NEIGHBORHOOD GARDEN FOR MARCH 2, 2013
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GIFT GARDEN
BY GLADYS
JEURINK
Quite often when someone
new comes into my garden they ask, “How did you get so
many different plants?” The answer is that many were given to me. Some
came from people on moving into retirement homes wanted to keep a family
heirloom alive. Others were moving and said “I noticed you did not have
one of these so I brought part of ours”. So mine is a fun garden and
this article is about some of those people and plants.
About three
years ago Beverly McLaughlin
brought me a seedling Golden Rain Tree (Koelreuteria paniculata) from
her yard. Now it is about 15 feet tall and very slender.
It bloomed this spring! My encyclopedia says it can get 40 feet
high and 30 feet wide and the roots are very deep so things can be
planted underneath without disturbing them.
The leaves are featherly so it looks fluffy.
The blooms are bright yellow in clusters that hang down, lasting
about 3 weeks. The author
says it is drought tolerant so this summer I did not bother it at all.
There is a gorgeous one at South 47th Street
and Pioneers in south Lincoln.
When we first
bought this house some 40+ years ago, Maude
Withgett
gave me a Fall Blooming Clematis (Clematis ternifolia) that I planted on
a 6 foot chain link fence.
It is still on the fence and goes to the top and travels along for 8 to
10 feet across the top, blooming in the fall, and completely covering
the fence with white, extremely fragrant, frothy white blossoms. It is a
heavy seeder with all those blooms, so I have given away numbers of baby
plants. Every spring there
are more. Its seed heads are large and fluffy so they too are a sight on
the fence. This plant needs
to have the top of the plant and flowers in the sun but their root area
needs to be covered with mulch in the summer to keep them cool. This
plant belongs to the pruning group that I cut to the ground in the fall.
Kenneth
Good decided I did not have enough
Peonies so one time he dug in his yard and brought me about five
different kinds but I don’t have labels for them.
Peonies are planted in root clumps of with at least 3 “eyes”. If
you look at Peony root clumps the “eyes” are pink, short knobs on the
roots. When planting they should not be covered with more than 2 inches
of soil for them to do best.
If you plant too deep the Peonies will grow but will not bloom. Also
they need full sun.
Peonies take four
different forms:
1.
Single,
with 5-10 incurved petals;
2.
Semi-double with 2-3 whorls of large incurved petals;
3.
Double
with large flowers, with crowded, overlapping petals; and
4.
Japanese
with the center of the flowers crowded by narrow, crowded petaloids.
In an early
blooming year many people will cut the blooms (actually the buds) when
they are beginning to show color and refrigerate to keep them for
Memorial Day.
About 15 years
ago Margene Zachek
at the South Earl May store called me and said they had a plant they had
not ordered and it was “different”, did not know what it was, and did
not know how it would grow. Of course I had to see it and ended up
buying it for my collection. I brought home this 12 inch, strange
looking plant with a fat belly located just above where the roots start
to grow. This plant comes from Africa so is not hardy. In the winter it put it in my
South window. It is double stemmed now and double bellied, 3 feet wide
and 3 feet high. The last few years I have seen a few of them in the
garden centers. It is called a Desert Rose (Adenium obesum). It has
white flowers about 3 inches across, about 3 inches long, and with a red
rim around each bloom. BJ put it in a huge pot for me as its bellies are
huge above the soil and also goes well down in the soil.
This plant
comes from Africa
with irregular, spineless, thick walled branches to conserve water.
Adenium species have thick waxy leaves which they drop during the
African dry season and uses the water they have stored in the caudex
(belly). When the African rainy season comes it leafs out and blooms. I
know when the African rainy and dry seasons start because of this plant.
This summer it
was outside and the bumblebees loved it! As a result it formed 6 inch
long seed pods. They opened up this fall when BJ brought it in. There
were 8 pods that split one night and several hundred seeds that look
like milkweed parachutes floated out. I still found a seed and its
parachute in hidden places in January.
I have a large grocery sack full of seeds and parachutes if you
would like to try growing one.
Remember that this is a very slow grower as it gets water only
half of its life. The name of this plant is Adenium obesum.
Barbara
Burton gave me a new little shrub,
Spice Bush (Lindera sp.). It is named for the smell of its leaves that
turn color in the fall. The
encyclopedia says it takes two in order to pollinate and get fruit which
is loved by wildlife. It is
still only a year old and is about 3 feet high. Next summer I hope I can
check its perfume.
Every spring
the Lincoln Garden Club has a plant sale before their
April and their May meetings. The members bring their
extra plants, cuttings, and seeds. One year George brought many large and small branches from his
“Twisted Willow”. Some call it “Corkscrew Willow”. I stuck one in the
soil and it grew. In a couple years I had a tall, twisted, very slender
tree hanging over the
Lily
Pond. Wouldn’t it be nice if all
plants were this easy to propagate and grow?
I have many more plants that were
given to me and have a history. Can you imagine the fun I have walking
around the yard and remembering the different people who shared with me?
What a fun garden you can have in time.
Copyright 2013
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