Plowbreaker Lust

I've been having bodacious success with my Bidwill erythrinas. For a plant that's a big tree in the tropics when left to its own choices, Bidwills are surprisingly easy to handle here in pots, by being cut down to the stump each Fall, in chilly New England. And even if they were pain-in-the-ass difficult, what wouldn't you do—moral or not, legal or not, expensive or not—to have their lengthy spikes of bloom, as colorful as they are unique, right in your own gardens?
Yes indeedy, this here is one of my bidwills, doing what it loves to do each July.

And then there are those weird swollen trunks — "weird" and "swollen" both being good things in this case.

Wow are these erythrinas fun, quirky, reliable, incredible.

And, oh yes, heart-stoppingly beautiful.


More, please.

And so it was with a quickening pulse that, last year, I saw at Seneca Hill Perennials an erythrina I'd never heard of, Erythrina zeyheri.

What? Bidwills aren't enough? (And I have four of them, remember.) Is there truly more joy, amazement, beauty, even shock that's possible in a garden? Let me know after you've been introduced to Zeyheri.

Let's start off easy. Too much excitement can be a shock to the system. Zeyheri is a perennial, not, like Bidwill, a tree. So on that score alone, ho-hum. Another perennial? I've got hundreds already. But take a look at this colony of Zeyheri in its native South Africa.
A real show, isn't it. Even moreso as a new citizen of my New England gardens, where vertical spikes are always welcome.

And in close-up, the flowers seem more like kniphofias.

Fine by me: I'm working up to a "knip" collection of, oh, a modest dozen.

















Here's another Zeyheri plant entirely. The color of the flowers can vary from intense red through orange and salmon clear to pinkish. Reds and oranges predominate. So then: Vertical red spikes? Oh yes, am I interested!
When you can tear you eyes from the flowers, notice the huge leaves.

This potted youngster's leaves completely dwarf the plant itself.
I'm guessing in a more established plant that they are a weed-smothering mound of foliage three or four feet across. Heavens. One reference commented that "the leaves are long-stalked and increase in size as the summer progresses." I know just how that feels.

More on the "perennial" thing: It leads to the real kicker. Zeyheri is a "normal" perennial in that it's a committed leaf-shedder, fully expecting and even relying on a long cold-season dormancy. It retreates to a massive, woody, swollen base for the Winter.


But that base is, oh my gawd, just the tip of the iceberg.

With such leg-sized woody roots, it's no wonder that Zeyheri is "What, me worry?" about getting through several months of off-season cold and drought. I'm hoping it's the reason that the Zeyheri will also be content to snooze in my basement for six months each Winter. The low above-ground profile of the massive roots gives no warning that the plant is nearby: No wonder that one common name is "plowbreaker."

(I can't make sense of why another name is "Prickly cardinal", though. Yes, the foliage is prickly, but the cardinal thing? I leave that mystery to those with a more direct connection to the Church.)

That, then, is the list of Zeyheri's charms: Rare, prickly, big of leaf, glorious of bloom, funny of name, an easy keeper in a pot, and with what looks like the potential to be my biggest and most alarming swollen roots ever. And just like with my Bidwills, each Spring before the growth starts up I'd scrape away another inch or two of soil from the top of the pot, and, in effect, put it at the bottom of the rootball. Then those limb-like roots would arise out of the soil year by year, inch by inch, foot by foot. Ta da! Another shamelessly-manipulated caudex for my collection.

Cearly, I was, and am, in plowbreaker lust. I had to have it. But now that I was good and ready for a Zeyheri to call my own, Seneca no longer lists it. Drat!

Back to Google, where—huzzah!—Penroc Seeds & Plants popped up at the top of the page. But Zeyheri's caudexs quickly get too big to ship. A relief actually: Penroc is in South Africa. Thank goodness, the plant is (they say) easy from seed.

So I e-mailed for the seed list. (Still waiting to hear from them; perhaps they're out on the veldt discovering even more wild stuff. I would be.) Meanwhile, there's time on my hands (and, I'm hoping, on yours) for some further Zeyheri research.

1. A Zeyheri reference page (with very washed-out pictures; don't be discouraged).

2. And what I think is the ne plus ultra reference site for plants with swollen trunks. (I can here you sigh of relief, "Finally!")

Marketing the Terraces Mailer

Ah, the terraces mailer. The saga started in November, where the mailer was developed and printed. And there it sat, on the shelf, waiting to be used.

Well, it's time: We have something to mail about. I'm doing the terrace talk again—at the Rhode Island and Boston flower shows—so let's get the word out.

The terrace mailer needs to be customized, to let people know about the talks. So we created a label; there's plenty of room in the bottom-center of the picture on the back of the card. Click for a look:

That was easy. Now the work: Who to send to? Well, it isn't just people that might actually be interested in attending one of these flowershows. The mailer itself has a larger value, a "halo" of power, so to speak. Even people who I know have no interest in going to a flowershow per se, may well be interested to know what I'm up to regardless.

Likely recipients, then, include my clients and client leads, whether or not they are in New England or not. (Client leads are a delicate species, though, needing nurturing as well as space: If you come on too strong, you can crush their interest. You need to love them with an open hand. Only some leads, therefore, also get mailings.) Plus design-industry colleagues like architects, interior designers, and hi-end artisans and landscapers that I might already be collaborating with, or would like to. Then, friends and fans, whose business potential isn't relevant to the decision to mail to them (although it might, in same cases, also be considerable). Then colleagues, contacts, and (best of all) friends in the media: people who write for magazines and newspapers, who are on TV or radio, who have blogs that I'm a fan of. The "mediacs" are, almost biologically, a hyper-verbal, chatty group. It's always good to put something in their hands, something in front of their eyes, that then might wind up on their tongues.

So far, I have 120 names in my list. (I've got 500 terrace cards on hand, so there's plenty more to use. There will be other terrace mailings too, after and unrelated to these upcoming flowershow dates.)

Then a posting on FaceBook. (You already know about the posting on Dirt.) It's always a tantalizing FaceBook unknown who looks at what, who passes what onto whom. (Only if you write back to me would I know you exist; without question there are people who look but don't write.)

And then, after the mailing list itself is in motion, on to addressing, "annotating", stamping, and mailing. These are the quick-and-easy tasks at the end of what is, otherwise, a lengthy, laborious, and expensive little project.

The addresses are, yes, just printed address labels that I generate from my overall database. But I almost always "annotate"—meaning I write, by hand, a cheery note of greeting, encouragement, and warm energy. I'm a big believer that there's power in handwriting–even if it's my lousy left-handed version.

Stamping and taking the post office, well these are the little victory lap. The first lecture date, at the Rhode Island Flowershow, is Thursday February 18, so there's no time to waste. I'll have all the terrace cards in the mail by the end of this week, and the very first batch on Wednesday morning.

Weather or not, here we are.

Good gardens are full of horto-experiments. Will this tree thrive handsomely even though (or, better, because) I coppice it each Spring? If I mound up the soil just a bit here, plus work in a bag of play-sand from Home Depot, will the drainage improve enough such that the shrub that's native to the cold and dry Rockies feel at home? Will this plant from Florida be excited about growing in a pot year-round, let alone sitting in my damp basement for six months each Winter?

Experiments in culture—in cultivation—are the easy ones: Chances are some other gardener has already figured out which trees not only tolerate but actually crave coppicing. Which drier-climate shrubs are more forgiving than others when it comes to heavier soils and higher water tables here in the East. Which fabulous Floridians don't mind going dormant and twiddling their thumbs for six months in my basement.

The real experiments are in location, not cultivation—which plants will handle this climate in that spot in this garden. There are so many variables, subtleties, and quirks of the individual plant, garden, and gardener, let alone the Russian roulette of that year's weather, that the outcome of the experiment is always in question. Which is why, duh, it's an experiment. You don't really know just what might happen.

Experiments are the hallmark of serious gardeners. The tried-and-true plants are only part of the story, because no matter how many peonies and daylilies and wisteria and birches and Japanese maples you grow, they aren't enough even in maximum diversity as well as quantity to provide everything you could ever want in your garden. Or shouldn't be: If you would just get a bit more adventurous, you could grow crocosmia too. Maybe even crinums. And if you would just suck it up and lug too many big pots as well as ten or twenty crates into your own basement each Fall (and back out to the garden each Spring), you could stun yourself as well as your neighbors with erythrinas, eucomis, lagerstroemias, hedychiums, agapanthus, and brugmansias. And then there's a greenhouse.

Gardening without experimenting—let alone without the grit and grimmace, the lugging and swearing that go with experiments, with curiosity, with adventure—is just chewing cud. It's gardening without pride, without the sense of responsibility to increase the good in the world wherever and whenever you can, even if it's "just" to prove that crinums can be fan-fucking-tastic in Rhode Island.

Plants that get through the Winter with our assistance, be it lugging or mulching or wrapping or spraying-with-antidessicant—well, well we've "been there" for them, shown them respect and consideration. It's no surprise (usually) that they make it. They were partnered, after all, with us, who bring to the table what they can't.

They can only sing their one or two songs, growing how they can, where they can. Without us, they remain, literally, rooted in place for better or worse. But we humans are creative and self-educating and by definition are never satisfied with the world as it is. Why not change here, tweak there? We've got the brains, the drive, the mobility, and the money. And opposable thumbs.

So bringing these plants through the winter isn't as much of an experiments as I first thought. After you and the plant figure out together just what assistance can be provided to get the plant through the Winter, then it's a routine victory, Winter after Winter. The experiment is successful (or not), and it's also over.

The real back-on-my-heels moment is the plants that make it through the year absolutely on their own. My part of the experiment was just to plant them, and then leave them stuck there, exposed to the worst Winter weather without so much as a muffler, let alone dry socks. The worst Summer weather without so much as a parasol, let alone a gin and tonic.

Yes, yes, the ones that survive are hardy. I get it. But I'm not talking about the obvious—the maples and elms and oaks, the trees, the monster plants of any temperate garden. They are huge and they are longer-lived than even we. They've seen the worst, again and again, decade after decade. They are not experiments; they are not afraid.

Nor the hardy plants that with the first serious frost relinquish every last millimeter of their above-ground selves to wait out the Winter safely underground. While I'm glad I don't have to worry that my hostas will come back in April, there's no achievement in their shuffling underground the minute the weather starts getting dicey either. One doesn't "experiment" with hosta hardiness: the biggest collection in the country (as I recall) is somewhere in Minnesota for god's sake. No wonder there's a Minnesota Hosta Society. (What else are they going to celebrate out there in Zone 4 on the edge of the northern prairie? Oh right: Lilacs and peonies too.) Hostas, Minnesotans: One's as hardy as the other, and that's that.

The real head-spinners, for me, are the plants that are hardy, and happily so, even though they don't have the benefit of size or the subterranean. They are out in the world, on their own, without having packed a lunch first. And yet they don't get 3 AM worries either.

Here's my Hardy Hero of the Week: Sedum lineare 'Tear Drop'.

In Summer, a mat of succulent little yellow-green leaves, quickly carpeting the ground of one of my new troughs. How quick? This mat was a plug in May, and a couple of square feet by October.

Happy if there's water. Or not. As long as there's sun, decent drainage, and a bit of soil within reach, this sedum is all set.

And here are the troughs this Winter, during the first good snow of January.

What a lucky break to be buried under the snow: You're out of the wind, whose wind-chill can make an already cold temperature fatal. And you're out of the direct sun too, so none of the "burn" plants can get in a Winter when the sun warms the leaves up (so they start transpiring) but the ground is still so cold the roots and the groundwater are still frozen (so the leaves dry out and die).
No worries about the part of the sedum colony that's safe under the snow.

But this sedum doesn't need to be swaddled in snow. It's fearless. What's the point of just having all the soil and sun you might ever want? What about what's beyond that? Maybe it's even better. But when you're a sedum, without eyes let alone access to all the travel websites that could fill you in on faraway trips to the next, oh, two feet away, the only way to find out is to grow on over. To have an out-of-pot experience. Talk about intrepid.

And so, this cascade down the side of the trough.

This sedum is a plant that's on the move, determined to see what's what outside it's immediate comfort zone.
But then—oh shit: Winter! Too cold to grow further, to get to the destination, which in any event wasn't identified in the first place. And to retreat back to safety when things get tough, like a wimpy hosta? Puhleeze.

Nope, we are where we are, and it's fine. Wind, cold and driving rain that's only 34 degrees? Fine, really. Needle-sharp snow driven into the plant, hour by hour, in a decent blizzard? Still fine.
All that needed is to strip down for adversity, not bundle up, by shedding all the mature leaves along each puny stem.

Only the tiny newest leaves at the tips, which have much less water in them—one reason they are so tiny—so they are too dry to freeze, remain. The forward motion of each stem of this sedum is the most secure when it looks like it's hanging by a thread.

And when the weather warms up and it can grow further, well then that's what it'll do. Grow further. Go further. With sedums, it's not the destination, it's the journey. It's making the effort to make the journey, regardless of the weather.

This is a plant that, if it were ever blessed with entrepreneurial evolution, would have every right to market T-shirts and bumper stickers.

It's Even Better Over There—And The Trip is Great Too.

Forward, Regardless.

An Inch Ahead is Still Ahead.



I'm repeating them before bedtime.