Episode 58: Diane Blazek, Virginia Bluebells, Rejuvenation Pruning
Leslie: Want to know the best plants of 2022? Keep listening. Welcome to Into the Garden with Leslie here on Newsradio WINA. This show is sponsored by Dos Amigos Landscaping. I'm Leslie Harris, and I'm so excited about spring and plants. Our plant of the week is finally a native, and honestly, it's one of my favorite plants in the world. I'll be chatting with Diane Blazek, the Executive Director of All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau about those new plants of 2022. And the playlist is about what to do in your garden this week.
Last week, I talked about the cable show. It's local to Virginia. It's called Virginia Home Grown, and I said that I would put links to where to listen to it in the show notes on LHgardens.com, which I finally did after being reminded by my daughter that I hadn't. Anyway, it doesn't come out until March 29th, which is Tuesday, so just a few days after you're hearing this, if you're hearing it on the weekend. Wait for it. It's a great show. I think it's about an hour long of gardening goodness for Virginians, and my pruning spot will only be about 10 minutes, but I can't wait to see it. I hope you enjoy the whole show, so look for that in LHgardens.com show notes.
Temperatures are going down here in Charlottesville this coming weekend and into the early part of the week. But after that, I am going to start rescuing my indoor plants and what I mean by that is getting them back outside and out of my care. But there's a certain way to do it right. Some people shove them in and take them out and put them in again and take them out, hardening them off a few hours each day. Me, I find it pretty easy to get my steps in without that back and forth thing. So what I do is I look at the forecast for a normally chill morning and I get them out first thing while it's still a little bit cold, high 40s, low 50s. That's their first cue that they should try to remember the good old days back last fall when I left them out to as low as 40 degrees, and they should start telling themselves that they can hang in there with those low temperatures like that.
Leslie: But I'm quite careful about the morning that I choose. It's a normal chilly morning, but it's going to be nice, so they only have to suffer for a couple of hours and it warms up nicely, and I've made sure it won't get too cold that night. And of course, I don't see any frost in the extended forecast, although it could still happen. Up through April, it could still happen. Anyway, that's a huge part of my decision making process, the extended forecast and that day which is going to start off a little cool and then warm up, followed by a warmish night.
And where do I put them? I line mine up right against the house on the north side of the house on the terrace. And I do this for three reasons. They're out of the sun, because even sun loving plants don't want to jump full on into the sun without getting used to the stronger light that is just on the other side of the glass in that window. They're snuggling up next to the house because the temperatures will dip at some stage and the house will keep them a little bit warmer. If I get caught with a frost warning, I can easily bring out some beach towels or old sheets and cover them up since they're going to be bunched together for a while. And then over the next few weeks, I'll get more confident about temperatures and I'll start to move them where I want them to go for the season. That's my system and it seems to work. I'd love to hear from you if you have some good ideas about your experience with indoor plants going back outdoors.
The plant of the week is the Mertensia virginica, which is a fancy way of saying the Virginia bluebell and yes, it is finally a native. Its native range extends over most of the Eastern half of the United States and up into Canada some too. It's perennial, but it's also ephemeral, so as happy as it makes us all at this time of year, it's best to plant it. It's pretty much essential unless you want to have just a bunch of mulch to look at for the rest of the season. You need to plant it with other plants that will pick up the slack when its flowers and even its foliage die back in mid summer. I have mine planted … Well, I have two groups. I have one of mine planted with some hostas in the shade bed over by my Edgeworthia. It comes up right under that. Of course that's finished blooming, but still it's a nice segue. And then I have another group of mine that's with some fall-blooming Anemone japonica, and it's in full-on sun.
I enjoy both little vignettes and I know there are lots of great ways to plant the bluebells. I should pay better attention this year, but it's possible that the ones I have in full sun go dormant a little bit faster than those in the shade bed, but I really don't know. And I can't say that it matters because you would always want to have the Virginia bluebell as a companion plant for other things that come with later interests. Whether it's perennials or you could do it with annuals. It really doesn't matter to me when it dies down, as long as it comes back and it seems to be coming back.
And that patch in the sun has actually - I was looking at it the other day. I think I did half a dozen plants there. There are lots of plants there, so now we're getting some self sowing. The light green foliage starts to poke out for me at about mid-March. It's a long kind of really spring break, green foliage. And once it starts, here it comes. A few days later, you're going to see pink buds poking up, and those are going to turn into the blue flowers, which are sort of loose and hanging down like, oh, hey, blue bells. That make sense? It's about a foot and a half tall and rabbits won't go for it, but deer probably will, or they could.
Blue bells can take some moist soil. That's their native habitat, and I've read that you can divide them, but my collection is pretty young, so I've never done it. I'm going to have to look into that. I don't see how you could have too many of these plants tucked in around other plants in the garden, tucked in around spring bulbs. That being said, they don't love being disturbed and they have a long tap root that would make it a tricky maneuver to divide them. Still, I'm not shy about these things. I think I'll give it a try later this spring and I'll let you know how I go.
Now is a great time to shop for them, but nurseries don't stock them after they've gone dormant, for the most part. I would imagine that having shoppers hand over money for what appears to be a pot of soil would be a difficult retail strategy, so it makes sense that there's only a limited shelf life for buying this plant. I read that it self-sows very prolifically, but I mentioned that I'm only beginning to see this. Of course, you know this is a fairly new garden for me, and this is a newish plant so I'm very hopeful that I'll have a pretty good stand of them. I really recommend it. It's just as joyful as spring bulbs, but you only have to plant it once and it keeps coming back for you. So it's the Mertensia virginica or Virginia bluebell.
This is Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, and coming up, we're going to be talking with Diane Blazek about the best new plants for 2022.
Leslie: Welcome back to Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA and today we're chatting with Diane Blazek of the National Garden Bureau, and that sounds so cool. And guess what? I've been in this business for seven or eight years now, and I did not know what that was, but now let me just give you a basic. The mission of the National Garden Bureau is to inspire, connect and grow. That is right up our alley, me and all of my listeners, I know. Diane's going to tell us more about the organization, a little bit more about herself and then about all the new plants for 2022. Yay. This is why you're really listening. Welcome, Diane.
Diane: Thank you so much, Leslie. It's an honor to be here. Very fun. I love to tell people the story about the National Garden Bureau. What most people cannot believe is that we are 102 years old, so we celebrated our centennial during the pandemic.
Leslie: Oh.
Diane: Yeah, right. So we really didn't get to celebrate much, so we just keep touting the fact that we are over a hundred years old. That means we were founded in1920 by Mr. James Burdett. I'm located in Chicago now and interestingly enough, he was located in Chicago in 1920. Our management office has traveled a little bit around the US, but we're still in Chicago. And what's interesting is Mr. Burdett was involved in the Victory Gardens during World War I. He then founded our organization and then he wrote the original Victory Garden manual in the 1940s, right when, unfortunately, World War II was underway. So we have a great history with the Victory Garden movement.
Leslie: But you're ornamental too. I know this because I'm excited about that part
Diane: Oh yeah. Well, to me, you cannot have a vegetable garden without the ornamentals, because you have to attract the pollinators. And absolutely, in fact, I would say more of our new varieties that we talk about are ornamentals than vegetables. So we can really talk a lot about all the pretty stuff today.
Leslie: Oh good. Oh, good. Well, thank you. It's great to know about the organization. Tell me a little bit about yourself. What's your background and how did you get to where you are?
Diane: Well, I'm a farm girl. I grew up in north-central Missouri on a family farm. And so at a very young age, my dad had me helping with the farm and I was tinkering with tools. Then my mom put me in the garden and I remember many summers scraping carrots, shelling peas, snapping green beans. We canned a lot, so I really did get my start in a vegetable garden. But then I discovered Coxcombs and Portulaca, and I planted them all around our little patio that we had.
So fast forward 20 years, I got into the publishing business within horticulture. That was 1993, and I did that for 15 years. Then I found this nonprofit, well, two nonprofit organizations, so I manage both National Garden Bureau and All-America Selections, which is a plant trialing organization, and we promote winners that perform well in our trials. So I'm actually talking about some of the new varieties from National Garden Bureau members, as well as some of our AAS winners today.
Leslie: We're going to get the best. The best plants of the year. I'm so excited. All right. Where do you want to start?
Diane: Oh boy, that's hard. Well, we've got some perennials. Some are tender perennials so it depends where the listeners are, but I'll talk about zones also. Let's talk about an Achillea ptarmica. This one is called 'Marshmallow" and I really have to describe this. This is a podcast. It's got these puffy white flowers like a double flower and it's just covered. To me, it's almost like maybe a baby's breath on steroids. A lot bigger flowers, but it is more compact and here's what's really cool with a lot of today's breeding work. Think about your listeners. Think about you. Think about your neighbors. We're all maybe having to garden in a smaller spot.
Leslie: Yeah.
Diane: Maybe it's on your patio or your balcony. Maybe it's in containers. So a lot of the work that the breeders are doing is more compact and that's what this Achillea is. It's only 12 inches tall. It's hardy in Zones 3 through 8.
Leslie: Okay. And another word for Achillea that listeners might connect to is Yarrow. I suppose you could say it that way. I've killed that plant a lot of times myself. I know that it doesn't love great soil and I guess I have good soil. Is that possible?
Diane: That's possible
Leslie: Doesn't do well for me, and it also kind of gets the flops so this cultivar will really help us. What's the name of it again? Something about marshmallows?
Diane: Marshmallow.
Leslie: Yeah. Marshmallow.
Diane: Yes, exactly. Yeah. That one's easy. And then the next one is an Agapanthus. This one is called 'Ever Amethyst', so if you can imagine it's a beautiful purple bloom. Again, they call this one semi-dwarf so it's also being bred to be a little bit shorter. It's about 24 to 30 inches. Now this, I think in a lot of places, people just want to grow it as an annual because it's hardy in Zones 8 to 11, so that's pretty warm.
Leslie: Okay. But they are getting some. I know that I bought myself an Agapanthus last year that was said that it was hearty up until Zone 6B. So if people are in my zone, I'll let you know how I do with this one. Agapanthus, which is that beautiful plant that you see lining the streets of Hollywood basically. It's huge in California and France. It was all over the place when I lived in Australia, but it's a house plant for so many people, but they are stretching these ones. So tell me the name of this one again, that grows in 8 to 10, Zones 8 to 10.
Diane: 8 to 11, and it's called 'Ever Amethyst'
Leslie: And so the idea is that it blooms longer than some other cultivars?
Diane: Yes. Very early and will re-bloom.
Leslie: So great container plant, if you're colder than …
Diane: Absolutely. Or if you want to dig it up, you know? If you want to go do that work. So we have another perennial and this one is called Amsonia 'String Theory', and again, it's more compact than your standard Amsonia, and it's covered with these little light periwinkle flowers. This one is Zones 4 through 9 so it's got a pretty good range.
Leslie: Yeah. Does it get that awesome yellow foliage in the fall?
Diane: You bet it does. Still does. It's got the periwinkle blooms and then it'll have the nice green foliage, so there is a foliage element and will turn a golden yellow in the fall.
Leslie: And describe the leaf because I think my favorite of all of them is still the hubrichtii, which can flop. That gets really big and it's difficult to divide. It can take up four by four in your garden. However, I still love it because of the thread-like foliage. What's the foliage like on this one?
Diane: That's exactly what I was going to say. It definitely still has that thread-like foliage and you know what is super great that people always ask me about? It's deer resistant.
Leslie: Oh yeah. And it's a native.
Diane: And it's a native. Yeah. So sometimes people will say, hey, if the deer are hungry, they will eat anything so you can never really say that everything is deer resistant. But maybe if you have some other things they like better, they won't touch this.
Leslie: Yeah, and that would be great. So let's do one more before our first break.
Diane: Let's do a Bougainvillea. Obviously for the south, but you can grow anything as an annual if you're in a different area, but this one's called 'Burgundy Queen'. It has a really deep wine-red foliage and intense fuchsia colors, I guess. It grows huge, very big, 20 to 30 feet vines, but why not grow it as an annual? Put it up a trellis and if you can bring it indoors, you can bring it indoors. If not, you have something that's really cool and you can say, look, I'm growing stuff that grows in the south.
Leslie: Exactly. And it bloomed all summer for you and it probably didn't have the energy to put out those really big prickers that it grows in the south. So maybe a newer, younger plant would only put out a few of those things. That is a great combination, that wine-red foliage and the bright pink. It reminds me of a Weigela which I can't name at the moment, but that's a really good combination. So people could look for that and grow it in a container. Do you have experience with bougainvillea enough to know how much it would grow in three to four months? I don't.
Diane: I don't. I have not tried it, but now that you've asked, I'm thinking, okay. I think I might try it and just see, then I can answer that question.
Leslie: Yeah, me too. I think I might give it a go. All right. This is Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, and we are talking with Diane Blazek of the National Garden Bureau about the best plants for 2022, and she knows what they are. All right. Let's do a few more. Just keep making us drool. Here we go.
Diane: Okay. How about two Celosias?
Leslie: Yeah.
Diane: There's two. There's one that's red and the series is called Arrabona. That's the Argentea series or type. And then we also have one that's the Plumosa type. That one is called Celosia Flamma Orange and the Flamma Orange is an AAS winner. So we trialed that one. It performed well throughout North America - it's not just US - throughout North America, and so it's an AAS award winner.
Leslie: AAS? What's that?
Diane: That's All-America Selections. That's the other organization.
Leslie: That's your other business. Okay.
Diane: Exactly. Right. Plant trialing. Tested Nationally & Proven Locally, that's our tagline.
Leslie: Okay. All right. AAS. Learning so much. And so for people who don't grow celosia, let's describe it a little bit. The Plumosa that I have that grows rampantly in my garden, just self-seeds from my compost pile, gets to be about three or four feet tall. The Argentea I'm not familiar with. Do you have any specs on that?
Diane: Yes. Well, actually both of them say that they're only 14 to 16 inches tall.
Leslie: Oh, that's easier to handle
Diane: Again, more compact because you don't want them to flop over and everything, so getting the things more compact. The other thing that the breeders are working on when it comes to newer varieties is better branching. They call it basal branching. That means if you have one stock, it's going to have a lot more side stocks that actually bloom, so it's going to be more covered with flowers so it means you get more color. I'm sitting here and I'm looking at pictures of both the Arrabona Red and the Flamma Orange, they're covered with flowers. They're little plumes basically. One is a shorter, fatter plume and the other one is more elongated and a little bit more feathery, the plumosa type is. But both of them just have kind of a delicate, feathery look to them I think is the best way to describe them. One's an intense red. One is a really good orange that won't fade in the sun
Leslie: And they make pretty good cut flowers as I recall, right?
Diane: These will. If you're wanting a more compact cut flower, it's not a 30 inch stem, but you still could. You absolutely could and you can dry them.
Leslie: Yes. They dry beautifully. They dry beautifully. And the other thing I was going to say to listeners, most people I'm sure know this trick, but with any plant that you want to be a little bit shorter and bushier, it sounds like this is built in for these two types of Celosia, but if you want to. For instance, my impatiens sometimes gets too tall. I want them shorter and fatter, and my Coleus, you can always pinch and that will produce more side shoots.
Diane: Now you just said something that is a perfect segue. You had no idea what I was going to talk about next.
Leslie: No, I did not.
Diane: I have something called a Coleus ‘Spitfire’, which is just tiny and compact and super cute. It's not a coleus with the big, broad leaves. They're narrow, longer leaves. They have a really pretty deep pink interior with a green edge on the leaf. It only gets 10 to 16 inches tall and maybe 12 to 16 inches wide, so it's definitely more compact. It would be great in combinations, maybe a window box. I'm looking at it right now in a container all on its own. So probably like maybe a 10 inch container would be perfect to have like a monoculture container.
Leslie: Yeah. Tell me the name of it again.
Diane: Spitfire
Leslie: Spitfire. Awesome. It sounds like it would have red, but it doesn't. It's pink and green. Any white or cream?
Diane: Well, okay, so I'm looking at a pink and then it's got just a little margin of like a burgundy, and then it goes to green, but it's a deep pink. I guess maybe you could call it a reddish pink. It's definitely on the darker side of pink
Leslie: And for people who aren't as familiar with Coleus, you've probably heard of it because it's just one of those wonderful container and annual plants. One of those things can grow to like three or four feet tall and wide. So it's kind of nice if you're scared off by that size for a container, because you do have to keep pinching at a plant that size and it actually gets some woody growth. This is a plant that's grown for foliage and not for its bloom so much. It will bloom, but then the foliage will kind of stop because it's like, okay, I've done my thing. I don't need to grow as much. This sounds like a really great one. Spitfire. Thank you. What else? What else?
Diane: Okay, so now we have another coleus because that is a little bit … I don't know if I want to say the opposite end of the spectrum, but it's huge and it's burgundy and it is just an intense burgundy. Does not fade in the sun and I'm thinking it's big. It's probably about 24 inches tall, but you were talking about blooms. This one was bred number one, to not have that burgundy color fade, and number two, to not bloom until very late in the season. It was September before it started to put the bloom shoots on here in my Chicago garden, which I'm a 5. What they're touting on that one is very slow to bloom, intense color that will not fade, and it is a beauty. I love it. So we kind of have the small Coleus Spitfire and the big Coleus, which is called 'Main Street Beale Street'
Leslie: Main Street Beale Street. That's a mouthful.
Diane: Main Street Beale Street and it is an AAS winner.
Leslie: Okay. Really good to know about the fading thing. I know that some listeners will be tracking that Coleus if you're an old lady like me. I used to grow Coleus only in the shade and now they've cultivated it so it will take some sun, but there is a little bit of fading in some of the colors. So it's great to know that the Main Street Beale Street will not fade. That bright red. All right, cool. What else have you got?
Diane: Now let's talk about a hosta, kind of a nice segue from a coleus, which is an annual but is grown for its foliage. So now we have a perennial that's grown for its foliage and I love the name of it. It's 'Miss America'. Has really, really large leaves. These are variegated. It has the center of the white. The height is 19 inches, but the width can be up to 55 inches so it's huge.
Leslie: Are the individual leaves huge, or it just spreads out with many …?
Diane: No, the leaves are pretty darn huge ... I wish I had a picture of it next to somebody's hand, but by looking at it, I'm kind of envisioning almost hand size.
Leslie: Okay. For each leaf?
Diane: Yes. For each leaf.
Leslie: Wow. Yeah. That sounds really cool.
Diane: And it's Zone 3 through 9. So that's another one that can be grown in many, many, many places.
Leslie: I love hostas. I know that we talk about native plants a lot on this podcast and we are not happy about alien invasives, but if it's just an alien and it's not hurting anything and it's making you happy, I'm okay with that.
Diane: Yes. Yes. Very true. Pay attention to these invasive lists because you don't want to be that person, but there's a lot of things that are just beautiful and are not going to harm the environment or anybody else.
Leslie: Yeah. And they're going to make you happy in your garden. What else is going to make us happy in our garden?
Diane: How about a Hydrangea that is a trailing Hydrangea? This is new. It's the first cascading Hydrangea in North America. Each trailing stem has all these blooms on the stem. This one they say do not prune because if you prune, you won't have as many. So it's very easy to grow. If you don't have to worry about when and what and where and how and everything else about pruning a Hydrangea, you've got this one. It is big enough to take up and be like a centerpiece plant in your garden. It gets to be about 48 inches tall and wide. Now this one is Zone 7 through 9, so I think you'll be okay with it in your zone. Further north, people are going to have to grow it as an annual, but Zone 7 and 9 covers a big part of the United States.
Leslie: So tell me more. What's the type of Hydrangea that it is? Is it a native, or is it a macrophylla?
Diane: I think it's a hybrid that they're not telling us what the parents are.
Leslie: Oh, how interesting.
Diane: It is a trademark, so it's called 'Fairytrail Bride', not fairy tale, Fairytrail because it's a trailing and bride because the flowers are white. But it looks totally different than what you might think of as a Hydrangea. If you saw it growing, you may not automatically think that it's a Hydrangea. It doesn't have those big mophead of blooms or the big balls or anything. So I think it's going to be pretty exciting.
Leslie: Have you seen it physically or just photographs of it?
Diane: Just photographs. I have not seen it physically.
Leslie: You see in the photographs the foliage? Does it look more like an arborescence Oakleaf, probably not a macrophylla?
Diane: Yeah. It's definitely not an Oakleaf. The leaves are actually relatively small for a Hydrangea
Leslie: So it might have some paniculata in it, because some of those leaves ...
Diane: It does. Yeah.
Leslie: Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. I can't wait to hear. So they're saying with Hydrangeas that we love our big poufy flowers, but what do you call the flat ones? The lace cap.
Diane: Lace caps. Yes.
Leslie: The lace cap ones are better for pollinators because they make the flowers more accessible to pollinate. And obviously, even though it's not a native plant, we can still feed pollinators with it.
Diane: Absolutely.
Leslie: Just like we like to eat sushi that did not come from the United States. We still get nutrition. So tell me about the flowers. Do they look kind of lace cappy but they've spilled? What do they look like?
Diane: They do look lace cappy in that they're flatter. They're not like a double and they're not a real tight clump. They really literally cover the plant. You see at least 50% flowers and 50% foliage.
Leslie: Wow.
Diane: And because they're trailing, the flowers are all along the stem, so they're really nice and spread out on the plant.
Leslie: Okay. One more question. Sorry. I'm a little fixated on Hydrangeas. I just want to describe it for people who can't see it, and I'll try to find a photograph for the show notes, but just for instant gratification, the bloom itself is about how big and does it look like it's spilling? Does it dangle? Can you equate it to any other bloom that you've seen? Butterfly Bush kind of flops over, but it's obviously very skinny. Is it something like that?
Diane: No, it's more just a big, massive ball of shrub, of flowering shrub. You can see the stems. Where I'm looking, they're slightly spilling over. They have probably done this perfectly for the photo, so I can imagine as it grows and grows, it might spill over this container. They have this one in a container for photography purposes, but no, it does not look like a butterfly bush.
Leslie: And it does not look like a Hydrangea?
Diane: No, it doesn't
Leslie: It just looks like a thing of beauty. Can we maybe call it that?
Diane: Let's just say it's in a class all its own.
Leslie: Okay. And the name again one more time.
Diane: 'Fairytrail Bride'
Leslie: 'Fairytrail Bride' hydrangea. I cannot wait to check this out. This is Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, and we are talking with Diane Blazek about the new plants for 2022 and we have time for a few more. I'm already drooling and spending imaginary dollars. Yes, tell me. Tell me what else.
Diane: Well, let's see here. Okay. How about some lavender? Because the National Garden Bureau does this 'Year Of' program, and a couple years ago we had lavender as one of our Year Of crops, and it was very, very popular. I know people love lavender. I know that lavender is not always easy to grow unless you're in Provence, so the breeders are trying to bring out new lavenders that are easier to grow. Maybe they're more tolerant in different soils. They bloom longer. They bloom earlier. They have sturdier stems. So I'll just mention two here.
One is called 'La Diva Eternal Elegance'. Now that's a Spanish Angustifolia. Easy to bloom and great fragrance. The height is 12 to 20 inches, and about the same, maybe a little bit wider, so it's compact and wide. And then the other one is Lavender 'Sensational', and that one has large, four inch intense purple spikes. This one is 18 to 24 inches tall. So it sounds like La Diva has a wider range of heights, depending on where you're growing it, whereas Sensational is more consistent at 18 to 24 inches tall.
Leslie: Okay. That sounds great. People who have not experimented with lavender or have been successful with it, you know that it's a Mediterranean plant. It does not like high humidity. It does not like particularly rich soil. It does not like the ‘pruning at the wrong time’ thing. That's a little tricky, and so it's such a great idea to grow lavender and then in reality, I think lots of people give up. So try these two new types. Repeat the names for us, Diane.
Diane: The first one is 'La Diva Eternal Elegance' and then the other one is 'Sensational'.
Leslie: Okay. All right. So really good. There's always hope, right? If you failed with lavender before, go give these two a try. What else have you got for us?
Diane: So I mentioned our Year Of crops. What we're featuring this year for a flowering shrub is lilacs, and we have a new lilac. First Editions is the brand name and it's called Lilac Pinktini™, and so what I like to talk about with lilacs right now is this is basically like Grandma's bush. They're around her house. They've outlived her ...
Leslie: They look horrible and all the blooms are 15 feet tall and you can't smell them.
Diane: Exactly. So sorry, Grandma. Dig out the old lilac. Let's put some new ones in. So again, they're being bred for a little bit more compactness, longer lasting blooms, or even reblooming. They're bred for disease resistance. The fragrance is what we love so the fragrance is not being bred out. If anything, they're being bred for more fragrance and a little bit more variation in colors. So this one, the First Editions® lilac Pinktini™ is definitely more compact, tidier.
Leslie: Excuse me. Excuse me. Did you say Pinktini™?
Diane: Yeah.
Leslie: Like martini?
Diane: Yeah. It sounds like a cocktail, doesn't it?
Leslie: Okay. I'm in. Keep going.
Diane: I know. We should be sipping cocktails right now. The height is 4 to 5 feet and the width is 3 to 4 feet. So a little bit more upright than round, but just envision these really rich pink-colored blooms, highly fragrant, stays a little bit more compact.
Leslie: That sounds lovely. What's the other one you got?
Diane: I only had the one lilac.
Leslie: Oh, sorry. I was getting really greedy with the two.
Diane: If you went to our website, ngb.org and went under the Year Of the lilac, you're going to see about 20 or 30 varieties there.
Leslie: Oh, okay. So they are really pushing them.
Diane: Yeah. There's definitely more to whet your appetite there.
Leslie: Okay. All right. Fantastic. And you said they're breeding them to be smaller and that's to a man. That's what people seem to want? No more of the tall vulgaris?
Diane: Yeah.
Leslie: Yeah. It does make sense. I mean, it's the scent that gets you and you don't want it too far away.
Diane: Yeah. I'm not 12 feet tall, so I can't smell it anyway.
Leslie: You can't reach it to cut it and bring it inside
Diane: And they won't need pruning as much either if they're shorter.
Leslie: That's good. So let's do a couple more. We probably have time for two more.
Diane: Let's do … I'm going to kind of switch up here. I'm going to talk about peppers, because I have two peppers that are both ornamental and edible. Both of these are All-America Selections, winners, and here's the deal. We started trialing in containers last year, because as we said earlier, more and more people are gardening in containers. So we have one that's a jalapeño that is perfect. It can be grown in a 10 inch container, maybe even 8. And then we have a Thai-type that's a lot hotter and that one's called 'Quickfire'.
The jalapeño one is called ‘Pot-a-peno’, jalapeño in a pot. Clever name. Only 12 to 15 inches tall and wide, and when it grows the peppers, it just kind of spills over the side so you can really easily pick them, harvest them. I had it last year. I got well over three dozen just in about a month's period of time off this so it's very prolific, so that's good.
The other pepper is called 'Quickfire' and you know how ornamental peppers have those upright peppers that are just so cute and kind of wavy? This one is upright, very hot, Thai-type peppers. It will only get 8 or 10 inches tall, and you can also grow that in a container.
Leslie: And green foliage on both? I know sometimes they get leggy, the foliage on those peppers
Diane: Because they're so small and compact, and then they have the peppers on there. They're really an ornamental that you can also eat.
Leslie: And who needs too many peppers? It's like, you need that one. I don't know, I'm kind of a baby with my hot, spicy things. So just one or two for guacamole and then that's it. We don't need to dedicate many square feet to our peppers.
Diane: I totally agree.
Leslie: All right. Maybe we have time for one more ornamental.
Diane: Okay. Because I am excited about this one also. Again, it's another All-America Selections winner. It is a gold medal and we do not have very many gold medals. We've had 3 in the last 17 years, so it's not very often we get those, and we actually have two or three, so I can talk fast, and there's a theme here. Well, two out of the three have yellow flowers. One is called Petunia 'Bee's Knees' and it's a vibrant yellow petunia. Will not fade, low maintenance, only about 10 inches tall, but then it'll spill over the container perfectly up to 24 inches. So that's one.
Then we have a Zinnia that's a red and yellow bi-color and it's the 'Profusion' Series. So Zinnia Profusion, red and yellow bi-color, and here's what's super cool. It's got yellow outer petals, a red interior petal, and then as it ages, as the flowers age, it morphs to different colors like rose and salmon, and they are gorgeous, so they come out this wonderful color, but then you get this transition as the season goes along.
Leslie: That's very cool. Like a hydrangea bloom almost. That's very cool. How tall is it? I'm not familiar with Profusion off the top of my head. About how tall?
Diane: They're shorter. They're 8 to 14 inches and they are disease resistant, so that's really good.
Leslie: Yeah. All right.
Diane: I really wanted to highlight those two that were yellow and that were gold medal winners.
Leslie: All right. Gold medal winners. That's fantastic. They must just be perfect in every way, because the gold medal would probably have to do with not only performance, disease resistant. What else would they be looking at?
Diane: Breeding breakthroughs and 80% of our judges say this is amazing. It needs a gold medal winner.
Leslie: Okay. All right. And they're all gardeners.
Diane: Yes, they are. They are experts.
Leslie: Diane, thank you so much for sharing all this with us. I am sure that everybody's inspired to get out there to the nurseries, which will be stocking up with stuff soon. Thank you.
Diane: Very soon. Thank you for having me. It's been fun.
Leslie: Have a wonderful 2022 with the National Garden Bureau, and I'm sure we're looking forward to even more plants, but this is a great start. Thank you, Diane.
Diane: Thank you.
Leslie: We'll be right back with more about what to do in your garden this week. Welcome back to Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA and it's time for the playlist. Are you so excited to go shopping for new plants now? Honestly, there's always the biggest or in many cases, the most compact, the shiniest new thing in the gardening world. I get so excited about most any plant, but still, it's really fun to be aware of what's out there. And instead of wondering if you should do that update for your phone immediately, or wait until the powers that be have worked out all the kinks, the All-America Selections committee has worked out all the kinks for you. Their slogan is tested nationally and proven locally.
What it is is a nonprofit organization that gets all these professional horticultural volunteers to do anonymous trialing, and so these plants really are chosen based on some fantastic information. I'm going to put the links to Diane's organizations because in addition to the All-America Selections, she's also the director of the National Garden Bureau, an organization that I didn't know existed. Well, I didn't know either of them existed, but now I am so happy to know. Anyway, these links will be in the show notes.
Let's talk about seeds for a minute, the inexpensive way to do new plants. I had a lovely chat with Clare Foster the other day. She's the editor of House & Garden Magazine in the UK, and she's a great gardener. She has a lovely blog and a great presence on Instagram. Anyway, she's going to be on the show in a few weeks, and I was mentioning to her my inexplicable lack of enthusiasm for bringing seedlings along. Although I do it and I have very many in the works right now, it's not my very favorite part of gardening. Clare had a bit of advice and she asked me to see if I didn't get a bit more excited at the point where I actually get the fruit or the flowers that come from the seeds that have germinated weeks or months before. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to see if I can muster some more zeal for this noble pursuit of not buying full-on plants that have been brought along by somebody else.
Last week, I briefly mentioned my cold frame, which I am lucky enough to have, and really a person who already had that zeal about growing things from seeds and didn't have to talk herself into it - yeah, that person is me - would be so chuffed to have a cold frame. So what is a cold frame? A simple explanation would be that it's a greenhouse for extremely short people, and maybe not even people. Nobody's that short. Picture if you will, a Jack Russell terrier with opposable thumbs puttering around with growing medium and small pots. That's about the scale of mine. It was made by my very handy Tim, who helps me with such things. It was made from an old door. So old in fact, that the glass is that cool wavy glass.
The door was left in the loft of a garage of the house that we moved into in Connecticut in 1991. The house was built in 1912. I don't know how old that door was. Anyway, the door stayed there and stayed there until I was cleaning out to leave for Virginia in 2014. I just couldn't leave it behind. Huge panes of wavy old glass. I knew it had a use, but I didn't know what until it sat in our Virginia garage for another five years and then I thought of the cold frame idea. Tim built me a frame made of wood that inclines toward the sun and it's in a south facing location. He put hinges on the door to attach it to the frame and even included little Plexiglas windows - not wavy but that's okay - on the front of the frame for more light. I'll put pictures on my blog if you're curious as to what it looks like. But if you were just to imagine that quite dexterous Jack Russell terrier in our scenario, if you've picture him in the cold frame, he would be able to out the front as well as having light coming down from above.
So how do I use my cold frame? Well, sort of like my brain and my computer. At about 10% capacity. I see pictures of gardeners in Canada. Oh, have you ever heard of Niki Jabbour? I want to get her on the show. Anyway, people like that grow greens all winter under such a contraption or those hoops or whatever, and they go out in the snow to bring water and they fiddle around with them. Yeah, I'm not doing that. But what I am doing is foisting my little seedlings out into the wild, way before I could if I had no cold frame. So I prop the glass door open really wide, all the way on warm days so that the little fellows don't get roasted, and just a little bit on cool days. I close it most nights and the heat stays on a bit to keep them protected.
The upside is that the inside of my house isn't filled with seedlings. The downside is that I do have to manage the temperatures on these things because that cooking of plants, that's real. If I travel at this time of year, I put all my seedlings in the garage and then have a friend, who actually I don't expect to be a plant nerd, simply open it in the day. The sun shines into it, it's south exposed and then close it at night and then water. They don't get nearly as much light that way, but they survive without my friend having to fiddle around like I have to fiddle around.
Another way I use it is to protect plants that could almost make it through our winters, but not quite. So if a not quite hardy plant of mine is all potted up in my favorite blue and white ceramic and looking quite lovely, it gets to go onto my glass porch, which has furniture and a TV and that's the place where we hang out in the winter. But if it's a plant that simply needs protection and isn't so pretty, I put them ignominiously into ugly black plastic pots and there they stay. These are second-rate gardening specimens, but they're going to survive in the cold frame all winter. But the same caveat applies. If we get a 60 degree sunny day, and those guys are under that glass, that's not going to go well for them so I have to be around to fiddle. So it's not foolproof, this system.
Cold frames I have decided are quite handy for dedicated gardeners who want to extend the season by trapping the sun's warmth under glass. But for lazy gardeners like myself, well, let us just say that it's probably good that I have not invested in a full-on greenhouse. But like the cute little garden bench that you put and you don't sit on it very often, I do use my cold frame. I just don't use it as much as I should, but it also looks kind of cool.
Questions from listeners: I had a question from Liz Hayes about pruning her camellia and I thought it would be a good way to go over two types of drastic pruning that you might want to be informed about. Have you ever heard of rejuvenation pruning? I bet you have. That's the type where you take a shrub down so low that you're really just relying on the mature root system to take over since you remove most, if not all, of the vegetation. When I moved into this house, there were some disreputable-looking Ilex - Japanese Hollys - out front where I wanted to put my sunny perennial borders. I did remove some of them. With others, I just had a chat with them and I said to them, okay, so you are not what I want here. You are big and misshapen and I don't like you, so I'm tempted to dig you out completely. But I do see a modicum of potential in you so instead of that, I'm going to get rid of all of your branches and cut you right down to the ground. And if you respond to that treatment by dying, so be it - sorry- and I will replace you with plants that I like better. But if you respond to that treatment by growing into a plant that I can work with, then great. You are welcome to be a part of my garden.
And sure enough, I have four Holly balls and I've got them into green meatballs. They're the kind of hollys that look like boxwoods at a glance by the way, but I'm not a snob. I don't care what it is as long as it looks good. And those four plants decided to play my little rejuvenation pruning game and they won and they are the bones of the border in winter and they make me very happy.
Liz was wondering whether to do that sort of thing to a top-heavy camellia or whether to take away one third of it. And one-third is a great rule of thumb for pruning woody plants. You don't stress a plant too much, if you think just one-third is going this year, and then maybe you could do a third the next year if it still needs more. But Liz's camellia is in that sad place that only has foliage on the outside. So even a lighter sort of pruning like this, just one-third, would render the look of brown sticks for a while. Camellias with mature root systems are pretty able growers, so I'm pretty sure that she would get cute little new leaves in a few months, maybe by midsummer.
If you are making this sort of decision about pruning, like how far to go with it, the thing that you need to keep in your mind is what your end game is. If you are at the point where you could well want to replace the plant, but you're willing to give it one more try after a severe surgery, then rejuvenation pruning, the kind that actually risks the life of the plant, could be the way to go, because then if it dies, well you really didn't love it that much anyway, now did you?
Another good topic that I wanted to talk about for a second this week was brought up on a podcast. I think it was a question on Gardeners Question Time on the BBC. I think it should also get my full attention next fall, but a bit of attention right now as we head into bulb season would be really handy. And the question was, how do you add bulbs to borders without skewering and killing and slicing the bulbs that you already have in borders? I have thoughts on this. Are you surprised? But a lot of my thoughts would be more useful to hear at bulb planting time.
Still, if this worrisome first-world conundrum is preying on your mind, there are two tactics that you can employ now, and they are, number one, take lots of photos or even better videos of your spring bulbs and keep them in a folder to review them in the fall. So walk around your yard, mutter into your phone, hope no one is looking, talk about what you like, what's petering out and maybe what you should give up on. And more importantly, where exactly you could dig next fall without injuring the bulbs you have and like.
The other one that you could do - I would never do this one, but you might - would be popsicle sticks in the ground, labeled with bulbs where they are. I guess on that stick, you would write what it is, how big the clump is, because if it's just two things that's way different than a four by six area of bulbs, when it flowered. It sounds like a lot of work for something that I know I would end up losing and I don't usually lose my phone. Anyway, those popsicle sticks, I would step on them. They would break. I would accidentally move them to the wrong spot. I only bring this up because it might be a better system for you, dear listener, even though I would never do it. You do you.
And what did I do in my garden this week? I cleared leaves out of beds, but not all of them of course. I talk about this a lot. I leave most of my leaves. I cleared some out of the formal beds. I like my circle garden down in the bog to be quite tidy and I like to edge it. I like to keep it as quite an exact circle, and so I did clear out leaves from there. Of course, the leaves that I leave in my other beds right next to those beds are probably going to blow back into those beds. It reminds me of the old smoking section on an airplane marked by a polyester curtain. Do you remember those days? Everybody smelled like smoke.
Anyway, I also had a guy put compost all over my lawn this week. This wasn't my compost with a million tomato seeds and verbena bonariensis and cleome. This was cured compost. If you might remember, I got the Christmas gift of taking care of the lawn so this was my first big step, but I wasn't prepared to do it. I had enough to do this week, so I hired somebody not to put chemicals down, but to put compost down, the cured kind that should take the place of Weed & Feed that was being applied before. And of course, as soon as he did it, I threw seeds all over the top of it, which should be pretty good timing, because we're supposed to have a very good soaking rain this week.
The only other different thing I did of interest besides my general tidying and pruning and fluffing was to transplant little forget-me-not bunches. That is the cutest little plant, the forget-me-not. It's the Myosotis. I have a pretty good population of it now, but each spring I divide it around to places where it doesn't grow yet under trees and shrubs. I thought about dividing some snowdrop clumps like I talked about last week, but it seems I only talked the talk and I did not walk the walk on that one, but maybe this coming week I will.
This was fun. If you have any questions or comments or corrections, please reach out to me at Instagram, @LeslieHarris LH, or to my website, which is LHgardens.com. And please go there to LHgardens.com and have a look at the blog that accompanies this podcast. You can support Into the Garden with Leslie there by buying me a cup of coffee or becoming a member. I name this show Into the Garden with Leslie because I'm really into my garden and I want to get you into yours and I will see you next week, which will also be spring. Can't wait.