Ooooo, the blog is getting a little too deep and self-consciously artsy.

Who said something about art being either plagiarism or genius?  In the horticulture trade, one of the first things a gardener learns is to borrow and adapt what others do. A good gardener  gives proper credit when told, “That is a nice plant combination.”  So, John Teramoto, Marty Krause, Annette Schlagenhauff (am I forgetting anyone?) – thank you for the exhibit Lay of the Land.

The exhibit combining Asian and Western art prints and poetry, set me to thinking about how often images in the galleries, or music and poetry cause me to recall some beautiful place I’ve experienced.  Nice memories and feelings …. trying to capture the bliss of the moment.

So as Autumn brings another season to a close, I offer some images and poems, with apologies to the artists,  that reminded this gardener of the promise and beauty of Spring as compensation for labors…

Work
The corn is baking in blue smoke,
Pickled tomato is piled ready on my plate,
And the chrysocolla of a young cedar branch is close.
Yet the breakfast that should be calm and enjoyable
makes me uneasy.
I’m worried about the manure I threw yesterday
From the horsecart and left on the slope.
Kenji Miyazawa 1896-1933

Manure and compost on vegetable garden at Oldfields

“Peasants Going to Work, by Jean F. Millet (IMA 40.65)”

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Ah. It is spring,
Great spring it is now.
Great, great spring.
Ah, great –
Matsuo Basho 1644-1694

Apple blossom in April 2009, Gene and Rosemary Tanner Orchard, Oldfields at the IMA. Photograph by Sue Arnold

Check out the IMA’s searchable database of the art collection any time.

Check out the flowers, and maybe some leftover
manure,  dawn to dusk on our 152 acres, or right where you live.

Being the nature woman she is, there is also a wide variety of natives for sun and shade. For those more in to garden rooms than gardens, there’s a wide range of non-plant garden related items as well (I’m a big fan of the battery operated paper lanterns). But since I get to write this blog, I’m going to concentrate on plants-  particularly the ones I like best.While the perennials will be available all season long (April – October), remember, some plants may be in short supply so members get here Friday, it’s your day. For everyone else, all I can do is suggest you become an IMA member right quick or get here early in the week-end. It’s not my fault if all the Actea/Cimicifuga simplex ‘Black Negligee’ is gone. Actually the Greenhouse gets in new plants fairly often through May and June so more may come in. Or they may not.

Looking over the perennials available, I did a quick design in my head using three plants that like sun to light shade – Heuchera ‘Tiramisu’ (coralbell/alumroot) Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Leprechaun Gold’ (columbine), and Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ (spurge).

The thing that ties all these together is foliage. Keep in mind most perennials bloom for a month or two so foliage is very important as it’s around 7 or 8 months.
Heuchera ‘Tiramisu’ is one of the new H. villosa hybrids. The infusion of H. villosa gives us a much hardier plant and usually a much larger plant. It’s not so fussy about soil or our hot humid summers followed by vicious winters. ‘Tiramisu’ is chartreuse (Mmmm, chartreuse) and red in spring with the red changing to amber in summer then back to red in fall.

I’m going to have to watch it in my own garden to know the time-table on this color change as the information varies with the source. Pink flowers, as if I care. H. ‘Miracle’ would give the same effect if all the ‘Tiramisu’ is gone.
Aquilegia ‘Leprechaun Gold’ has gold and green variegated foliage with violet flowers. It’s nice to have the flowers but again it’s the foliage that counts, deep blue-green with gold splotches and specks.

Euphorbia ‘Fireglow’ has nice coppery green foliage in spring with a bright coral midrib.

In summer the leaves will be a deep green with red stems. But to be honest, while the foliage caught my eye, I want this one for the flowers as much as anything. Multiple sources call them orange-fuchsia. That color makes it a “must have” for me.  As with most Euphorbias, it’s the bracts- not the actual flowers- that provide the most color. So with these plants you have the red in the Heuchera picking up the red in the Euphorbia, the Chartreuse in the Heuchera picking up the yellow in the columbine, and the dark green of the Euphorbia picking up the dark green in the columbine.

Another plant that would be a good addition to this little collection would be Heuchera ‘Citronelle’, a pure chartreuse (Mmmm, more chartreuse) coralbell also with H. villosa genes. Since you can never have too much chartreuse I’ll also mention Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ (Mmmm, even more chartreuse, on Sutphin Mall) and Tricyrtus ‘Heaven’s Gate’.  Keeping with the color theme is Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, Hakone grass, Perennial Plant Association Plant of the Year. This is a plant that is always in my top picks for gardens and containers. It’s beautiful, absolutely flows in a design, and is very hardy.

I think the redbuds being offered will sell out real fast. Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ has purple leaves with darker than normal flowers while Lavender Twist™ is a lovely strongly weeping form with the usual lavender pink flowers. Both can be found in the gardens at the IMA, ‘Forest Pansy’ near the Garden for Everyone and Lavender Twist™ as you exit Deer Zink into the Overlook. Also available is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ which grows in large masses outside the 40th Street entrance.

I have to mention the annuals and tropicals even if the event is called Perennial Premiere. You will have to keep these indoors or move them in and out according to temperatures. Again, some of these can sell out. Being a big fan of the bananas I was glad to see the virus tested Musa bajoo, a hardy species, will be available. I planted one of these at home last year and it got 8-10 feet tall with about a half dozen pups. Unfortunately I mulched it really late so it may not come back. For those that don’t mind things a little prickly there is the Agave bovicornuta ‘Reggae Time’, a cultivar of cow’s horn agave (bovi=bovine=cow, cornuta=horn). A large assortment of succulents will be available as these are still trending very hot. And of course we have many coleus, begonias, and flowering tender plants.

The hours for Perennial Premiere are Friday 11am – 5pm, Saturday 11am – 5 pm, and Sunday 12 noon – 5 pm. Those are just the regular hours the greenhouse is open every week (actually next week they will return to the 11am – 8pm schedule on Fridays). This week-end, all the Horticulturists will be working in the greenhouse along with the regular staff to help you make wise selections. Please join us for three special days of plant shopping and fun. Since some of you all may be unfamiliar with this concept of shopping and fun I strongly recommend you watch this important video before traveling to the IMA Greenhouse (be sure to catch the Spring Blossom Festival).

Crocus pushing itself up through the mulch

The main plants I want to talk about are the witchhazels, Hamamelis. We have several in the IMA gardens in full bloom right now. Or they were. When it gets real cold the petals curl back up in a ball and wait for a slightly warmer day. Witchhazels do best in full sun or part shade and do like good soil. They make great cuts for a vase too.

Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’ and H. mollis ‘Wisley Supreme’ can both be found in the Garden for Everyone. Most witchhazels are somewhat fragrant but these two are especially so. You can catch their scent from a long way off. Both are a bright yellow that really shows on a cloudy February afternoon. This is ‘Pallida’ on the top and ‘Wisley Supreme’ on the bottom.

Pallida

Wisley Supreme

A third yellow cultivar is blooming in the Tennis Court area of Oldfields, H. x intermedia ‘Primavera’.

Primavera

Yet to bloom is another yellow cultivar, ‘Arnold Promise’, selected by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University located in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. The oldest public arboretum in America, the Arnold is one of the meccas of horticulture for those who love woody plants.

Diane

Just so you don’t get the idea witchhazels only come in yellow I want to show you two others we have. From the red group we have H. x intermedia ‘Diane’ behind the Lilly house at the start of the Ravine garden.  Notice how the flowers are not fully open? That is due in part because this particular plant is somewhat shaded. ‘Diane’ is one of the best reds.

Of course a garden isn’t really a garden without some orange in it so we have the beautiful ‘Jelena’, another H. x intermedia located in the Southwest Border Garden.

Jelena

A close inspection of the flowers reveals they are really made up of at least three colors – red, orange, and yellow.

Jelena close-up

The overall effect is very, very tropical – mango, papaya, and passion fruit. In February tropical is very, very good if not actually needed. Witchhazels tend to have good fall color too. An interesting tidbit, the red and orange flowering ones tend to have red and orange fall color and the yellow flowering ones tend to have yellow fall color.

Some witchhazels get quite large and I think they could make nice small multi-trunked trees over time. I’m thinking in smaller gardens or near patios, that sort of thing.

And the snowdrops have stated blooming! These antique bulbs are located several places but these images were from between the Formal Garden and the Ravine Garden.

Snowdrops

I’ve been trying to look at other horticulture/gardening blogs. I came across one by Margaret Roach (15 years with THE Martha) called A Way to Garden. There I stumbled upon an entry about using cardboard as a weed suppressant and a way to prep an area to be planted. I had read about and used newspaper but this cardboard use was new. These materials are used in conjunction with some sort of mulch. I’m trying it at home this year. Look out ground ivy.

In these continuing wintry days and uncertain economical times I long for warmer weather and comforting affection, some sweet summer lovin’.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Dolly Parton.

People who do not garden fail to have even the slightest notion of how important that date is. This is the day when the dahlias can go in the ground. This is the day when the tomatoes can be planted. This is the day the houseplants can go out on the porch. THIS IS THE DAY WHEN WE GET OUR HOUSES BACK! For two months I’ve been fighting with the Enstetes in my laundry room for access to the dryer. I finally cut a leaf off one of them this week. At the same time I am so grateful that my two biggest are still alive and growing. They are actually pushing against the ceiling (say a little prayer for some of the smaller ones in the plant room). In just a few weeks their huge burgundy and green leaves will bring tropical splendor back to my yard. That’s one of them in the background of this picture.

It’s been a banner year for mealy bugs in the holding greenhouse. They’ve been breeding like white trash at a family reunion. As we remove the plants we pull off as many ugly leaves as possible taking the mealy bugs with them. A good bath with soapy water will get rid of some more. It’s important to remember that frequently while a plant is outside in the fresh air and sunshine, all happy and healthy it suppresses the insects. You bring the same plant indoors to less ideal conditions. It becomes stressed. Boom! The insects are back with a vengeance. So my stressed out plants in the greenhouse are a mess even though they went in looking fine. But with a few weeks outside and some extra care they will be beautiful again in our gardens.

In the root cellar the Brugmansias are begging for some warmth and sunshine. They are one of the easiest tropicals to overwinter. You don’t need a root cellar certainly. A dark basement is nice to keep them dormant but just keeping the water to a minimum will work as well. After several weeks they will be covered in trumpet shaped fragrant blooms. Hopefully the dahlias and cannas survived alright. We’ve had years when nearly all of one was great nearly all of the other was lost. No rhyme or reason. Just so you know we go through many of the same problems every gardener experiences.

Right now there is a nice rain falling. Looking out my window everything is shades of fresh green. We’ve had the best year ever for flowering trees and shrubs – dogwood, magnolia, crabapples, redbuds, cherries, and lilacs all in bloom at the same time. I can’t say I have ever witnessed that before. And they remained lovely for so long. I just love Spring. Everything new and fresh, full of hope and possibility. And the truth is I want to get my plants outside before I kill anymore of them.

I also remember a picture of my oldest brother taken with one of those Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum cameras – I am so damn old and this is not the Joe of my youth. He was sitting out in the yard in jeans and a flannel shirt I think, about 8 probably. When I was about 6 I would cry because people would say it wasn’t me. I was a sensitive child and please remember that child still exists under the hard ass exterior you see today. My point being that at that age in our lives we looked so much alike it was unreal. Our differences are much more obvious now. Puberty was cruel to some of us. He has my mother’s fabulously thick hair. When I went to college I had the opportunity to study genetics a bit more. Not just in the regular appearance of it in many science based classes but in an actual genetics class. An entire semester devoted to the mysteries of DNA, miosis, and mitosis.

It was there that I learned the birth order of my siblings and I must be something very unusual as well. One of the things we covered in the class was probability. If you crossed a barred chicken with a blue chicken what was the chance of getting a red chicken (snowball in hell should be crossing your mind right now), that kind of thing. What I never did the math on was this. Nine children were born. Where I come from the number is not the unusual part, okay? Here’s the unusual part. The 4 girls were born first, then the 5 boys. Complete separation of the sexes. Fascinating.

Where was I going with this? Oh yea. Back on track. Genetic diversity. Horticulture. In my many years of living in Indiana one of the great joys of Spring remains seeing our redbuds start blooming. The redbud – Cercis canadensis – can be found all over central and southern Indiana, blooming a week or two before the more famous (and fussier) dogwoods – Cornus florida. In all my years of walking fields and woodlands and driving down countless roads I have never seen a truly different looking redbud. All those thousands of plants and only an occasional – “That might be pinker or slightly redder”. My friend Paul found one with yellow variegation in the leaves at a nursery. But to this day I have found nothing. Fortunately other people have. They have found a lot of diversity in redbuds, in flower color, leaf color, and plant form. I first learned of these in the woody plant courses at Purdue. I wanted them all. They were very rare in the nursery world in truth. The last few years they have finally started becoming available widely. Which is most fortunate because that’s when we began the museum expansion and we had lots of new landscape to plant – to plant with redbuds.

We now have 11 cultivars of Cercis canadensis on site, plus 2 other species. The cultivars vary from white to true pink to red. Leaf colors come in purple, green and white variegated, and chartreuse. One is a beautiful weeping form. And just to make life easy for all, virtually all can be seen by taking a walk from the museum’s Efroymson Entrance to the Garden for Everyone and back re-entering the museum on the backside of the Deer Zink Pavilion.

At the main entrance you will find a planting of 5 ‘Appalachian Red’ to the right as you exit the building. Cross the Sutphin Mall to the Garden for Everyone. As you enter on the left will be 3 small plants of ‘Silver Cloud’, a green and white variegated redbud. It tends to remain smaller than purely green-leafed forms. Just past there on the left again is a ‘Little Woody’, a more dwarf cultivar. Then you are looking right at our beautiful old tree with the large bloom masses on the limbs of the tree. This is called cauliflowery because of its obvious resemblance to cauliflower.

Walk on out of GFE and turn left. Before you get to the sidewalk taking you back into the garden is ‘Forest Pansy’, the redbud with purple leaves and slightly darker than normal flowers.

Continue along the outside sidewalk and you find ‘Appalahian Red’ again, ‘Tennessee Pink’ and ‘Wither’s Pink Charm’. I’m no longer sure which is which in these photos but both are good pinks.

Next you will see ‘Alba’.

On the right just beyond is Cercis chinensis ‘Don Egolf’ blooming so heavy it’s almost stupid.

You will see a couple more ‘Tennessee Pink’ on the right but look ahead and you see the palest pink of ‘Pauline Lily’.

Then there is the other species we have, the glossy leathery leafed Cercis reniformis represented by the cultivar ‘Oklahoma’. Finally as you enter Deer Zink there is ‘Covey’, known in the trade as Lavender TwistTM. This is the best weeping form available.

My personal favorite at this time is ‘Hearts of Gold’. I have it in my front yard at home and eventually we will find a place for it here.

Well, I know that was a lot of plants coming at you fast but I feel I didn’t even complete my mission of bringing you more horticulture. I will mention quickly that breeders are working to cross all these different leaf, flower, and growth forms to bring us even more genetic diversity – and beauty for our gardens. Fiddle-dee-dee. I didn’t touch on magnolias for heaven’s sake. So many flowering trees it gives me the vapors sometimes. I wonder if I inherited that from some ancestor? Was that Aunt Myrtle or Aunt Stella that used to…….

Well, winter weather be damned. Here’s a day-by-day plan to heat up your weekend, despite the frigid temps.

On Thursday, Enjoy a Cocktail – Nothing says warm weather like a fruity drink. After work today, start your weekend early by grabbing a cocktail at Puck’s Happy Hour. As you sip your Orange Crush or Pomegranate Martini, close your eyes and imagine strolling along a beach or lounging by the pool. Once you have finished your drink and awakened from your daydream, stay warm by strolling through the galleries or enjoying a talk about the “Art of the Parade” with Alison Heimstead. (Learn more about Alison Heimstead, by clicking here.)

On Friday, Strut your Stuff –Don’t miss the “haute”est show in town. Friday night, the IMA heats things up with Project IMA – a runway show featuring the outrageous / beautiful / irreverent / glamorous designs of 16 fashion designers from the Indianapolis area (pictured below). The event is free and starts at 7:00 pm. Between the fashion and the music of DJ Stefan, it’s going to be one sizzling Friday night. (Learn more about Project IMA, by clicking here.)

On Saturday, Explore the Great Indoors – You don’t have to be outside to enjoy nature. Despite the lingering winter outside, our galleries are filled with scenes of spring. Need a little sunshine? Try a sunny, bucolic landscape in our American and European galleries. Yet to see a bloom in your garden? The Asian galleries are filled with colorful blossoms. (Explore the IMA’s Great Indoors from home, by clicking here.)

On Sunday, Step Back in Time – Visit Oldfields-Lilly House and Gardens on Sunday. As you stroll through the sunlit home, imagine the Lillys gathered on a warm summer’s day almost a century ago. Can you see the family dressed head-to-toe in white playing a game of croquet on the front allée of the mansion? Drift back to present day by wandering over to the warm haven of the greenhouse. Breathe in the fragrant air sweetened by an abundance of blooming flowers. (Learn more about Oldfields – Lilly House and Gardens by clicking here.)

So there you go, 4 days and 4 ways to celebrate spring regardless of the weather. If Mother Nature can’t provide, then the IMA will. Hmmm…That sounds like a pretty good t-shirt slogan, if you ask me.