff as well as teaching the public about different aspects of horticulture. He lives in Rockland county New York.
The other day, a friend asked me how much he should water his plants. And oh boy was that a loaded question. “Sit down,” I said. “This may take a minute.”
Most plant enthusiasts would agree that this is not always such a cut and dry subject. Some plant fanatics even go as far as to us the Best Water Softener Systems in their gardens! What comes to mind is the litany of questions I would want to ask before coming to any sort of conclusion.
Michael Hagen is the NYBG’s Curator of the Native Plant Garden and the Rock Garden. He previously served as Staff Horticulturist for Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, NY and Garden Manager at Rocky Hills, in Mt. Kisco, a preservation project of the Garden Conservancy.
Plymouth Gentian (Sabatia kennedyana)
Summer’s definitive arrival has brought bold sweeps of color across the Native Plant Garden’s Meadow, and with so much in bloom it might be easy to overlook one of the gems of the garden, the delicate pink and white open blooms of Plymouth gentian (Sabatia kennedyana).
By its flower alone, with its delicate rayed petals and yellow and red central markings, you might mistake this flower for an unusually colored Coreopsis or perhaps a daisy, but when you see its tall, upright stems growing where it’s happy—along the wet edge of the pond next to the Boardwalk, or in among bachelor’s buttons (Marshallia grandiflora) and pitcher plants (Sarracenia sp.)—it’s hard not to realize that this beauty is something very special.
Plymouth Gentian has a patchy distribution in the wild, and can be found in just a few sunny spots in wet, open ground along the sandy and peaty shores of coastal streams and lakes from Nova Scotia to South Carolina. It is one of the few species of Sabatia that is reliably perennial among the 18 or so mostly annual or biennial species that are native to North America.
Stephen Scanniello is NYBG’s Curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. The author of six books on roses, his latest is A Rose By Any Name. Stephen is the recipient of the Jane Righter Rose Medal from the Garden Club of America. He gardens in Barnegat, NJ.
Shrub rose ‘Alexandra, Princesse de Luxembourg’
During July in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, you’ll find the gardeners and volunteers bent over headfirst into the rose beds filling buckets with faded blooms. We’re deadheading, or as they say in England, “refreshing” the rose shrubs. Deadheading is summer pruning and very easy to do. Simply cut the stem bearing the faded rose to a point where a set of healthy leaves is attached. This is a time-consuming job that will reward you with beautiful new roses in a few weeks time.
There are still plenty of roses to enjoy in the garden. The sweetly scented ‘Alexandra, Princesse de Luxembourg’, a blush-pink shrub rose, and ‘David Rockefeller’s Golden Sparrow’ are both in full bloom. Last week, in Paris, this yellow beauty won the prestigious Gold Medal for Landscape Roses at the International Rose Trials of Bagatelle.
Kristin Schleiter is the NYBG’s Associate Vice President of Outdoor Gardens and Senior Curator. She oversees the wonderful gardening team that keeps our flowering gardens looking top notch, curates the herbaceous gardens and collections, and manages the curator of woody plants. She lives and gardens in Fairfield, CT.
As spring has turned to summer, so my attention has turned to the Native Plant Garden meadow. It changes daily now, with new plants offering their voices to the swelling chorus. One of my very favorites is Bush’s poppymallow, Callirhoe bushii. Set among fine grasses, golden tickseed, and brilliant white wild quinine, its white-eyed magenta cups demand attention.
Happy in average or dry soil, Bush’s poppymallow loves a sunny site and will flower throughout the summer and sporadically into the early fall. In our meadow, its loosely sprawling stems pop up through its neighbors, creating lovely and spontaneous living bouquets. It has seeded itself around gently, but editing is easy if you wish. All Callirhoe have taproots which makes them very drought tolerant, but also very difficult to move once established.
Todd Forrest is the NYBG’s Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections. He leads all horticulture programs and activities across the Garden’s 250-acre National Historic Landmark landscape, including 50 gardens and plant collections outside and under glass, the old-growth Thain Family Forest, and living exhibitions in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
The flowers of Penstemon cobaea var. purpurea are much larger than those of the other beard-tongues in the Native Plant Garden.
I am batty for beard-tongues. No, I don’t mean the furry-mouthed feeling that people with actual social lives get after long nights of too many cocktails, I mean the more than 250 species of Penstemon, a genus of perennials and biennials native to North America from the Maine woods to the alpine meadows of Idaho and the deserts of California. With tall clusters of flowers as beautiful as their common name is ugly (the moniker beard-tongue refers to tufts of hair that emerge from the sterile fifth stamen of certain species), beard-tongues carry late spring in the Native Plant Garden.
The most common beard-tongue in cultivation is Penstemon digitalis ‘Husker Red’, selected in 1983 by Dr. Dale Lindgren of the University of Nebraska for its maroon leaves, long-lasting inflorescences of white flowers, and extreme hardiness (it thrives in Nebraska!). We planted ‘Husker Red’ in the Native Border, where its flowers bridge the gap between the peaks of mid-spring and mid-summer bloom, and its foliage adds a dash of welcome color throughout the growing season.
Brian Sullivan is the Vice President for Landscape, Gardens and Outdoor Collections. He oversees the care, presentation, and development of the outdoor gardens and landscape management of the Garden’s 250 outdoor acres.
Allium giganteum
When choosing a new plant to add to a garden, some people choose plants for beauty. Others choose plants with a purpose, for example a shade tree or an upright evergreen for structure in the garden. Well, isn’t it nice to find a plant that fills more than one need?
One such plant is the ornamental allium. If that name sounds familiar, it should. There are many species and cultivars of the genus Allium, which include the well-known chives, onions, and garlic.
The flower appears to be a single, spherical flower borne on single upright stems. However, the globes are actually made up of many small, star-shaped flowers radiating out from the center. Alliums come in many sizes. The flower heads range from tiny to quite large, and the density of the flowers can be quite full, creating a dense flower head; or very open, making for an airy flower head. The stems also range from a short 12” to an astounding 36”. Colors can range from dark purple to the light pink, with some white cultivars. The different species and cultivars can be massed in large numbers or mixed all together for varying effects in the garden.
Todd Forrest is the NYBG’s Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections. He leads all horticulture programs and activities across the Garden’s 250-acre National Historic Landmark landscape, including 50 gardens and plant collections outside and under glass, the old-growth Thain Family Forest, and living exhibitions in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
Frost-killed hydrangea stems should be pruned back to live wood.
On April 16 at 6 a.m., the Garden’s weather station reported a low temperature of 30.2°F. The freezing temperatures were accompanied by about a half inch of icy slush that coated the greening turf and accumulated in the chalices formed by the opening flowers of saucer magnolias, which had just emerged after a string of warm April days that, I hoped, signaled the end of our seemingly interminable winter. Needless to say, the Garden’s venerable saucer magnolias did not have their best spring.
For many, memories of that hard April frost will be erased by this week’s temperatures—approaching 90°F as I write—and the reappearance of seersucker suits in midtown. Those of us who love plants will be reminded of April 16 every time we see an old-fashioned Hydrangea macrophylla over the next few months. With the exception of remontant (re-blooming) varieties such as Endless Summer® (more on these later), Hydrangea macrophylla flower from buds formed during the previous growing season. Dormant through the long winter, these buds began to swell as temperatures finally rose in early April, only to be zapped by the hard mid-April frost.
Kristin Schleiter is the NYBG’s Associate Vice President of Outdoor Gardens and Senior Curator. She oversees the wonderful gardening team that keeps our flowering gardens looking top notch, curates the herbaceous gardens and collections, and manages the curator of woody plants. She lives and gardens in Fairfield, CT.
Himalayan fox tail lily (Eremerus himalaicus)
One of my favorite plants on our new Seasonal Walk so far is the Himalayan fox tail lily, Eremerus himalaicus. Re-designed by renowned designer Piet Oudolf and planted late last fall, it has been a thrill to watch the garden unfold. After a very cold winter filled with lots of nail-biting, the plants have emerged healthy, happy, and simply glorious. As all the best gardens do, this one changes magically from week to week. The leading characters now are our native columbine Aquilegia canadensis (complete with hummingbirds darting around enjoying the red and yellow flowers) and the magical Himalayan fox tail lily. Elegant spires of white star-shaped flowers dance gracefully down the length of the double border. They are four feet tall this year, but hold the promise of more height in years to come as they settle in.
Fox tail lilies are easy to plant. Their tubers look much like a sea star with a whole mess of legs wearing a dunce cap. Dig a hole wide enough to spread out their roots but not too deep—their noses should be just a few inches underground. They don’t enjoy wet soil and love the sun.
The Seasonal Walk is only just beginning to seduce with its tapestry of plants. I love the fox tail lilies now, but I’m sure there is something else that will start blooming next month that will steal my fickle heart.
Michael Hagen is the NYBG’s Curator of the Native Plant Garden and the Rock Garden. He previously served as Staff Horticulturist for Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, NY and Garden Manager at Rocky Hills, in Mt. Kisco, a preservation project of the Garden Conservancy.
Wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
Asking a curator to pick a favorite plant is akin to asking a parent to tell you their favorite child—surely an impossible choice. Nevertheless, there are moments when, with plants and children alike, they do something that gladdens the heart and captures otherwise divided affections.
Such a moment is upon us in the Native Plant Garden. A visit this week will reward with the sight of spectacular drifts of the native wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis). Their delightfully fine-textured, almost fern-like foliage is a perfect backdrop to the sprays of delicate, red-spurred flowers, with just a light flush of yellow on the petals and a cluster of exerted yellow stamens. A not insignificant bonus is that they are pollinated by Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, and this generous display is sure to offer a welcome sight to any migrating birds that make their way through the garden.
