The Variegated Thumb

This weekend my wife and I ran across a flower we had never seen before.  It was the Texas Bluebell (Eustoma grandiflorum), also called Prairie Gentian or Lisianthus.  These flowers can be white, pink or purple.  The purple flowers that we purchased are very blue in color.

Texas Bluebells from above

These plants have short stems, densely topped in flowers.  The profuse blooming shouldn’t be any surprise, given the species name - grandiflorum.  However, in my opinion, the coolest element to these flowers is the appearance of the buds as they mature and open.  And I think my wife agreed with me on that aspect.  The petals spiral open like a rose.

Texas Bluebells (Eustoma grandiflorum)

There are few flowers that look as impressive in the bud state as they do fully open.  Of course, after they do open, they look more like poppies than they do roses.  But what a cool combination!

Texas Bluebell buds

I haven’t planted them yet and they have been sitting on the front porch of my house, which receives full sun in the afternoon and evening.  The high temperature has been over 100 for the last 5 days and these little plants are the only ones that haven’t wilted each and every day.  It seems they are rather heat and drought tolerant.

Texas Bluebell buds unfurling and looking like roses.

In Oklahoma these plants are considered annuals or tender perennials.  They are actually hardy in zones 8b-11.  I will be planting mine in our corner garden and mulching them well this fall, hoping for them to come back next Spring.  If they don’t come back, I might just buy some more next year and keep them indoors overwinter.

I lured my wife into yet another plant-inspired weekend road trip.  It’s really not that hard to lure my wife into road trips.  This weekend we took a drive a little over an hour north to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to visit a plant nursery that I had heard about from another plant blogger that lives in Oklahoma.  Martha from All the Dirt on Gardening suggested I visit Bustani Plant Farm for a little variety.

The Bustani Plant Farm has a great selection of plants that tolerate the heat and humidity of an Oklahoma summer and they have the appropriate motto “Grow something different.”  Many of their plants I had not seen available anywhere else.

I bought about 10 different plants, including some perennials for the corner garden and some tropicals that I will have to overwinter indoors or in a greenhouse.  The two coolest plants I walked away with are Spanish Flag (Ipomoea lobata) and a Hybrid Passionflower (Passiflora x alatocaerulea ‘Pfordtii’).  These plants are both tropical climbing plants that like full sun.  I hadn’t really planned where I would put the plants when I got home.  I just knew that I had to have both of them. 

I found some nice-looking, inexpensive wooden trellises and mounted them to the back fence for these two plants to climb this summer.  I mounted the trellises in such a manner that I can remove them easily this Fall and leave the brackets in place.  My wife can help me carry the trellis (with plant attached) while I carry the pot and we can keep each plant alive indoors over the winter and then bring them back outdoors again next Summer.  I imagine the Passionflower will be pretty hard to remove from the fence, due to the clingy tendrils it forms.  I had quite a difficult time just separating my little plant from the other plants next to it at the nursery.  I might have to monitor it throughout the summer, making sure that it is clinging tightly to the trellis but discouraging it from clinging to the fence.

Hybrid Passionflower (Passiflora x alatocaerulea ‘Pfordtii’) growing on trellis along back fence.  See all of the swollen buds, ready to open?

I had pored over the pictures on the Bustani Plant Farm website before my visit and was really happy to see that the plants were of great quality when we arrived.  My Passionflower is already blooming and looks every bit as cool as the picture on the website.  Passionflowers, in general, just look like made-up, imagined plants to me.  It doesn’t seem like they could be real.  Every time I see one I think, “Surely, that’s fake!”

Hybrid Passionflower (Passiflora x alatocaerulea ‘Pfordtii’) bloom - simply amazing! Notice the alternating sepal colors - green to purple.

The sepals of the bloom alternate from purple to pale green/white.  This is an interspecific hybrid, which means that it was bred from two different species (P. alata and P. caerulea).  It does not produce any seed, but supposedly blooms more because it does not have to put energy into the production of fruit.  Bustani also had a Passionflower that is a hardy perennial in my zone, but I really wanted to try this hybrid with the different coloring.  I brought one of the hardy blue Passionflowers back for my mom, so we’ll get to enjoy that variety as well.

Spanish Flag (Ipomoea lobata) growing on trellis along back fence.

The other climber I mounted along the back fence is the Spanish Flag (Ipomoea lobata, sometimes also called Mina lobata).  This plant is the in the Morning Glory family, along with the ornamental Sweet Potato Vines (Ipomoea batatas), the edible Sweet Potatoes, and the Cypress Vine (Ipomoea quamoclit).  It is a fast grower and attracts hummingbirds with its colorful display of red to orange to yellow to white flowers (see picture below).  The blooms are very different from other members of the Ipomoea genus, which otherwise seem to resemble each other.  My plant is not yet blooming, but is pretty healthy.  With all of the rain we have been receiving, I can already see some new growth.

Ipomoea lobata - Spanish Flag - photo from Bustani Plant Farm

What do you think of my new acquisitions?

Last week I wrote about adding some plants to our corner garden.  Over the last couple of weeks we have carefully selected some plants and added them in.  Our main criteria are:

• Colorful,
• Not weedy-looking,
• Season-long interest,
• Emphasis on Perennials or self-seeding Annuals.

The corner garden in it's current state. It looks much fuller than it will in just a couple of weeks, when the Daffodil and Tulip stems die back. Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum) in the foreground.

We did purchase some annuals that do not self-seed, but for the most part we chose plants that adhered to these criteria.

African Daisy - Osteospermum hybrid 'Orange Symphony' before planting in corner garden.

African Daisies were the annuals of choice for this year.  First we spotted the ‘Orange Symphony’ variety with its purple centers.  We bought four of these plants, but two of them quickly died, before we were able to put them in the ground.  Thankfully, Home Depot has a 1 year warranty on all of their plants.  We took back the two dead plants and replaced them with two of the purple variety ‘Soprano Light Purple.’  These bright, annual flowers are grown by Proven Winners, that has produced creamy yellow, white, purple and orange flowers, all with purple centers.  You can see the color varieties grown by Proven Winners here.

African Daisy - Osteospermum 'Soprano Light Purple' planted in the corner garden. The green clover shaped leaves in the top left corner and the purple clover shaped leaves in the top center are both Oxalis. Tulip, Daffodil, Daylily and Violet foliage are also in this picture.

A couple of days after planting the purple African Daisies (Osteospermums), we found some more plants to add to our corner garden, including a wonderful little silvery shrub from the genus Elaeagnus (possibly Elaeagnus pungens).  I planted the Elaeagnus in the corner and moved the Oxalis to the foreground of the bush to provide good contrast with the silver foliage.  The purple Oxalis has actually started blooming since I moved them.  Their blooms are light pink, but look white in the picture below, due to some extra reflection.  Notice that the purple African Daisies are also much lighter looking in this picture.

Silver shrub is an Elaeagnus (pungens?). The white blooms in front of the Elaeagnus are from the purple Oxalis lying in front of it.

I really like the silvery leaves of this little shrub.  It turns out that it is from the same genus as the Russian Olive Trees that I admired last May in Boulder, Colorado.  I wrote a little bit about them on my Desert Island Challenge post.  This shrub will provide great contrast to the purple foliage of the Oxalis planted in front of it and the cranberry red Barberry bush planted on the opposite side of the corner garden.

Rose glow Barberry bush (Berberis thunbergii v. atropurpurea), planted 2 years ago

The Barberry bush is not new.  We planted it two years ago and it is one of my favorite outdoor plantings.  The foliage is just stunning, with such a vivid color.  It immediately draws your attention when you look at the garden, even with other plants in bloom.  I highly recommend this bush.

Another new addition - Euphorbia longifolia 'Excalibur'

I have just recently become aware of a group of Euphorbias that can be planted as perennial shrubs in temperate climates.  Most people know of a couple of species of Euphorbias - The Poinsettia (E. pulcherrima) and The Crown of Thorns (E. milii) - but would be surprised to find that this plant is from the same genus.  I am preparing a much more long-winded post on Euphorbias that I will probably have ready in the next 2 weeks.  The tag of this Euphorbia says “Abundant flower heads emerge red and turn a brilliant yellow, highlighting the mounded blue-green foliage.  A superb accent plant for the mixed border or rock garden.”  So far we’re just enjoying the blue-green foliage, which is a nice addition to our garden.

Pink creeping Phlox (Phlox subulata) in the foreground with contrasting foliage colors in background.

We planted several pots of creeping Phlox in our corner garden a couple of years ago, but for some reason they had trouble getting established.  It was probably due to a hot dry spell when we didn’t stay on top of watering.  Only one of our Phlox survived from year’s past - a pink one.  My wife’s favorite Phlox are the blueish purple color.  So this year we bought three really healthy purple Phlox plants and mixed them into our corner garden.  We will stay on top of watering these, and hopefully have more Phlox every year.

Newly planted Purple creeping Phlox (P. subulata) with Oxalis in bloom (small pink blooms) and small Rudbeckia plants.

Over a month ago I raved about some Rudbeckias called R. hirta ‘Moreno.’  Well, I ordered three of these plants.  They aren’t much to look at right now (see the little rosette just to the right of the Phlox above?), but hopefully they will mature nicely this year and then bloom next year.  If I take extra special care with them for two seasons, I hope that they will start to self-seed and I will have many more in the future.  I also ordered some seeds of the ‘Cherry Brand’ Rudbeckias, which are solid red.  I am going to start these seeds in the next week.

White Cyclamen planted in more open space on the right side of the garden.

Cyclamen are one of my favorite plants.  I couldn’t resist getting a couple of these plants to add to the corner garden.  With amazing silver foliage and really unique blooms that look upside down, this just seems like the perfect plant.  Notice the difference in variegation of the leaves on the two plants I purchased.

White Cyclamen planted in front of green Oxalis.

I just realized there are Oxalis in 8 of the 11 pictures in this post!  We were given two varieties of Oxalis by a coworker of my wife a couple of years ago.  One is a green leaf variety with bright pink blooms.  The other is a purple leaf variety with a light pink bloom.  They have multiplied each year and are doing really well in our garden.  We will probably have to thin them out soon, assuming they continue to multiply at the same rate.

Another new perennial that we planted is a Mexican Petunia (Ruellia brittoniana).  This plant has long, strappy leaves that are deep green and produces pink-purple blooms that resemble a Petunia.  We planted this plant on the nearly-empty top tier of the corner garden.

Mexican Petunia (Ruellia brittoniana 'Katie's Pink') planted on top tier of corner garden. Green Oxalis in the foreground.

I also transplanted some of our Irises to the top tier.  I’m not sure why we have neglected to plant more back there, but now it is getting hard to get back there to do any planting, since our flowerbed is filling out.

What do you think of the new additions?

I don’t mean for this post to be an advertisement (for any particular magazine or plant vendor).  I’m just excited because I received my first issue of Fine Gardening today and already found something of infinite worth in it - a plant for my corner garden.  My wife got me the Fine Gardening subscription as a Valentine’s gift after I devoured a free issue that I received.  The first issue of my annual subscription arrived today.

Fine Gardening - April 2009

Just a couple pages into the magazine I was stopped dead in my tracks by a photograph of a flower unlike any I had seen before.  It had the common Daisy/Gallardia-type look to it, but the color… that was a different story.  Anything but ordinary, the center of the flower was a purplish blue.  The petals faded from almost black at the center to a glowing amber at the tips.

I quickly went to my computer and found the website of the grower - Bluestone Perennials.  But it took some time before I discovered the name of the flower that had caught my attention.  There are thousands of plants for sale on Bluestone’s website, but nothing was going to stop me from finding the gem I had seen in the magazine.  [Can you believe they didn't mention the name in the advertisement?  Maybe that is their way of getting you to spend time on their website and find other plants you want to buy.  That's actually a pretty good marketing scheme.  It worked on me.]

After seeing a flower with similar form and a dark center, like the one I had seen in the magazine, I was pretty sure that the plant was from the Rudbeckia genus.  Doing a search for Rudbeckias brought up all sorts of flowers that I wanted to plant - including the one for which I had been searching.

Rudbeckia hirta 'Moreno' - Gloriosa Daisy, Coneflower - courtesy of Bluestone Perennials.

I was very excited to see that not only is my zone listed in the plant’s description, my zone is in the middle of the pack.  That’s good news.  I didn’t want to be on the cusp of being able to keep these flowers.  I would like them to flourish.

My mom used to grow some cornflowers that were very pretty and came back each year from seed.  Apparently there are four related genera of plants that use the common name of coneflower, and who knows how many species for each of those genera.

I think the plants my mom grew were from the genus Echinacea and are generally much taller (around 3-4 feet in height).  On average, Rudbeckias tend to be 1-2 feet in height.  At least that is what I am seeing in my preliminary research.

The particular plant that I am interested in is a color cultivar of Rudbeckia hirta.  The common Rudbeckia hirta is known as the Black-eyed Susan - a well known, and rather ordinary-looking, yellow flower.  They are pretty, but I want something in my garden that pops - something that stands out - something that people have not seen before.

I have never seen any flower with this coloring before.  I’m hooked.  I’m already trying to figure out how many of these I can afford to purchase.  Here is another color variety that caught my eye:

Rudbeckia hirta 'Cherry Brandy' - Gloriosa Daisy, Coneflower - courtesy of Bluestone Perennials.

This variety is a little bit taller, reaching as much as 2 feet in height.  As I noted in my new year’s resolutions post, my corner garden needs some attention this year.  I would like to plant both of these in that garden, adding a splash of red and purple and a splash of orange and purple.

What do you think?