sounds like you and Granny Artemis had a severe case of "sticky pot"
syndrome..................
madgardener who was just happy to slip another red dogwood home with three
pots of Japanese painted ferns today..........GBSEG
"paghat" wrote in message
news
Granny Artemis & i went both days to the annual spring sale of the
Rhododendron Species Foundation. We're not rolling in money just now so
told ourselves we were only going to get a few odd shade plants & native
species that tend to be relatively cheap & not often if ever seen in
regular nurseries. So we did load up on shade plants that were cheap
except i couldn't resist a few large Himalayan jack-in-the-pulpets for my
pulpet garden, & those alas were not affordable, so right away our plan to
spend very little wasn't working out.

In past years we've bought mainly mature shrubs whenever we spotted
remarkable specimens. But by now alas our smallish gardens are pretty
darned full of large shrubs & we now have to focus more on smaller things
which has come to mean shorter shade plants, bulbs, & sundry other
perennials that can be fit in wherever. But there were so many dwarf
species rhodies being offered, a few of them so rare or so newly
cultivated they're not even listed in Greer, & we spur-of-the-moment
decided a bunch of these would fit nicely between larger things, but
without dying back in winter like the perennials. I think I could've
restrained myself if Granny Artemis hadn't gotten over excited, but with
her encouraging me we both essentially lost our minds.

So we got:
1) Rhododendron calostrotum var gigha, a bright red-flowering dwarf
already with fat red wrinkly buds. It's such a baby plant, but looks more
like a bonsai than a youngster, it has every mature feature & upright
form. Ten years from now it might be a whole foot tall. Most of the others
we got are also very nice for form despite being so little, most are
one-foot tall now, but one of them is REAL eency:

2) Rhododendron keiskei var. cordifolia "Yaku Fairy." Good lord this is
cute, about one inch tall & six inches wide. In ten years it could be a
foot high but probably only six inches high. Most of these dwarf rhodies
want a lot of sun, but this one likes a bit more shade, so I planted it
with a micro-dwarf lingon berry. The "big" plants behind these would
ordinariy be the smallest things, like the hepaticas.

3) Rhododendron campylogynum var. cremastum, which has a color range from
white to pink, will have to wait & see which.

4) Rhododendron hippophaeoides var. hippophaeoides. This'll likely just
have the same-old lavender trumpets seen on the majority of dwarf
evergreen rhodies, but the tiny leaves were so appealing by themselves, &
it MIGHT turn out to be the darker blue.

5) Rhododendron telmateium. Very bushy dwarf to 3 feet, though only a foot
tall now, promising rose-purple flowers. This is on the list of the few
rhodies that like alkaline soil, which we didn't know when we added it to
our cart, but should be adaptable to the acidic soil it's gonna be stuck
with.

6) Rhododendron tolmachevii. Will have pure white flowers, the buds are
cream colored now. Extremely upright at one foot, could reach 3 feet in
ten years. It looks nothing like a rhody really & was formerly in another
genus. It's already flowering, the flowers look like hawthorn flowers,
tiny white clusters. The coolest thing about it is the leaves smell
wonderfully of spice & will do so year-round, so we planted it this
morning on a path edge where we can take advantage of the odor.

7) Rhododendron tsai. Could get two feet tall someday. The tiniest leaves
imaginable make it so cute, otherwise sort of duplicates R. hippophaeoides
in appearance, will have the usual violet/purple trumpets no doubt but we
selected it for its miniature mature structure.

So by now our "let's get a few cheap shade plants" had turned into some
expensive shade plants & a lot of miniature rhodies. But the thing we
WISHED we could have was a Western Azalea from the collection of Britt
Smith, a locally super-famous collector of this one species. Quite a few
"spares" didn't fit into the South King County Arboretum Smith-Mossman
Display Garden, & these have been dished out to members of the
Rhododendron Society & R.S.F. a few at a time the last couple years. There
were only two specimens offered, one huge, the other gigantic. They were
being AUCTIONED, how cruel. We made a bid on the bigger of the two big
ones, but later found out it sold for hundreds, our bid must've looked
laughable. But the other one at a "mere" six feet tall & lichen-encrusted,
likely a 30 year old plant that had lived 20 of those years on Britt's
property -- we actually got it! (The guy told us we weren't really the
high bidders, but he thought we were more deserving of Britt's shrub -- so
it pays to be a clubster after all). So now we have:

8) Rhododendron occidentale. Spent most of this morning planting just that
one shrub in what is probably the last place we had for something this
big. It was a bear for two of us to move around, & they're brittle shrubs
so we had to go slowly. It's only twigs & buds right now, but SO beautiful
in its shape. It's supposed to be a naturally occurring interspecies
hybrid, not the white that grows in Oregon nor the red from California,
but something on the border, can't wait to see exactly how the buds open
for color! The flowers on the Western Azalea are about the most redolent
of all deciduous azaleas too. By gum I love azaleas & it's so wonderful to
have this native species -- & wonderful to have a direct connection with
the Smith-Mossman collection, I guess this means we have to join that
arboretum too & help support its existence, though it's quite a distant
drive for us to visit.

But were we done? Minutes before the second day had ended & the whole sale
were officially "over" we were waylayed by a chap who could tell we were
easy marks for these things, & said, "Be my last sale! Be my last sale!
Half price for any of these!" So we also obtained:

9) Rhododendron pachytrichum. Three feet tall & wide now, but could
someday be quite large, growing with the form of a fat little tree. It'll
bloom pink. This is exactly what we weren't supposed to get any more of,
since the gardens are cram-packed, but there's a spot we planned maybe two
or three years from now to re-landscape which is just a grassy slope now,
so probably in the next day or two I have to prepare a part of that area
much sooner than intended. The rhody will have to remain potted for a
while I suppose.

10) Rhododendron albrechtii. A medium-large Japanese species azalea,
deciduous, orchid-colored flowers that sometimes look just an eency bit
like orchids too. I'd recently dug up an oversized Torch Lily (seven feet
tall when it flowers & a sprawling mess) & moved it to a streetside
sun-garden, so I already had a perfect hole already dug for Albrecht's
azalea right at the foot of the back step. I dunno if this is one of the
redolent azaleas, I hope so, since it'll be so near the door.

With all this I haven't yet been able to think about the exact placement
of the many shade plants. The only thing I planted from among those so far
is the jack-in-the-pulpits right on the top of Pulpit Hill. I recently
extended Pulpit Hill by laying down cardboard to kill weeds, placing soil
& compost & stepping stones on top of that, but can't really plant the
area until the cardboard is eaten up by worms & the weeds under it all
killed. But it's nice to know I haven't yet filled up every corner
available for aroids & trilliums.

And hooboy, after what we spent this weekend, we are going to be eating a
lot of cornbread the rest of this month.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/