NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006
I don’t like to call it a post-mortem, but that’s really what it is. The plants are “dead,” after all. So it’s time to think back on the gardening year and see which ones were really superior performers and which were found wanting.
While 2006 fortunately didn’t hit us with the debilitating drought of 2005, we did have the usual Midwestern quirks—remember the sudden heat wave last spring, followed by a precipitous drop in temperatures? That really zapped the edges of all of my big hostas with blue sieboldiana blood in their veins and left them looking downright ugly for the rest of the year.
The blue-leaved ‘Halcyon’, on the other hand, came through with nary a scratch and put on a spectacular blooming show in August. For sure, it doesn’t have the amazing giant leaves of H. sieboldiana ‘Elegans’ or ‘Blue Angel’ or ‘Frances Williams’, but it didn’t get brown edges either. The chartreuse-leaved ‘August Moon’ and ‘Zounds’ also looked pristine all summer, probably because they emerge from dormancy late and thus avoided the temperature blitz.
When it comes to roses, you can’t knock the ‘Knock Outs’— single red, double red, a rosy pink, and a blushing (pale) pink. Repeat bloom, winter hardiness, low-maintenance and disease resistance—all they lack is fragrance. The same is also true of ‘Lady Elsie May’, which blooms June to November with semi-double salmon-pink flowers. ‘Hot Cocoa’, an unusual dusky orange, and ‘Wild Blue Yonder’, a slightly fragrant deep rose with a white center, also performed well for me.
The variegated phlox ‘Norah Leigh’ is another superior plant. Not as rampant a grower as the more common types, it has variegated creamy/ pale green leaves that stand out against the sea of green along my front fence. This phlox would be worthwhile even without its flowers (white with a pink eye) because it provides such useful foliage contrast, and if it were to get that scourge of phlox, powdery mildew, who would even see it? A new series of phlox on the market called Volcano merits some serious attention. Available in several colors and growing only 18 inches tall, the Volcanoes have very welcome mildew resistance. The rose-red ones in my garden this year seemed to almost shimmer with color in the late summer border.
In the vegetable garden, ‘Sun Sugar’ tomato put on a stunning performance. Most cherry tomato types are very productive, and this little orange beauty was no exception, but what really makes ‘Sun Sugar’ a fine plant is the fact that the skin doesn’t split when the fruit is ripe (something that drove me batty last year with ‘Sun Gold’). Since the two varieties are equally sweet and flavorful, I’ll be growing the one that doesn’t split from now on.
There’s more, of course—pulmonarias with white-splashed leaves so crisp-looking in shade, clematis from the C. viticella group that bloom abundantly and don’t get the dreaded clematis wilt, and the Luna series of hardy hibiscus that was causing folks to stop and ask what in the world is that? All in all, a pretty good year.
