Cornwall - Poppy Cottage Garden Near Saint Mawes And Veryan, Roseland Peninsula - The Photo I Use As

Cornwall - Poppy Cottage Garden near Saint Mawes and Veryan, Roseland Peninsula - The photo I use as a wallpaper while reading Charles Reeza’s “The Gardener”

http://poppycottage.garden/

PHOTO: https://www.greatbritishgardens.co.uk/images/galleries/poppy_cottage/poppycott.JPG

Christmastime flowers - Puget Sound, Washington, USA

Christmastime flowers. Several of the flowers shown above are true winter flowers, while others are long-blooming holdovers from Fall. After preparing this post, it’s clear that separate posts on each flower would be of interest to readers. Will work on that! The winter flowers include:

yellow Winter jasmine (see write-up in post to follow) - Jasminum nudiflorum

shrubby wallflower Cheers(TM) Florange - Erysimum linifolium ‘Balcherflora’ PPAF. This is a floriferous plant, very showy and even fragrant in its prime, but becomes quite “leggy” as the season progresses. Hope to try some of the other orange-flowered cultivars to compare.

shrubby wallflower Cheers (TM) ‘Mighty Mauve’ - Erysimum linifolium ‘Balchermauve’ PPAF. This variety grows like a fuller, more compact ‘Bowles Mauve’, which is still a desirable, reliable standby. Even though Mighty Mauve and Florange are in the same Cheers (TM) “series”, they grow very differently. This mauve form is very full, and does not get leggy. Blooms all year.

Christmas rose - Helleborus niger ‘Jacob’ - a member of the Gold Collection (R) Hellebores, technically named ‘HGC Jacob’. This is the earliest, most reliable Christmas rose in my experience. Starts blooming by Thanksgiving (late November in USA), right on through the winter, sending up a succession of bright white flowers. It stays in a compact low mound of shiny dark green foliage. Will do fine in a pot for a couple years, but would prefer to go into the ground in the spring. In Pacific Northwest, this species of Hellebore can be planted up close to foundation, as this provides lime which it likes and also good winter drainage.

Pin Snowdrift winter heather - Erica carnea ‘Pink Snowdrift’. This is the low, ground-covering winter heather species. ‘Pink Snowdrift’ doesn’t actually turn pink until later in the season, and unfortunately, I’ve not found it to be as floriferous and long-blooming as the white ‘Snowdrift’.

Big Sur manzanita - Arctostaphylos edmundsii ‘Big Sur’ from the Central California Coast, but hardy up here, over 900 miles to the north, thanks to the moderating effect of Puget Sound. Great 2x4 tall groundcover, with very early-blooming white bell flowers. This plant is in heavy bud, but there are a few tiny white bells open on stems down toward the ground. These flowers are hugely important for early pollinizer insects, and hummingbirds.

Holdover flowers from Fall - these would all be gone if there had been 20-25 Farenheit weather this season. But that hasn’t happened yet.

Early Bird black-eyed susan - Rudbeckia fulgida 'Early Bird Gold' PP #20,286. This is a more compact, longer-blooming close cousin of R. fulgida var. sullivantti ‘Goldsturm’, found in a field of the latter at Dupont Nursery in Louisiana. Early Bird starts blooming earlier, and continues sending up stalks of new flowers clear until hard freezes. The flowers aren’t as showy this time of year, but are startling and useful for any late bumblebees. We planted both Early Bird and Goldsturm, and after 3 growing seasons, this is the one I’m keeping. Goldsturm is too tall and vigorously expanding for our small back garden. This is so easy share with friends - producing nice offshoots with good roots.

Moonshine yarrow - Achillea x ‘Moonshine’. This beauty is a hybrid from England formed by crossing the native wildflower yarrow (Achillea millefolium) with Egyptian yarrow (Achillea aegyptiaca x taygetea). Fabulous dense silvery foliage and incredible displays of chrome yellow flower heads! This is a vigorous plant that blooms early to late summer, then sends up a smaller flowering in the Fall. 2x3′. We brought this particular plant from our former garden in Bothell as two twigs. It started growing in September, when we planted it, and expanded to a full-sized plant the following spring. Would not be without this!

A wonderful Calibrachoa hybrid - Superbells (R) Blue Moon Punch (TM) that is growing with lime green foliaged ‘Lime Marmalade’ heuchera hybrid in a tall turquoise pot. Petunias will bloom here through several degrees of frost.

Waterfall trailing Serbian bellflower -  PP#13161 Campanula poscharskyana ‘Blue Waterfall’. This is an amazingly compact and floriferous form of the sometimes skraggly Serbian bellflower. Profuse early-mid summer flowering, followed by a re-blooming in early fall. But this wintertime shoot of flowers is a surprise. The foliage is evergreen. It really wants to grow upward against a wall, but is easily coaxed into cascading over the side of this turquoise pot.

Wintertime foliage vignettes

PHOTO 1: Baker’s Colorado blue spruce, with Sydney Skyline summer heather, Apollo Oregon Grape, Sunset rockrose, and a huge “bush” of Firebird penstemon (semi-evergreen perennial)

PHOTO 2: several of the same plants, plus Mountain hemlock, Thoreson’s Weeping Western hemlock, Firebird summer heather (reddish foliage), various sedums, an English lavender, and “golden grass” - the evergreen Acorus gramineus ‘Ogon’

PHOTO 3: Emerald Carpet manzanita - a hybrid between Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (Kinnikinnik) and A. nevadensis (Pinemat manzanita) 

PHOTO 4: Emerald Carpet manzanita, Cyclamen coum, Blue Pacific Japanese shore juniper, Boulevard dwarf Sawara cypress, the corner of a Pieris ryukyuensis 'Temple Bells', Albyn Prostrata Scotch pine, Fred Boutin French lavender, with Gulf Stream nandina and a Marina hybrid arbutus tree in the background

PHOTO 5: Gulf Stream nandina

PHOTO 6: Feelin’ Blue dwarf weeping Deodar cedar, trained up as a standard, with Gold Baby dwarf variegated ivy.

Atlantic poppy - Papaver atlanticum - a wonderful, cheery, long-blooming small scale poppy for the front of a border. It is a clump former, with leaves coming up about 8-12" and flower stalks 2-3 ft. Always well-behaved. This bright peachy orange poppy keeps on sending up flowers on single stalks for months. The individual flowers fade and wither in a couple days in warm sunny weather, but linger longer in cool misty weather. The bushy clump of grayish fuzzy foliage stays evergreen in our climate. Fully flowered segments of the clump with turn brown and need removal in late fall. And I keep dead-heading the flower stalks. They go to seed quickly so even when trimmed frequently, enough seeds get scattered around to provide babies to share with friends. Easy to gfow from seed. Not sure about dividing. Never tried that. PS this started blooming with a few flowers in mud-April.

Happy Thanksgiving! So very much to be Thankful for this year, both personally in my first year of retirement, and corporately for the future of our Democracy and role as a world leader. And Winter flowers are such a joy. Here are Delta and Penny series of Pansies and Violas in full bloom this morning on our front porch 1/4 mile from Puget Sound and 15 miles from Seattle across the water. They are planted with lovely Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima aka Nasella tenuissima) which provides a billowy counterpoint year round. The Pansies and Violas, if potted up by early October will bloom all through winter, then put out a burst of growth and beaucoup blooms in Spring. They wilt every time the temperature goes a couple degrees below freezing (32 F or 0 C), but bounce back up as the temperature returns to our normal wintwr daytime high 30s/low 40s F. The Puget Sound Region and all of the west-of-the-Cascades Mountains part of the Pacific Northwest, western British Columbia and SE Alaska are blessed by the warmish Japan current that curls up from the subtropics past Japan and across the north Pacific Ocean. Very similar to how the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic moderates the climate of Western Europe. BTW the evergreens in the background include small ferns and the lovely Little Flames dwarf cultivar of Leucothoe axiallaris, with Vinca minor Illumination cascading down. The leucothoe has brilliant reddish new foliage in Spring and then colors up distinctly for Winter.

Had a lovely post prepared and paused to check on a botanical name on Google...and Tumblr dumped the post. Live and learn. Anyway here's some plants in frost in our garden yesterday morning. Winter blooming Pilbury Rose heather from the Alps, dwarf Mondo "grass" which makes an evergreen lawn, dwarf bluish Catherine Elizabeth Japanese white pine, and the lovely fluffy Boulevard Sawara cypress. Earlier this week when it was warmer, I watched a native bumbleee climbing in and out of the tiny heather flowers. So they do have nectar to support any pollinators out and about in the winter, during days above freezing.

Cheers from Kingston Washington