This evening I feel more secure in my new home: this morning we
brought the rest of the container plants from my country house to the
city house (and even earlier this morning, the plumber fixed the
laundry drain so I can wash clothes at home). Having the potted
plants far away felt almost as if I had abandoned pets. They're now
lined up in blocks and rows on the vast paved driveway (it's good for
something, anyway), waiting to see if the promised crew ever shows up
to strip, amend, and till the planting areas. I am attacking some
limited areas with spading fork, shovel, and wheelbarrow, but I look
forward to industrious laborers with a Bobcat (small backhoe/loader
on tracks). Dumptruck loads of sand, compost, and composted manure
wait to be tilled into the native clay, and then I'll order a couple
of loads of pea gravel to mulch around the bulb house for a "gravel garden."
First to go into the ground were some selected forms of Cyclamen
hederifolium, already in flower. Turning them out of the pot and
flipping them into the ground was a tricky operation, rather like
getting a tarte Tatin neatly onto a serving plate. I think they'll
survive the untimely transition, though. I interplanted them with
Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' ("black mondo grass", Liliaceae),
which I've found is a pretty combination with the heavily patterned
cyclamen foliage. In the middle of their bed I planted Ribes
laurifolium, a low-growing currant with a large, fragrant
inflorescence in winter, pegging its long branches down to the soil
here and there among the Ophiopogon (thanks to Paul Otto for this subshrub).
Arriving today were all the tender geophytes I've been used to
keeping in the solarium over winter. The new house has no solarium,
but it does (finally) have a covered patio where some of these plants
may survive, or I can bring a few of them into the house, and a lot
more into the garage as many people do; there's a massive workbench
obviously built for a very tall person to use, and I can repurpose it
for plants, as it has a fluorescent fixture and a south window along
it. I think some of the Cyclamen species I've been keeping under
glass in winter can go in the garden here. Driving through the
neighborhood, I see many well-grown plants that weren't hardy in my
previous garden, including cannas and Clematis armandii (just bought
two of the latter to clothe a fence).
The bulb house still awaits top-dressing with gravel, but the
fall-bloomers are performing well. There are some tiny colchicums (C.
longiflorum flowering for the first time from seed), the earliest
crocuses (C. kotschyanus, C. karduchorum), the fall scillas now known
as Prospero spp., and some Biarum species. Some leaves are shooting
up, such as Iris tuberosus (formerly Hermodactylus) and Notholirion
thomsonianum. The beds are planted and overplanted, and I'm reduced
to popping deciduous Lewisia spp. into the holes of the masonry
blocks that enclose the beds (I did test their drainage first).
Behind the new retaining wall separating the front garden from the
road (no sidewalks here, but plenty of neighbors' cars that were
parking on the edge of the former lawn), hundreds of colchicums are
in flower. Yesterday I finally found a flat of small pots of
Ceratostigma plumbaginoides to interplant with them; its deep blue
flowers and red-tinged foliage are an excellent combination with the
blue-pinks and whites of the colchicum flowers. Daffodils will go in
behind them, and perhaps some bergenias, a plant I don't despise as
some people do -- I have plenty of the semidwarf 'Baby Doll' with
soft clear pink flowers, and the tiny Bergenia stracheyi (from a
Chadwell seed collection) for a choicer spot.
Jane McGary
Portland, Oregon