24 May Weekend in Teza’s Garden

Thanks again to Daniel Hinkley for bringing yet another stunning Disporum to gardeners attention – Disporum uniflorum, which is still widely known as D.flavens is a superb plant native to Korea and northeastern China. It creates columns of bright green, clasping foliage on erect clumping stems to 0.9m, with striking long and narrow, soft yellow flowers, similar in effect to those of Uvularia grandiflora, which are formed in terminal umbels in mid spring to early summer. Later, oblong bluish black fruit are produced in abundance.

She may be a pink ‘Mlokosewitschii’ after all, but in my eyes she is divine! A delicate single flowering form that this year has presented me with four flowers!

My Bletilla is blooming. A Chinese terrestrial orchid that is rather easy to grow, its only demand being humus rich soil in partial shade, Bletilla needs to be included in more woodland garden plans. Long, lance like, slightly pleated foliage is handsome all summer long and the flowers, with a true orchid like pouting lower lip can sometimes appear two or three to a stem.

  The Rare and Unusual border is a mass of colour and texture, predominantly blue, green and fabulously chartreuse! Guess its not hard to tell who the caretaker is!

Cory Blue Panda is that you? Of course it is…. who else were you expecting? Fingers crossed that he decides to grace me with his electrifying handsomeness this year! He can be downright Divaesque when he wants to be…..

  I cannot post without including my beloved Epimedium…. their bloom time is so relatively short [with the species I favor at least!] and there isn’t a moment when they don’t make me smile!

The dainty flowers of Epimedium can be seen at the base of Tulipa saxatilis – my all time favourite within a genus that by right should be close to my Dutch heart. Oddly not!

Awww yeah! Hairy leaves can only mean one thing. Okay, maybe two but the other info might fall under the TMI category so I will refrain. I am beyond words thrilled to see that Meconopsis x sheldonii ‘Lingholm’ has overwintered for me.

I am determined to have a yellow flowering Paeonia in the garden this year, and it looks like Paeonia x ‘Going Bananas’ [an Itoh hybrid] might just provide yet another ‘Sweet Baby Jesus’ moment! Stay tuned. In the meantime, is his foliage not to die for!

I love having a heron [okay, so he’s not blue!] that lives in the garden all year long!

The truly serpent like presence of Arisaema thunbergii var Urashima is always a welcome sight for a plantaholic who still considers this to be his first identified genus at the tender age of seven!

   Mark me impressed! I have always loved Dryopteris wallachiana, but after this past week, spent watching his amazing fronds unfurl, I now have a new favourite fern! Judging from the photo below, he is nowhere close to being finished with the unfurling!

Cercis canadensis ‘Greswan’ [Burgundy Hearts] is showing us why it was given this moniker! I have been enamored of his more tender cousin ‘Forest Pansy’ for years, and didn’t think twice about snatching this one up when I stumbled across it last week on a nursery crawl with my boss!

It has been an incredible 24 May long weekend – perfect gardening weather meant record sales at the nursery, and also allowed for me to get the last of the compost spread, the new trees potted/planted and still allow me time to get up close and personal with the kids!