In a Garden with Memories

A couple of weeks ago, I was planting dahlia tubers and thinking about old friends. You see, many plants in my garden have come from divisions which others have given me.

The particular dahlia is the off-spring of one which Winston Churchill Macdonough, a stalwart of the Wethersfield Historical Society gave me 20 years ago now. I had visited him one day spring just after he had planted his dahlias, and he had thrown the excess on the compost pile.

I was starting a garden at the Hurlbut-Dunham House and he was glad to share. While I thought initially that throwing those tubers out was a waste, in the ensuing years I discovered how prolific these were and I soon started sharing these with others.

Win passed away quite a while ago...I think probably in about 1994, and he is brought to mind every time I plant these tubers and every time they bloom. I'll never forget the image of him splitting wood at the Captain James Francis House. At the time he was in his 80s and I doubt I could have kept up with him.

Walking through my garden brings lots of memories. Although I moved from Meriden, Connecticut to Troy, Ohio (NOT a short distance) in 2005, I brought a lot of plant material with me. Some things I brought along were rare or ones I was particularly fond of, others I brought just because of who gave them to me. I was lucky as I knew we were going to move in Sept. of 2004, so I had time to make divisions and pot things up at the proper time and long before the house was put on the market.

These clove pinks (dianthus) are wonderful plants and an antique variety. Mary Alves, now a writer and the horticulturist and landscape manager at Historic St. Mary's City in Maryland, and the wife of my colleague C. Douglas Alves, shared these with me to plant at the General J. K. F. Mansfield House in Middletown, CT.

Clove pinks are extremely fragrant and have become a favorite of my non-gardening, but long suffering husband. I also like them for the mats of blue green leaves. Mary gave me this plant (or rather it's ancestress) back in the early 1980s.

Sometimes, but rarely, I obtain a plant as a division from a friends garden and I have no idea what the variety is. This frothy filipendula is from Eleanor Buck Wolf. Eleanor was a remarkable lady who I am proud to have called a friend even though she was old enough to be my grandmother. Eleanor obtained this plant from HER grandmother, which puts it no later than the mid-19th century.

Probably just as old of a variety is this stalwart (it stands tall and straight), long-lasting blue iris. Elizabeth Pratt Fox obtained this one at one of the historic houses she worked at....either the Buttolph-Williams house in Wethersfield, or the Buttler-McCook House in Hartford, Connecticut. Both houses are 18th century (the Buttolph-Williams house dating to the early 1700s), but the gardens at the time she was working there didn't have a lot of history. It is possible that these are plants put in the late 19th - early twentieth centuries or it is possible that they are earlier.


Regardless, these blue beauties are tough, and they have wonderful fragrance. They remind me of the grape Kool-aid I used to drink during Vacation Bible school as a child growing up in south central Michigan.

While I was living in Meriden, quilter Susan Varanka lived across the street from me. Not only did ideas about quilting and fabric go from one side of the street to another, but plants went across the street both ways as well.

This lovely yellow tritoma, also known as a "red-hot-poker plant" was one Susan gave me...by mistake.

Susan had both the orangey red colored tritomas which are more common and the yellow. She was changing her bed over to have only yellow and she gave me a piece..and low and behold, it turned out to be yellow, not orange! Check out her website at:

http://www.susansquiltcreations.com/


One of my closest friends in Connecticut is Martha Smart. Martha is a gardener par excellence. Her gardens are breath-taking no matter what time of year you visit. She shared these beautiful purple Siberian Iris "Caesar's Brother" with me a long time ago.

Siberian iris has to be divided fairly regularly. Failure to do so will lead to a spot in the center without flowers and a ring of flowers around the bare spot.


Lots of other people are remembered in my garden. I only hope that perhaps when other people who have meant a lot to me walk in their gardens in Connecticut that they will think of me as they look on plants that I have given them, or that I encouraged them to buy.

I am dangerous to have as a neighbor because you just might find a pot of iris, or a daylily sitting on your doorstep as a gift from me. Of course, that angel I use in my profile is flying across a bed of coreopsis which my neighbor Ellen was going to throw out......

Now, if only it would get a bit cooler so I could go out and weed, or it would rain......

Iris Borer and Bacterial Soft Rot: Perils of Poor Horticuture

I have been working like a crazy woman in the garden....trying to catch up on tasks I should have started in April (plant division and moving plants to better locations) and weeding.

I have also been in a panic as my irises need major attention. Because of poor horticultural habits (I let the weeds and other plants crowd the iris and also didn't divide last year) and my heavy soil, I was beginning to lose many of my clumps of German or bearded iris.




At left you can see a clump which is suffering. When you get up close to it and poke around a bit, you can easily see the problem.




One of the biggest pests for German iris is the iris borer. The borer is the larval stage of a moth. The moth lays the eggs in or around the iris and when they hatch, they start eating.

Here is the tell-tale sign of the iris borer. See the eaten edge of the leaf? The discoloration? The healthy leaf is a really cool shade of green, many are bright green but some have a blue-green cast to them. See that area which looks like it is wet down near the base of the leaf? That's the sure sign. The small circular brown spots are from a fungus which attacked in the cool spring we had, and aren't related to this problem.











This next shot, you can easily see the holes the borer chewed into the leaves and when pulled the leaf away from the fan, the borer was right there. Look closely and you can see this ugly beast. He is sort of yellow/tan with a reddish maroon head, right above my thumb in the eaten area of the leaf.


Most garden manuals say that you can press the leaf and kill the borer, but in several of the leaves which I have been working with, the borer is so small that I wouldn't have squished him. The borer will eat it's way all the way down through the leaf and tunnel through the rhizome (the root of the iris which some people incorrectly refer to as the "bulb").





One of the other problems with the borer is that they carry a bacteria on their body which enters into the rhizome from the damaged areas. I didn't have much of a problem with this in Connecticut, so I can only think that the heavier soil I have here makes this a greater problem.

Here, you can see where the soft rot has gotten into a part of the rhizome. The central yellowish blob was once a stalk and now has completely rotted away. There is slime in the soil nearby and the whole thing smells rotten. We're lucky this time that there isn't a smell-o-cam as this is pretty nasty.

You can see a little bit better an area of soft rot at the tip of my knife.

Conventional wisdom says to destroy all of the clumps infected. I am afraid that I can't do this and I've had pretty good luck with doing the following.

I cut away all the offending parts down to the good tissue. I then dunk the rhizome and what is left of the leaves (which have usually also been cut back because of the borer in them) into a 10% bleach solution.

I then leave the rhizomes out to dry for a couple of days, or at least overnight. I then dust them with a fungicide and replant them, usually amending the soil with a lot of compost and some sand as well. They may not bloom well the next year as I have been pretty ruthless in removing leaves (the leaves are where the plant gets the energy for more flower production next year), but the following year, they are usually fine.

Any particularly nasty rhizomes, I do throw out. Usually the bigger rhizomes throw new growth as the plant is thinking it is going to die and it is going to do everything in it's power to live. Thank goodness!

Here's a better shot at what the borer looks like.

Good gardening practices, such as cutting away and destroying the leaves after a good, hard frost, keeping the plants in open area for good air circulation and amending the soil to provide better drainage, or making raised beds are good methods to avoid the mess I have this year.