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#1
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Overspent on rhodies, gawdammee
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/ |
#2
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Overspent on rhodies, gawdammee
I LIKE cornbread, a lot! Sounds to me like a pretty good trade off for all
your goodies. Now I'm trying to figure out where I might be able to tuck a potted rhodie so's I kin eat lots more cornbread :-) Val "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/ |
#3
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Overspent on rhodies, gawdammee
"Valkyrie" wrote in message news:1049674442.608479@yasure...
I LIKE cornbread, a lot! Sounds to me like a pretty good trade off for all your goodies. Now I'm trying to figure out where I might be able to tuck a potted rhodie so's I kin eat lots more cornbread :-) Val "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 I was reading your article with interest, in my country of Scotland we have Rhododendrons everywhere, I have two small ones in my garden called Linda, Ruby Hart another solution could be to go for Azaleas the are a member of the same family and have lovely flowers and of course they are small. Hope this helps in some way. Kind regards Linda 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/ |
#5
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Overspent on rhodies, gawdammee
"paghat" wrote: I've tried not to be totally emersed in rhodies & azaleas though, & also like native deciduous shrubs a great deal, especially berrying shrubs that bring red & orange & white & purply-black drupes (berries) into the gardens for autumn & winter, & stuff that blooms in winter like Winter Honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), Dawn Viburnum, Witchhazel... -paghat the ratgirl In which case I should be a good neighbor and not to suggest a visit to our local candy store http://www.bovees.com/ a short distance from our home and a long distance from our checkbook, which in spite of being left behind always manages to jump into the car while I am not looking with the same "disastrous" results after visiting any nursery ;) ... Allegra |
#6
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Overspent on rhodies, gawdammee
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/ |
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