P. microcephaly in my garden. The foliage emerges dark red in spring before the green takes over the edges.
Plant of the Week
When you walk up the front walk of Great Dixter, you choose to go either right or left outside of the front door. Neither choice is a mistake, but the biggest borders are to the left: the Peacock Topiary Garden and the High Garden. Why is this important? Because when Marianne and I first started to explore, we went left, and one of the first plants we lusted over was a Persicaria. That particular Persicaria was P. runcinata ‘Purple Passion’ and it was showing itself to great advantage next to some tall ferns, which Fergus Garrrett later clarified as the Dryopteris filix-mas.
Polygonam perspicaria, formerly P. maculosa. Thanks for the intel, Marianne.
I grow a couple of different Persicarias, but Purple Passion went on my list of Plants I Must Grow (and what a list it became by the end of my week at Dixter). I wish I had taken a photo of it. Look at the P. microcephela ‘Red Dragon’ above, then imagine deep purple in the middle, surrounded by a silvery white, with green on the outside edges. If Wimbledon had an official plant that had the added advantage of resembling a classic cricket jumper, it would be that plant.
P. virginiana ‘Painter’s Palette’ is another one I grow and it has more oval leaves and variegation that includes cream, green and and a deep red. I could be guilty of magical thinking brought on by looking at “shade” plants that were prospering in Southern England, but I am going to move some things around in my garden to see just how much sun they can tolerate, and ‘Painter’s Palette’ is one of those things that will be testing its tanning tolerance.
In the category of annoying plant name changes, you may have heard me refer to the common and sort of cute weed known as ‘Lady’s Thumb’ as P. maculosa on the podcast. It turns it is now referred to as Polygonam percaria. That error was Mariann’e fault, for sure. Kidding— Marianne was the one who told me it was (was) a Persicaria and then let me know that it had changed to a polygonum. Marianne knows a lot more about plants than I do. But I have more compost piles, so there’s that, if you are interested in botanical competition.
Hope you join us there!
We mentioned the upcoming “Speaking of Gardening” event in Asheville, NC August 12 and 13. Sign up here to meet us there! I will be in the audience, but Marianne, former guest Scott Beuerlein, and a bunch of other people that I can’t wait to meet (and maybe have on the show!) will be speaking.
P. virginiana ‘Painter’s Palette’
Karen Blair, Charlottesville artist
When I mentioned Karen on episode #70, I jumped the gun, as we decided it would be better to formally announce our collaboration upon my return.
That being said, no reason you shouldn’t go look at her beautiful paintings now.
Guest:
Marianne Willburn
This photo by Marianne was the result of camaraderie and mulch pile climbing.
Fergus demonstrates the staking of plants, a skill which I had previously thought I had previously mastered.
I know more now! (Photo Marianne Wilbur)
The Great Dixter
Round up
When Marianne Willburn and I found out that we were going to do a crazy gardening thing that we both decided on pretty last minute, we did a podcast episode together about how excited we were. Then we went to do the crazy gardening thing, which was the May Symposium at Great Dixter. So it only makes sense that we had to do another episode to talk about how it went, right?
We talked about the reasons that we were happiest that we went, what we learned, and what we brought back, besides some poppy seeds that may or may or may not have been a problem at customs had we been caught.
All’s well that ends well, and no security agent got all hot and bothered about Papaver somniferum. We are confident that Fergus would have bailed us out. After all, he supplied the opium poppy seeds.
Fergus is a natural teacher, and as Marian mentioned, there is a series of lectures that you can rent on the Great Dixter web site. Lots to learn there, if you can’t make that big trip across the pond right now.
The most repeated words we came up with to describe our takeaways from the experience were joy, courage, experimentation, and playfulness. We are both inspired to do more in our gardens, and have more fun doing more. I have never been overly concerned about spacing out plants carefully, but with a new understanding of how to look for and understand plants that can stand up to being crowded, I feel that I will want to fill my beds more and more.
The Symposium at Great Dixter will be the gift that keeps on giving in terms of inspiration, and the gift that keeps on spending in terms of all the plants I now want to crowd into my gardens.
Fill your hands? Fill your borders. With plants.
Coffee Time!
Please consider supporting Into the Garden with Leslie my buying me a cup of coffee
OR! Becoming a member of I’m into the Garden too!
I will send you some LH Gardens gear if you become a member!
Dixter Download—
a bit more…
Tree Coppicing
Besides succession planting, plant staking, seed and cutting propagation and learning tons of new plants, another topic that I really enjoyed was tree coppicing. Coppicing can be used for aesthetic or space reasons now, but the practice would have been carried out for fuel in ancient times. Today it serves to maintain biomass in the vibrant ecosystem that is found at Great Dixter by keeping otherwise short lived Ash trees alive and regenerating for hundreds of years.
You can look at the reel that I made on Instagram and learn more from Fergus Garrett himself.
I took this photo at Dixter in the last week in May and the orchids were beginning to pop.
Meadows
You know my opinion on No Mow May, but I am very much a fan of meadows, and it was interesting to see the use of the plant Yellow Rattle, or Rhinanthus minor as a strategy to hinder the growth of grass in the meadows at both Dixter and Sissinghurst.
Marcia Sparling, one of the May Symposium participants, was the one who pointed that out to me (she pointed out a lot of stuff, in the nicest way). Very knowledgeable gardener is Marcia!
One week later, they had REALLY popped. Photo by Emma Davies of Great Dixter.
TWO WEEK BREAK!
For the next two weeks, I will be traveling with husband to a wonderful place where they have these,,.
Photo by Rick Govic on Unsplash.
But it’s possible I could be concentrating more on things like this…
Photo by Mgg Vitchakorn on Unsplash