David Austin "English Roses" for So Cal and a Meilland

Darcy Bussell

This rose is named for  the premier ballerina of the Royal Ballet. She was 20. Darcy went from strength to strength as a dancer and was awarded the OBE. Here she is in Balanchine's Rubies.

The rose named in her honor  --unlike some of the Austin roses---  is especially recommended for our zone and will " will remain bushy and compact even in the warmest areas, making it ideal for the front of rose beds or the mixed border" . And it smells good. If you can't find this rose in stock now at your local nursery, hasten to the Austin website and order one there.http://www.davidaustinroses.com/american/Advanced.asp?PageId=1893.

David Austin is too well known to need any detailed biography here--and it's all on the Austin website anyway. However, he's my hero because all his roses smell like roses used to smell, and some smell absolutely heavenly. Austin roses have a character of their own. The first ones this gardener tried all grew nicely but were slow to establish themselves-- Gertrude Jekyll, Graham Thomas,Pilgrim,. However, Teasing Georgia and  Abraham Darby took off running

. In recent years Austin has his  roses sold in this country,  grown in Tyler,Texas, and many of them are totally  adapted to our climate.




Jude the Obscure

This rose , besides being spectacular has won some impressive prizes for scent  which is described as " having a strong fruity fragrance with hints of guava and sweet white wine". Hmmmm.....this sensual delight is not one of Austin's more appropriately named roses . It applies to one of Thomas Hardy's more depressed character( which is saying a lot, as most of them are depressed.)  Jude hangs himself. Perhaps Mr. Austin is not a great reader? Any votes out there for re-naming it Jude Law, a sensual delight to the eye even if we don't know how he smells?

                                           

                                             Molineux

This lovely won the medal for Best Scented Rose of the Year** . What makes it a sure thing  is the fact that it is named for the Wolverhampton Soccer Team.With recommendations like that ........ how can we lose? 

Not to be missed is another recent rose

Lady Emma Hamilton

And what did she do? Quite a few scandalous things***. She was a country girl who made it in London, (she was Romney's favorite model) married a Lord and became the lover of British  naval hero Lord Nelson. Austin named the rose to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar. Well, okay, perhaps a bit of a stretch..... but Lady Emma is luscious has a strong "fruity scent of pear grape and citrus. It is vigorous and free flowering. 

Last but far from least, is Meilland's Yves Piaget,  named for the president of watchmaker/jeweler SA Piaget. ( Piaget is a famous  French firm of long standing ---made watches for Napoleon). Yves It is a superb rose, tough, undemanding and disease resistant .

Yves Piaget

This rose smells spicy, and has great substance which makes it a great cut flower. It lives without complaint, on grey water from the washing machine and is a particular favorite in this garden.

Notes

** at the Royal National Rose Society Trials

*** See movie starring Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier That Hamilton Woman made when Leigh and Olivier were young and in love. In black and white, not a memorable  film but do they  look good. 



New Roses for 2012-- a selection

Sunshine Daydreams

Breathes there a man with soul so dead”….that his heart doesn’t leap up at the thought of new roses for the year? This  gardener  already has about 50 roses that live on grey water, unsprayed for the most part, and when sprayed it's either with milk, for black spot, or pepper spray for bugs.( Having established the politically correct  organic credentials for rose growing), let's see a few.

Sunshine Daydreams is a grandiflora described as “yellow to cream”. Not for a pot on the patio but give it some room and it will be a rival to Abbé de Cluny. And, best of all Sunshine Dreams managed to win AARS under no spray conditions. According to the breeder it is almost continuously in bloom. Give it room—5 “by 4’ when mature.

                                               Koko Loko

This one caught my eye lavender and cocoa? Koko Loko. As you can see, it begins one color and ends up the lavenderr you see  at the bottom left. It’s a floribunda, moderately fragrant . “Milk chocolate changing to lavenderr” according to Weeks, the grower, and a good cut flower.Sounds a little like Lavenderr Lassie, an old climber, much loved. Tempted to try it.                                       


                           

Pink Traviata

The next rose is a sport  of Traviata  (a rose  this gardener has successfully grown for about five years). Very tough, floriferous and undemanding. Grown by the unrivalled rose-breeding family, the Meillands, in Provence.

This rose is one of their series of Romantica© roses that are ideally suited to the Central Coast. Almost any plant from Provence seems to thrive here whether it is artichokes (remember the baby purples grown from seed) or roses. This particular rose, Pink Traviata, is a hybrid tea, fragrant,  evoking Violetta,  in Verdi’s opera**  La Traviata“The Woman who Goes Astray”.

 Scratch a rose grower and find a Romantic….. For four generations the Meilland family has been raising memorable, much loved and admired roses. Perhaps the most famous is Peace (which flourishes here), and commemorates the end of WWII . This rose was  originally named for Mme. A. Meilland.(  see   www.meilland.com/en )

                                                       Luscious

This rose is Luscious--magenta and amber, bewitching fragrance, long stems.Hybrid tea. Always a fool for scent, this one sounded like a winner, however, not 100% sure it will do well along the coast, as it was bred in Tyler,Texas. It'll be well suited to the Central Valley, and should like the heat.

                                                                   Ebb Tide

This rose is newish (2006) but not new this year, however the color is so remarkable and the scent---"strong spicy clove scent" -- so endearing, Ebb Tide made the cut.It is a floribunda. (Next blog will discuss David Austin roses for this year, which will include DA's featured rose for the year Darcy Bussell, which is in the same color range)

 If you are after this color, compare the two roses and figure out which will work best for you. Ebb Tide was bred in Australia, which indicates it'll probably flourish here. Carruthers (the breeder)  patented the rose in 2006, and Weeks, a California grower, has been carrying the rose for several years so it must be better than okay. 

Now, to try not to  get carried away  at the nursery.......

                       

** from Dumas fils play.

Hippeastrum (a.k.a.as "amaryllis"-they aren't)

Equestre


The trouble begins with this beauty. Linneaus named it Amaryllis Equestre ("Knight's or Horseman's Star") It came from Surinam--2 to 5 degrees from the Equator  on the coast of S. America, next to Brazil . Surinam is very tropical , has 2 wet seasons and  2 dry*.

This tropical "amaryllis" caused the next round of botanists no end of trouble, as it turned out Equestre was not inter-fertile with the S.African bulb, already named amaryllis. Equestre was a different genus with different blooming habits.




Surinam c 1840

 

Hands were wrung, decisions were made as tactfully as possible by one of our heroes

Dean of Manchester, the Hon. and Rev. William Herbert the final authority on amaryllis.(see earlier blog). He decided to create a separate genus name for the S. American bulbs, which besides being tropical,  had a differently shaped bloom than the A. belladonna lily from S. Africa, and quite different growing habits.


Amaryllis Belladonna



                                                     AppleBlossom, hybrid (Hippeastrum)

Why do we need to care?

 Because one kind of amaryllis--- the S. African --often sold in California as "garden amaryllis" can be grown all up and down our coast with no more trouble than a Naked Lady. The most common color seems to be red, which is fine--since already have our Naked Ladies in profusion.

                                                 

Naked Ladies (come from Mexico)

The tropical Hippeastrum behave rather differently. They can be grown outside in sub tropical  areas-- the South Coast.They'll manage on the Central Coast at least as far north as Santa Maria outside. They tend to revert to blooming when the Horseman (Centaurus) is rising

in the spring.

However, they've been hybridized to bloom in December, if watered. (Since the 2 wet seasons they started out being used to, are the hybridizer's delight.) These are the ones that can be depended on to bloom in their individual pots at Christmas time.  Happy Hippeastrum!

                           H. (Species) Papillo   -"  Butterfly"  from Brazil



Once had an  ambition  to have enough amaryllis and hippeastrum growing to use them as cut flowers.....then realized this was probably a form of horticultural hubris that would result in every snail in So Cal descending on the garden and eating the leaves of both Amaryllis and Hippeastrum as they emerged from the ground.

                   ****************** *************************

Macedonian coin showing the horseman's star Centaurus

                                             c. 320 B.C.

*See p 138 of Herbert (1837) Amaryllidaceae . Linneus named his bulb Equestre. Lat. gen.-- refers to The Horseman constellation.That's why politic Herbert kept the idea going in Hippeastrum. (Horseman's Star).

 When the Horseman rises the spring rains are coming, and this observation goes back to the Sumerians. That's when the Hippeastrum bloom along the Coast here, if planted in the garden..



Lycoris- more denizens of the cloud forest

Lycoris aurea

Lycoris originate in Asia-Japan, Korea, China and mountainous area in other Asian countries. Most of the lycoris we received in the West had long been hybridized before we received them in the 19th c.. Lycoris radiata is a native species in Japan  (or maybe it's China--experts disagree). Anyhow we got ours in the U.S when Perry opened up Japan in the mid-19th c.

.

Since Japan and our Central Coast are close in latitude (between 45 and 34 N ) lycoris are a natural for us to grow here. The lycoris are also called Spider lilies--not very poetic, but reasonably descriptive.



Lycoris radiata in a grove-Japan



To the Japanese, lycoris are the stuff of legend-- of passionate but doomed lovers. The fall flowering of the flower after the leaves have disappeared gave the lilies the an association with death, the dying of the summer, an elegiac ambiance. 

William Herbert

Synchronicity appears to be at work in the naming of Lycoris. Another of those absolutely amazing and accomplished botanists appears. He did a magnum opus on the whole  family of Amaryllidaceae,* The Rev. and Hon. William Herbert  was a lawyer,M.P.,poet,classics scholar and formidable botanist.**

Lycoris alba.

Lycoris was the name of a cycle of elegiac poems written by Gaius Cornelius Gallus to his mistress (less fortunately named Volumnia). Herbert had just been whipping out translations of Greek and Roman poetry.

He had to  know Gallus was considered the first elegiac love poet  in Roman literature. ( The Gallus/ Lycoris story had a suitably doomed lovers ending as Gallus committed suicide.) Herbert named this fall blooming bulb to echo it's mythology in the Orient. Elegant!

Herbert's home in West Riding.

Have a look at Lycoris alba.This beauty was planted around houses to keep rodents out. The bulbs of all lycoris are very poisonous and ideal for decorative  pest control . (The Amaryllidaceae family, which includes narcissus, tends to be lethal if eaten.) Lysine is the poison derived from Lycoris. It's a protein inhibitor which is presently being investigated in the treatment of some cancers.

Border of lycoris

But the best reason for growing lycoris along our So Cal and Central Coast is it's beauty and ease of culture (for us).

 Like all the bulbs in this family it deeply resents being disturbed at the wrong time, and may sulk for a couple of years if displeased. The bulbs can be planted now and several nurseries have them (http://chenyinursery.com/i/t-214.jpg; http://www.willowcreekgardens.com/c-58-lycoris.aspx.  Lycoris, in our climate can be planted until Dec. 31. 

So---what are you waiting for?

* available as a download free from Google. 

** Herbert was a direct descendant of Mary Herbert Sydney, Countess of Pembroke,

the literary ornament and patron of the Elizabethan period.

Mary Herbert Sydney

                                                     by Nicholas Hilliard

Denizens of the Cloud Forest for So Cal -Nerines

Nerine bowdeni

If you have only seen a nerine in a vase, or a couple of bulbs in a border, the notion you could grow them in drifts  (budget permitting) is an epiphany. Futhermore it turns out that nerines have a very glamorous history. The first ones that got to Europe from their native S. Africa came on an East Indiaman that was wrecked on the shore of the Island of Guernsey in the English Channel. It was called the Guernsey lily, or the Jewel Lily.

 N. sarniensis 

"Originally found on Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town in South Africa, the jewel lilies flower in a spectrum of colours from their original oranges, scarlet and white through new purples, pinks, mauves, reds, scarlets, copper and bronzes where they scintillate in the sunshine with gold or silver crystalline flecks that make their petals sparkle." (Exbury Gardens.com)

Nerine bowdeni also came from S Africa ,the Drakensberg mountains, and was sent in seed form by Athelstan Cornish-Bowden to his mother  c 1904. This good lady raised the nerines then sent the seed off the Kew, asking the plant be named for her son.**

Exbury hybrids

Somehow, the nerine sarneiensis came to the attention of one of England's most accomplished and passionate botanists--- Lionel de Rothchild. Rothchild was of family necessity aa  banker,  and a successful  politician, but he described himself as a gardener by vocation.

Lionel de Rothchild

Rothchild was another of those extradinary men who turn up in love with botany. He bought the Mitford estate --yes, those Mitfords ("Love in a cold Climate") and proceded to build a beautiful Georgian house with acres of greenhouses in which he hybridized nerines in the 1920's and 30's. (Obviously he was very, very rich. well as being remarkable.)

Exbury House

Rothchild sold the unsurpassed nerine collection to another maddened nerine lover. The nerines went to Switzerland with Sir Peter Smithers where they thrived and became more various and beautiful until Sir Peter felt he could no longer care for them properly . He sold the collection back to the Rothchild's in 1995. Nicholas Rothchild who is Lionel's grandson and president of the Nerine Society, has taken charge of the collection. Quelle histoire. These are lucky, lucky  bulbs!

Naked Lady (she's a Mexican native)

What is even nicer is that with their Table Mountain, South African DNA we can grow them along our Central Coast with no trouble at all. Just like our ubiquitous Naked Ladies they flower in late summer, and early fall ---however, keep their strap like foliage.

                                           
** This hot off the press from The Telegraph (British paper) 11/26/11


Next: "Amaryllis" Hippeatrum and Lycoris. More bulbs to plant now from cloud forests.

Blue bamboo, Damarapa and the cloud forest at SFBG

Damarapa bamboo

Blue bamboo

This is a real/surreal color. The new growth is blue, it then turns green, then pale  gold. It's proper botanical name is Himalayacalamus hookerianus, its a native to China. It is non-invasive, clumping and grows to a height of 20 feet. It flourishes in the SFBG as do many denizens of the Cloud Forest.Where has blue bamboo  been all my life?

The Cloud Forest is going to be something So Cal coastal residents may become more and more interested in, as our annual summer temperatures continue to drop. We get more like a cloud forest everyday. So what is it? A cloud forest is also called a fog forest, and exists both in the tropics and in more temperate zones. "It is characterized by  a persistent, frequent or seasonal low cloud cover..." W .

 May Gray, June Gloom, July Why, August Less ...our 10 degrees colder summer is certainly characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low cloud cover..."  That's the bad news. The good news is Cloud Forests are home for some of the most exciting plants on the planet. The San Francisco Botanic Garden in Golden Gate Park (larger than Central Park in NYC) devotes big swatches to the Himalayan Cloud Forest plants, and even more territory to the Meso American Cloud Forest which covers over 7,000 miles of the Americas, as well as the Canary Islands, parts of South Africa and

Australia, New Zealand and our own Redwood Coast. So even if our favorite Big Boys are not ripening properly, there can still be joy in Mudville...We could do this.
 

                       Nerines in drifts at SFBG- Nerine bowdenii from S Africa
 
We could grow a giant salvia the hummingbirds were clustered around




Hummingbird Heaven

 
This salvia can easily grow to 6 feet if you let it. If you have a shady spot under a big pine, a place few plants really like you could grow a patch of crinum lilies:

                                                Crinum moorea

This have enormous, hard to dislodge bulbs, so be sure about where you are planting them. Tried digging some up once. You'd need a jack hammer. Like the nerines and our Central Coast "Naked Ladies" the crinums are members of the amaryllis family. Some are S. African natives as is this one. "Port St Johns (Eastern Cape) form: pink flowers produced in September to October"  From the Natal Botanical Garden http://www.plantzafrica.com/plantcd/crinummoor.htm.



Crinum moorea growing at SFBG

Keep crinums (which you could grow from seed from the Natal Botanic Garden) in the shade. NBG says any sun spoils the leaves and flowers.

There are more, stay tuned, for the native plants of the Meso American forest.

Aeoniums and Echeveria setosa -- tough guys

Aeoniums- and the name tells you a lot, as it means immortal  -- flourish madly on the Central Coast Their point of origin is the Canary Islands off the NW coast of Africa at around 15 degrees of longitude.
                                 

 

Aeonium arboreum is a resourceful plant when it comes to drought. Not frost proof (though probably would come back from the root, if the frost were brief) . The plant strategy is to grow big and flat, with lots of thin shiny leaves.It easily attains a size of 3 feet across, growing pups under its rosettes at a brisk rate for a succulent. It's motto is "size matters".

'Schwarzkopf'

It's smaller but also prolific, shiny and dramatic, very chic these days as "black" flowers are the "in" thing is Aeonium arboreum var atropurpureum 'Schwarzkopf', or Black also known as Tree aeonium . This one looks great with chartreuse colored succulents. It's all over the place in the Getty Gardens in giant pots, looking very fashionable.

The next plant strategy is a little different. Here is A. tablaforme (like a table.)

   

                                        from Scientific web. com 

Not only is it big, many leaved and flat, but furry. The small hairs all over the leaves are great moisture catchers. (So much so that A. tablaforme rots in captivity rather easily. Water it no more than you would a resting orchid if its inside. Outside in SoCal, along the coast, don't water it. It's perfectly adapted to a maritime climate.) It's reproduction strategy is a little different . It colonizes:

The next one is in here because it's s-oooo pretty. But also furry, colonizing and doing what all these aeoniums do when its going to rain--forming cups of their leaves.

                                          A. glandulosum  from Madeira

If you have an appetite for more aeoniums go to the site of a passionate collector, now unfortunately  décèdé , at  http://www.aeonium.info/   A memorial to Jacques Gaurnalt.It's wonderful for pictures, and can be easily translated by using Bing's sometimes  loopy translator. 

The last man standing in the drought stakes is not an aeonium at all, but Echeveria setosa from Puebla, Mexico. As you can see it has adapted the furry leaf, and  colonizing habit, but its small compared to the aeoniums. Usually not more than 3 or 4 inches across. In this case, size seems to matter less than fatter leaves.(See  great botanical drawing at http://www.botanicus.org/title/b11793533 --plate 6 in Addisonia from 1916 published by the NY Botanical )

In fact, many succulents are perfectly capable of subsisting inside with no soil at all, if you put them in the bathroom were they collect water as though it were fog, from the shower.

                                            Angel sculpture by Margaret Dunlap

                                              *    *      *      *      *

 Incidental intelligence: the most successful new hummingbird plant in the garden is Pineapple sage. Brilliant red. They love it.

                                             Pineapple sage blooms   

 Next: the Haphazard Gardener visits dahlias and the SF Botanical Garden in Golden Gate park.