Floral Treasures after a Lush Season

What an incredibly lush summer season we have had in 2010! Powell Gardens official weather station received 24.00 inches of rain in June-August: 3/4th of our normal ANNUAL rainfall! The gardens' plants have responded with incredibly lush growth and are currently at their peak as we edge closer to the Autumnal Equinox (less than 2 weeks away).

The bananas lined out below the Visitor Center Wall have reached magnificent proportions and look extra striking backlit with a backdrop of dark green moonvine foliage and a sparkling foreground of lush summer annuals.

The Butterfly Bonanza Border south of the Visitor Center is at its prime with an accompanying flock of butterflies and an abundance of caterpillars too.

The Orange Bed is south of the Cafe and the magnificent Mexican Sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia) have flopped a bit but still look vivid against Sedona Coleus. Each of the Visitor Center's front and terrace beds has a color theme (other than the butterfly bonanza): look for purple, red, scarlet & blue, sunset colors, blue, white (moth), green, pink, brown and yes BLACK (see below) as color themes. Each bed has an interpretive sign describing its color theme and how that color impacts you!

The Black Bed north of the Visitor Center isn't true black but of plants with the darkest foliage, flowers and fruit: the Black Pearl Pepper has almost true inky black, glossy fruit before they ripen red.

Beds below the Visitor Center terrace walls are billowing masses and at their peak of exuberance. This image is just off the north corner of the building and is composed of a self-sown Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate (Polygonum orientale) weaving its strands of pendant pink flowers through Lacebark Pines, Coleus and other flowers. We do utilize some self-sowing annuals in the gardens wherever they are appropriate.

Verbena bonariensis (bonariensis means from Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a classic self-sower but often perennial in our climate. Masses north of the Visitor Center have created a lovely meadowesque and low maintenance scene full of nectaring butterflies.

Missouri and Kansas native Threadleaf Sneezeweed (Helenium amarum) have self sowed in many places around the Visitor Center and provide rugged feathery plants adorned with graceful yellow flowers in late summer through fall.

Looking like a pink "baby's breath," Missouri native Palafoxia (Palafoxia callosa) self-sows along the Island Garden's living wall and provides a breath of fresh flowers along the walk now.

Texas native Gaura (Gaura lindheimeri - airy flowers of white) and Verbena bonariensis have self sown in beds between the Island Garden's water pools. Delightful and airy they create a nice sparkly companionship.

In the Perennial Garden annual Snow-on-the-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata) makes its perennial self sown appearance and sparkles with its naturally variegated foliage. This is actually a wildflower native to Kansas and northwestern-most Missouri's loess hills. It SHOULD be called Snow-on-the-Prairie!!! It is related to the poinsettia so the colorful leaves are like the red ones of poinsettias that surround the tiny real flowers at the center of each leaf cluster.

Local roadside ditches and moist wild spaces are dazzling with the golden yellow flowers of Bidens polylepis now. This "Beggar Tick" or "Bur Marigold" is the showiest species of Bidens in bloom and is a nice addition to gardens where it self sows in moderation. It does not have the seeds that catch on you like ticks or burs of the other members of its Genus. It also is a good host plant for the tiny Dainty Sulphur butterfly. Look for it along our entrance drive, in the Insectaries Garden, Perennial Garden and here and there elsewhere throughout Powell Gardens wildlands.

Our native Impatiens Spotted Touch-me-not or Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) is another self sowing annual that can be too much of a good thing unless planted where it can fill in like in our Shade Native section of the Perennial Garden or in the Rain Garden along the Dogwood Walk. It is called touch-me-not to the delight of children and adults as the ripe seed pods EXPLODE when touched. The seeds are coated in brown with a wintergreen aroma and a robin egg blue center!

The Dynamite Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) is still the most vivacious plant in the Perennial Garden. Wow, still in full bloom with nearly true red, crape paper-like flowers.

The striking blue flowers of Hardy Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) have been blooming since midsummer but are currently at their peak. This is one of our best groundcovers but has escaped into the living wall of the Island Garden as shown here. Look for fall-blooming colchicums to begin to flower through masses of this plant as they both make great companions. Hardy Plumbago is slow to start in spring so benefits being co-planted with bulbs that have flowers and foliage early but then are masked as they fade by the plumbago. Colchicums bold spring foliage works too and the flowers are strong enough to push through the plumbago for a great garden hurrah now.

Garlic Chives (Allium tuberosum) is still in full bloom and full of insects from honeybees to the Viceroy butterfly in this shot. Look for this great insectaries and fruit tree companion plant in various borders from the Visitor Center to throughout the Heartland Harvest Garden. We do DEADHEAD all of our plants as this can self-sow and become a garden weed otherwise! Gardener beware, but a great edible flower and beneficial insect attractor worth the extra work.

This floral gem is a species of Surprise lily or Hardy Amaryllis called the Red Spider Lily Lycoris radiata var. radiata we planted in 2002 but never bloomed until now. Look for these unique gems in the New Millennium bed of the Perennial Garden.

The White Rain Lilies (Zephranthes candida) are sparkling with white flowers after last week's 3 inches of rainfall. This native of Cuba is supposed to be hardy only into zone 9 but never read that reference and has been fully hardy for us for a decade!

While Tomatoes and Peppers are the stars in the Heartland Harvest Garden this weekend, be sure and take time to see the rest of the gardens and the bounty of this past lush season. Will we ever get 12.46" of rain in July ever again?

The Third Garden: Cool Season "Annuals" for Fall

The Visitor Center is decked out in its fall attire with a new suite of plants that like cool weather and can tolerate frosts and mild freezes. In fact, some of these plants can survive the winter and rebloom next spring. Yes, Greater Kansas City's climate allows for a third garden that can often look very colorful through Thanksgiving and even into December. On mild winters we have flowers on occasion throughout winter.


This image is of a container underplanted with cool-loving annuals including cultivars of stocks, pansies and lettuce. This is planted beneath a hardy Queen Palm (Syagurus romanzoffianum)-- not hardy for the entire winter but tolerant of cold. Not all palms (and annuals) are tropical and tender to a freeze.

The prime characters of the above image include 'Mariposa Peach' Pansy. New cultivars of pansies are increasingly hardy and usually overwinter well if planted in the ground. Those in containers are less hardy. Be sure and notice the lightly sweet aroma of pansies!

Vintage Copper Stocks are another hardy annual for fall. I enhanced the experience of several visitors yesterday by making them smell this gem: the flowers emit a rich, spicy scent!

At the entrance to the Heartland Harvest Garden is a patchwork of lettuces, cabbage and pansies. Yes, all are edible too! The bronze foliage is 'Deer Tongue' Lettuce; the lime green foliage is 'Black-seeded Simpson' Lettuce and the cabbage in the middle is 'Ruby Perfection,' a new Plant of Merit and outstanding edible and ornamental.

In the beds in front of the Visitor Center you will also see the marvelous 'Ruby Perfection' cabbage, along with companions of lettuce and diascias

.

The pink flower is the Diascia or Twinspur, a relatively new cool season annual from South Africa (Many of our best new cool season annuals are cultivars of native South African wildflowers). We have had it take 17F without hurting it a bit! The coppery foliage is 'Tomahawk' Lettuce.

Nagoya White Cabbage is a most ornamental of cabbages and beautiful in the garden. Most cabbages are fully hardy to 10F!

Here is another cultivar of Diascia: 'Red Ace' (it's pink!) perfectly paired with our favorite lettuce 'Merlot' (also the lettuce in the first image). Look for this stunning combination along the ramps from the Visitor Center Terraces to the Dogwood Walk.

This colorful cool season foliage is of 'Five Colored Silver' Beet (Chard). When backlit like this shot, it glows with colors from yellow and green to bronze, red and purple! It is delicious too.

Pansies are the staple of the cool season garden and come in a beautiful array of colors and patterns. This true yellow is 'XXL Golden' Pansy.

This pansy with a "face" is 'XXL Red & Yellow' Pansy, which reminds me of the old fashioned varieties my grandmother adored.

Violas are close relatives of the pansies and I'm sure you can recognize that pansies and violas are all in the same Genus with perennial Violets. This is the 'Antique Gem Purple' Viola. Violas often overwinter and bloom exceedingly well next spring.

Snapdragons are another great cool season flower and also can overwinter in sheltered places or after mild winters. This is 'Montego Purple' Snapdragon but it looks more pink than purple to me.

This is a cultivar of one of South Africa's most beautiful wildflowers Osteospermum; called "Osteos" for short. This stunning cultivar is 'Soprano Vanilla Spoon.' Osteos take cold well but should be protected from hard frost.

New hybrids of the annual Phlox (Phlox drummondii) from the Southern Great Plains have resulted in some really cold hardy new cultivars. This is 'Intensia White' Phlox sparkling against a yellow mum. All the "Intensia" phlox are very hardy -- blooming well into December.

Come out to Powell Gardens and explore the flowers of the cool season and get ideas for what you can add to your garden or containers for fall. It is not too late to still enjoy 6 to 8 weeks of color! You've just two more weekends left to enjoy the fabulous Chapungu sculpture display as well.

Hot Plants for an Exuberant Garden

The last of summer (we are still officially in summer!) is the time to see the full size of many tropicals and summer annuals. These HOT seasonal plants around the Powell Gardens Visitor Center are exuberant this year! Come quick to see them because they will gradually be replaced in the next month or so with cool season fall plantings. We try to keep some of them out until Jack Frost pays his autumnal visit (usually in mid-late October).

The bananas are blooming! The banana flower is magnificent with the young banana fruit forming above as the flower opens from top to bottom.

The bananas are along the south side of Cafe Thyme. Bananas are NOT trees but huge tender perennials (there is no wood in their "trunks"). If you save the pseudostem "trunk" through the winter it will bloom next year. We cut off all the leaves before frost and save the trunks indoors, dormant in the greenhouse complex. We pot them up in spring and plant them outdoors after danger of frost has passed (usually by May 1). We do not have a long enough season to ripen bananas outdoors here.


The castor beans have reached tree-like proportions too! Hard to believe most of our plants are self-sown seedlings from this spring! This is the beautiful 'Sanguineus' or purple-leaved cultivar. It dwarfs the large Mexican sunflowers blooming in front of it.


On the north side of the Visitor Center you can see this "bed of fire." It is a fiery display of warm colors with ornamental peppers in the foreground, Profusion Orange zinnias in the middle and Cannas as a backdrop. This is not a composition for a place where you want to relax but it is invigorating.


The giant purple leaf Crinum has a nice color echo with flower of the Flowering Maple (Abutilon). Diamond Frost Euphorbia provides a sparkle of dainty white flowers.


This morning glory seedling has added some summer color to the Lacebark Pine on the north side of the Visitor Center. This little bit of vine does not harm the pine but if this plant filled in thickly we would have to remove it.


Lime Zinger elephant ears is in full size and here with a crown of 'Northwind' switchgrass is a great combination of a tropical and a native plant.

A mix of hot annual 'Buddy' globe amaranth (Gomphrena) with Missouri native Savanna Blazingstar (Liatris scariosa) sets off the beauty of both. Look for this combination in the Butterfly Garden, which envelops the Fountain Garden north of the Visitor Center.

Make your notes now for ideas of how to use tropicals and warm season annuals for next year. The catalogs for Spring 2009 will be arriving in the mail before you know it!

Containers in Color

We are a month past the Summer Solstice and the summer annuals and tropical plants are full sized and exuberant at Powell Gardens! Here's a brief show of some of our containers and plantings...

This container in the Perennial Garden (by former Senior Gardener Jay Priddy) is one of my favorite. It contains the three "classic" elements of container design: thriller, filler, and spiller. The thriller is hare's tail grass (Lagurus), the filler is a cultivar of black-eyed-susans (Rudbeckia hirta) and the spiller is Margarita Sweet Potato (Ipomoea battatus). The use of a grass and a cultivar of a native wildflower really speaks to our region of native grasslands.

The Chapungu Sales tent covers part of our terrace beds outside the Visitor Center but the remaining corner functions as a container. The dramatic use of a Variegated Fucrea (Fucrea)"thriller" and shocking 'Crystal Palace' red geraniums makes quite a composition. The crisp stone edging to the bed makes use of a "spiller" obsolete here. This design is by Horticulturist Anne Wildebor.

This container by Anne Wildebor has a mix of harmonious foliage plants with just a splash of contrasting pink flowers. The dramatic foliage is Canna 'Sunburst' on either side with a Black Elephant Ear (Colocasia) in the center. Coleus 'Fishnet Stockings' and Alternanthera 'Red Thread' are fillers all being set off by the pink angelonia in bloom. Again the low crisp container would be muddied up by a spiller.

This container by Anne Wildebor is about texture and the wonderful color we take for granted: GREEN. A spectacular 'Macho' Boston fern is perfectly punctuated by a white Caladium. This container only gets morning sun under the east overhangs of the Visitor Center.

This dramatic Leopard-Palm (Amorphaphallus konjac) has a pink caladium to help set off the subtle pink in the print of its stem. A spiller would "muck up" the elegant container. This design is by Anne Wildebor.

Even Edible Landscaping can be unique: this container near the entrance to the Heartland Harvest Garden has a dramatic fig (Ficus carica) with a base of curly parsley for contrast. It's all green but the drastic change between coarse dramatic leaves of the fig and fine detail of the parsley leaves make it work. This design is by Matt Bunch and Barbara Fetchenhier: look for their containers of edibles at the entrance plaza to the Heartland Harvest Garden north of the Visitor Center.

The seasonal display beds around the Visitor Center are reaching maturity with this wonderful planting (designed by Tracy Flowers - now gardener at the Kauffman Memorial Garden) outside the north side of the Conservatory: huge Castor Beans, sword-like Purple Majesty Millet, purple and white Kahuna Petunias and an edging of trailing Blackie Sweet Potato all make for a stunning, tropical-esque composition.