Up Close and Personal: Daylily ‘Enduring Freedom’
Em's Garden
A little slice of country in the city…
Belly up to the Bar, Bugs
I’m clearly asking for trouble in the garden this summer. Last year the Japanese Beetle population leveled off. I’m not sure if that was a natural occurrence or the result of the cool temperatures we experienced, but it’s caused me to become reckless with my plant purchases this spring.
I dove in headfirst with a new coneflower. That’s merely a Japanese Beetle appetizer. The main course will be served when they spy my new butterfly bushes. No, I didn’t stop there. My longing for the smell of roses overtook any common sense and I purchased 5—3 shrub roses, a grandiflora and a hybrid tea. Roses are crack to Japanese Beetles. They can mangle a bush in an afternoon. I knew I’d completely lost control when I topped it all off with several dinner-plate dahlia tubers. A bug’s gotta have some dessert, right?
I may as well have stocked the liquor cabinet for a recovering alcoholic. What was I thinking?!
Well at least fellow gardeners in my neighborhood can relax this summer knowing that all the beetles will be in my yard.
Daylily ‘Coleman Hawkins’
This spring I had to move my ‘Coleman Hawkins’ daylily because the area it was growing in was getting too shady. My plant has been getting smaller instead of bigger each year, and in March when the foliage peaked out I noticed the plant had moved over about 6 inches. It was time to dig it out and move it to a sunnier location.
‘Coleman Hawkins’ sports bright orange flowers with a golden-yellow throat. The flowers are huge (8 inches) and appear on 28-inch scapes. Even in its shady location my plant bloomed for many weeks.
When the morning sun shines on ‘Coleman Hawkins’ the petals and sepals glow:
‘Coleman Hawkins’ looks great with yellow or red flowers but you can also get a little wild and plant it with pinks and purples (in the top photo my plant is next to Zinnia ‘Purple Prince’ and in the bottom photo, Daylily ‘Slow Burn’).
Plan B
All of the anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) plants I started from seed last year survived winter and came back this spring with a vengeance. They are perennials that I grow as annuals, so it’s not uncommon for them to reappear, but usually not with this much vigor. I have six plants that are over a foot tall already.
Anise hyssop is an herb and a member of the mint family. The leaves smell like licorice when crushed or torn. Bees will abandon all the other flowers in your garden for anise hyssop. The flowers also attract hummingbirds.
The plants tend to self-seed, but it’s nothing you can’t easily control (at least in my Zone 5 garden). I love anise hyssop because it performs beautifully for me in sun or shade and the plants have no disease or pest problems. They are my cheap, “Plan B” plants when I need to fill a space and don’t necessarily want to make a trip to the garden center. I can always find a volunteer lurking around the garden somewhere to tuck into a trouble spot.
While anise hyssop can supposedly grow up to 3 or 4 feet tall, my plants usually top out at 24 to 30 inches. There’s also an AAS-winning variety called ‘Golden Jubilee’ with chartreuse-yellow foliage, but I like the species version better.
‘Gold Heart’
Last spring I purchased a new bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) called ‘Gold Heart’. It was discovered in England as a mutation of the common bleeding heart. The foliage is yellow or lime green but the flowers that appear in spring still resemble old-fashioned bleeding hearts.
‘Gold Heart’ grows 24 inches tall with a 36-inch spread and grows best in bright shade. It will grow in full sun if you provide adequate moisture, but note that the foliage is susceptible to sunburn.
‘Gold Heart’ goes dormant in summer. You can either cut it back or interplant it with other perennials. I have mine tucked in between daylilies in a partial-shade garden.
Garden Winner: Tiarella ‘Sugar and Spice’
I didn’t know the first thing about foamflowers (Tiarella) when I purchased one last spring. One of my flowerbeds meanders under the canopy of a giant oak tree, and I needed something pretty for the front of that shady border. The shiny green and red leaves of ‘Sugar and Spice’ intrigued me.
My plant sent up a few pinkish-white, bottlebrush flowers after I planted it last year, but I had no idea what a blooming fool ‘Sugar and Spice’ was until last week:
‘Sugar and Spice grows just 8 inches tall and sends up 12-inch flower scapes in late spring. It prefers moist, well-drained soil and thrives in partial or full shade. It has no pest or disease issues.
Whether in bloom or just showing off its fancy foliage, ‘Sugar and Spice’ a fantastic little plant for the front of a shady border.
‘Little Beauty’
I planted 6 ‘Little Beauty’ species tulips in the front of one of my daylily beds in the fall of 2008. This year when they bloomed I was pleased to see that they have already started naturalizing.
I like species tulips because they return year after year without fail. The critters don’t seem to be interested in munching on them, and the foliage dies back quickly after they bloom. They are so small that it’s easy to interplant them with perennials.