End of September: still a few glimmering embers!

Silphium pinnatifidum

No, I'm not going to start singing the Fantasticks! But there are still some fantastic plants hanging in there: first bloom on one of the lesser known Silphiums--a genus of spectacular native American composites that are favorites of mine (although they take up a LOT of room!). They're worth it!

Closeup of the same. A gift of Peter Zale--one of America's premier plantsmen. It came originally from Clark County, Illinois. It reminds me of a yellow cyclamen!

 I envy the Californians the vast array of hardy succulents there...but some are worth trucking in and out...this Echeveria is a champion! It's put up with abuse (fell off that perch more than once--but not in this pot)...lost the cultivar name: help anyone?

Glaucium acutidentatum

My garden could be termed "Horn Poppy Heaven" or hell as you choose to interpret. I think there's some blooming from April to November. I love 'em!

Hylotelephium (Sedum)  'Matrona'

 This erstwhile sedum looks graceful dancing around the mullein and the manly clumps of Festuca mairei. Why manly? Pat Hayward (past CEO of Plant Select) nixed the grass "cause only a man would like it!"... I was too slow to retort that "men matter too, my dear. And we need to lure more of them into the garden center!". If it takes cacti, grasses and conifers to do it, so be it! I suspect Pat would be all over the conifers which she loves, but cacti and grasses...not so much! Hasn't stopped her with stuffing her magnificent garden with them!

Opuntia tortispina

 It will take a while to get used to shedding "O. phaeacantha" and adopting one of the innumerable new species names that used to be phaes...Now to get a genuine phaeacantha so I can learn to distinguish them myself!

Opuntia tortispina

A closer look: it's really a magnificent beast.

Opuntia aff. azurea

The fruits are as pretty as the flowers--and last a hell of a lot longer!

Sedum (Phedimus) hybridum

 Quite different from the wild form we collected in the Altai--this commonly cultivated form of S. hybridum (I just can't bring myself to adopt the "other" name, which I think is best relegated to being a subgenus). It is indispensible as far as I'm concerned: albeit it is cursed by being so easy to grow.

Rumex scutatus 'Silver Shield'

 Rumex scutatus (in this cultivar to be sure) is definitely one of the least appreciated and most valuable shade perennials. It looks simply stunning right now: and very well behaved, despite it's being a Rumex! Alas, not widely availabe commercially....yet!

Chrysanthemum weyrichii 'Elfreda"

 Another fantastic groundcover for shade: heck, this thrives in full sun or DENSE shade--and grows in almost any kind of soil: how many plants can boast that? Although it flowers sparsely in shade--here it is under my Carpinus--a tough spot. There are innumerable selections, but this one was made by my volunteer, Elfreda Sacarto--an utterly wonderful woman and superb gardener--who graced my life for decades. She's been gone since 2005 but I think of her tenderly when I see this outstanding plant.

Colchicum procurrens

 Lots of colchicums and crocuses are blooming around the yard, but still mostly closed in the cloudy light: this tiny one is out enough to show the bright anthers.

Stipa extremorientalis

 Possibly my "signature" grass--no one seems to grow it but me. But it's all over the garden. I love it.

Achnatherum splendens

Or perhaps THIS is my signature grass: collected on the steppes of Kazakhstan in the fall of 2010, it's settled happily into my garden where the very high flower stems wave in the wind for months.

Pelargonium x hybrid

 I wouldn't be without pellies--and the zonals are among my favorites. They bloom like crazy forever, and that piercing salmon red! Ooo lala!

Zauschneria (Epilobium) septentrionalis

 I know, I know--we're supposed to lump these hummingbird pollinated xerophytes with the pinky, weedy mesophytic Epilobium...D.N.A. undoubtedly reveals their proximity, but it's obvious they're doing their damndest to get away from their dysfunctional home and live under a safe new alias far far away!

Orostachys fimbriata

Just gets taller and taller...

Aeonium tabuliforme

Every fall we play the game of "Chicken": how late can we leave the tender house plants outdoors before frost mars or kills them?

In the next week or so this will migrate in...but dang it, it looks so good out there!

It's warming up--time to go plant some bulbs!

Love is Irrational, right?

Orostachys fimbriata

A year or so ago, James Hitchmough (the English Landscape Architect) came to Denver and gave a talk. One of the themes of that talk was that the general public likes COLOR and lots of it. Well, who doesn't? But those of us who regard ourselves as sophisticated plant nerds tend to like the unusual, where form trumps color. [My God, he's ruined the word forever]. The flowers of this little foxtail succulent are pinkish--but not much showier than the budded stems above. But it does have form!

It's undeniably....well...upright and somewhat suggestive perhaps. Not terribly complicated...my first starts were a gift of John Trager of the Huntington who told me they were collected on the rooftops of Suzhou. When I visited that city twenty years ago, I kept looking at the roof tiles, and did see some sedums, but never these--so I better go back and check again don't you think?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Here's an old picture showing the flowers starting to open--quite pretty in a subdued fashion...This May ACTUALLY BE Orostachys japonica now that I look at it--but the flowers are very similar...

I published this picture before...years ago as a matter of fact. But I think it really shows the rusty color dusted with a bit of flour that make the rosettes irresistible.

Now at the tail end of the growing season, when asters, rabbitbrush  and the rabble of annuals are all at their peak, this subtle little gnome of a plant gives me special delight. Love is irrational for sure: how do we explain our whims and megrims to others? Well, we can't. But we can share them!

Yet ANOTHER book: this one is a killer.

I confess, I haven't read every word on the 400+ folio sized pages. I have skimmed every page, however, and stopped and read far more than I intended. Not many books come out that are utterly novel and fresh and new. And superbly produced, chockablock full of fantastic images and truly novel information that you will not find anywhere else.

If you search my blog, you will find several posts about my travels in the Tian Shan: I am stunned as I look through this volume how few of the plants I have seen on several visits over two years time: that mountain range is simply astonishing! I have also blogged about the senior author several times. Vojtech is extraordinary on so many counts: I know no other plant explorer who has explored more mountains over a longer period of time (for over 3 decades so far he's traversed much of Eurasia yearly, as well as North America, South America to boot!).  I doubt that many people have seen and photographed more species of montane and alpine flowers. Or grown them in his exquisite garden.

Meanwhile holding down a job as Director of the Gene Bank of the Czech Republic. Vojtech just gave a stunning presentation about this book (and its namesake mountains) at our second Rocky Mountain Steppe Summit--and sold a goodly number of books while he was at it!

The flora of the Tian Shan shares a few species with the Himalayas to the south and the Altai mountains to the north and east. But the lion's share of the plants that grow there grow no where else.

And unlike Himalayan species, the Tian Shan wildflowers are amenable to cultivation in North America.

There will be 18 copies of the book sold for $69 advertised in the forthcoming copy of the North American Rock Garden Society bulletin: I don't expect these will last very long. But yet another great reason to join America's premier organization of plant connoisseurs. (NARGS was the only organization to provide a grant to the authors to print this book).

Hopefully more will be ordered. It is conceivable you can obtain a copy from the author  (he gives details as to how to get it on his webpage) but the cost will be much more.

If you live on the Eastern Seaboard, you may be able to buy one at one of the many places he will be speaking: I can assure you if you can make one of his talks, you'll need his book!

I hope he can obtain an American distributor so that libraries and bookstores across our country can get copies of this book!

Excuse me while I go back to skimming the text: who ever heard of Vinca erecta? What a stunning perennial. And all those Corydalis!

Now I shall find out if anyone really reads my blog--and one you may even be rewarded if you read to the end...I happen to be in Victoria (British Columbia) and the fog was pea soup this morning at dawn, but now the sun is threatening to come out and the misty air is positively glowing with a promise of sunlight. And if Jan ever gets off her damn I-Phone, we'll be off to Butchart's (yes, Butchart's) where I've not been for quite a few decades since my last color headache there...

In this misty luminous light it should be even more electrifyingly incandescent....

I have a bit of history in Victoria: I've been here quite a few times, even before 1980 when I quite literally launched my lecture career at the Empress Hotel (a long and embarrassing story). My first visit was July 1976 when I went on my first adventure in the old Falcon attending the Interim International Rock Garden Conference in Seattle and Vancouver....afterwards, I drove up to Anacortes and the ferry to spend time with my best friend from High School, but was highjacked by Roy Davidson, his cousin Linda Wilson and Sharon Sutton--and we spent nearly a week camping on the beaches of West Vancouver Island and exploring Mt. Arrowsmith vicinity. I still grow Dicentra formosa I collected on that trip over forty years later!

But before that even, as a teenager or earlier I'd discovered Hugh Preece's book--the feeble picture above isn't the real cover (I have it with a dustjacket). It's a quirky Edwardian piece--strangely personal and full of great data. I am sorry I can't seem to find any of the images inside it on the Web to post--and my copy's in Colorado (and I'm in Preece's backyard, figuratively speaking). But honestly, his commentary on a vast variety of American wildflowers inspired me as a kid: even then I knew the prose was a bit much, and that he was a piece of work.

I met Ed and Ethel Lohbrunner on my first trip, and asked them if they knew Preece. Indeed they knew Hugh (who was long gone by then). He was sumpthin'! I never quite figured out what that Sumpthin' was...but his book is something. If you look below and click the title of the book, you'll go to the Abebooks page where several copies are for sale, some for under $10.00 for a first edition from 80 years ago!



The classic North American Rock Plants by Hugh Preece has apparently been reprinted by one of those South Asian publishing companies--I'd go for a first edition myself..

I know you may have a kindle or whatever brand of e-book reader--I've resisted. I know much of the world's literature is digitized: I don't think this book is. And no matter how good the reproduction and how wonderful the digital glow of text, there's something about those old black and white images on slick paper that isn't reproducible on a screen.

Some day I think this book will be recognized as a classic--it is surely the first time that many great garden plants from North America were described so well, photographed so nicely, and rhapsodized in such fine Edwardian-era prose...

I wrote a review 8 years ago I stand by--which they've attached to the new ersatz edition (not sure I think that's kosher). Click on the first sentence and you can get a bit more about it...

A misty day outside our Air-bandb in Victoria--and Hugh's spirit still lingers in my memory, and just beyond the corner there, hidden in the mist.

Two weeks to Steppe Summit!

Steppe Meister!

Perhaps it's not the most flattering portrait...but this does perhaps convey some of the whimsy that balances Mike Bone's many other more serious sides: I've had the pleasure of working with Mike for two decades, and I have come to know and admire much about the man. Heck, I adore the son of a gun! I eulogized him almost two years ago (Genghis Bone) with many better pictures of him....

I have also done Prairiebreak portraits of the three other exotic speakers who will be speaking at the Steppe Summit on September 15 at Denver Botanic Gardens:

Vojtech Holubec on the Flowers of the Tian Shan (feauturing photos from his just published book o the same subject

Christopher Gardener, Garden designer and plant explorer who now lives in Turkey who co-wrote Flora of the Silk Road and will speaking on the subject.

Zdenek Zvolanek on "The Beauty Slope" (his spectacular private garden of steppe plants at Karlik)


Mike will be giving an update on his work in Lesotho--the mountain Kingdom surrounded by South Africa where so many of our Plant Select treasures originated. He's been assisting staff at the Katse Botanical Garden there with projects, and collaborating with Munich Botanic Garden in seed collection and research in the high steppe environments of the country in the Southern Hemisphere that most closely resembles Colorado in climate and geomorphology.

Mike is also the mastermind who has orchestrated the creation of the Steppe Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens--which has generated enormous interest in the last few years. It contains several dramatic takes on the theme of "crevice gardening" that won the admiration and high praise from Zdenek Zvolanek last week.

Zdenek and Vojtech were two of the handful of Czech gardeners who evolved the Crevice garden technique of rock gardening--which is now featured in several areas at Denver Botanic Gardens, Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, Montrose and Durango Botanic Gardens, the Yampa River Botanic Park, Vail Alpine Garden and several public gardens in Colorado Springs, as well as the spectacular Simms Street APEX crevice garden in Arvada. There is talk about new Crevice Gardens at the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, the Gardens at Spring Creek in Fort Collins and elsewhere in this region. Come "drink at the source" of what is proving to be one of the most exciting new garden styles!

Just click below and sign up! There will never again be a line up like this--at least not in America!

Rocky Mountain Steppe Summit registration

Or you can join the ranks of "Coulda! Shoulda! Woulda!)....