Unexpected Fragrance: Scented-Leaf Roses

Many of my favorite plants for fragrance don't have scented flowers.  A favorite from childhood is Black Cottonwood.  When the leaves unfurl in the spring you could swoon from the scent.  The buds contain a ruby resin which is richly fragrant, perfuming the air quite a distance from the trees.  Large trees can drip this sticky red dew in the fall till the ground under them looks bloody.  Picking the buds will leave your fingers aromatic all day, but you will have to compete with the deer for them: tasty, I guess, but soapy to me.  And what does this have to do with roses?

Rosa primula, the Incense Rose, has the same intoxicating fragrance in its leaves.  Misty or rainy summer mornings waft the scent about the garden.  Its large single yellow flowers, the first rose to open here, before the wild ones even, are softly scented but you must put your nose into them to find that.  The foliage is small and full like burnet but thorny on the back of the leaflet sprays. Rosemary Verey, in The Scented Garden, says to plant R. primula by your door, and she's right. The scent in the first sunlight of a summer morning is not to be missed. I save a few branches when I prune (this gets to be a large creature--5 feet or more and I of course planted it next to the sidewalk) and dry the leaves for pot-pourri. It takes heavy gloves for this! Another lovely aspect of Rosa primula is its tall, glowing red stems and (many) red thorns. Normally shaped, unlike R. sericea pteracantha's monsters, they are beautiful in the sun and

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A Year in Blue

Blue flowers rare?  My friends might tell you it sometimes seems that's almost all there is. I am constantly growing trial plants to assay for blueness and pressing the results on all my gardening friends.  True, there aren't as many as yellow and pink offer, but there are lots of true spectrum blues available, some brilliant and many stunning.  Oddly, not  many are fragrant, and most of those are bulbs.

I have read that most blue flowers are from the northern hemisphere; why that would be is a mystery to me.  A bigger mystery is the reputation for rarity.  Perhaps because so many pure blues are annuals that resent transplanting or perennials which don't readily bloom in pots, thus frustrating most garden centers; or perhaps it is because of nurserymen offering up lavender as though it were blue.  We all fall for it.  Catalog descriptions written by true believers or cynics with high-color printing lead us into purchases we sometimes rue.  Here are things from my list of  favorite 'true blues':

The very first are the forced reticulata iris from the fridge, in January if you remember in the fall soon enough (October & November). They smell wonderful & are marked with cheery gold & brown stipples and transplant out well later on. Next come the narcotically fragrant hyacinths; I always pot some to bring out the first week of March to break up the winter. 'Blue Jacket' are nice and this year I will try some 'Menelik' from Old House Gardens: so inky blue as to be nearly black, the catalog says; have to try them. Hyacinths also transplant well in the spring, blooming for years to come. Fast now come the blues out in the garden: reticulata iris, Muscari in several shades of blue, (try the powder blue 'Valerie Finnis'), hyacinths, and the little bulbs. Chionodoxa sardensis, a larger Glory of the Snow than the standard, bearing more and much brighter, deeper blue flowers on taller stems. Scilla siberica 'Spring Beauty' is best adored by lying on the sunny spring lawn with your nose up to them to inspect their pretty bells, blue pollen & shiny foliage and to enjoy their sweetness. If left to their own devices & the lawn mower is kept leashed, they will sow far out into the lawn. Violas and violets put on their show next. Viola 'Joker Light Blue' is indeed truly blue and is hardy here as a perennial, forming larger clumps over time and sowing very similar progeny. I would not be with out this tidy gem which blooms most of the year. Viola adunca, the Early Blue Violet, though teeny in the woods and modest, is lush and very bloomy in the garden, usually reblooming in the fall.
A nice combination the plants themselves thought of is Water Forget Me Nots (Myosotis palustris) with the double yellow primrose 'Sunshine Susie'. The regular forget me nots form a low pale blue cloud at the foot of my mother's cherry tree, perfect below the white blossoms and with double daffodils peeping out above the blue

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Penstemons for the Cottage Garden

Penstemons are enjoying an increased visibility in American gardens.  With a little searching one can have penstemons in bloom almost any time of the growing season in most of the country.  Once the province of alpine & rock gardeners or European botanic gardens, they now show up with regularity in catalogs and garden centers.  Native only to the Americas, penstemons range from woody sub-shrubs to tough perennials and tender ones grown as annuals.  Penstemons evolved with bumblebees and hummingbirds as pollinators; adding these plants to your garden will increase your wildlife viewing as well.  Most states have native penstemons on their native plant lists, and most are adaptable far beyond their home range.  Favored for their blues, they also include candy pinks and bright reds.  Once thought of as short-lived and fussy, breeding & evaluation projects by Universities and individuals alike bring new garden worthy plants to market yearly. 
I first noticed penstemons while hiking; teeny spikes of blue trumpets caught my eye and I had to find out what they were.  A little research showed me there were many kinds locally but they sounded difficult to please.  As an adult, I tried them anyway (that blue!) with fresh seed from exchanges and basic growing information from the Penstemon Society. Now I have beds full of different kinds and am delighted to report that they are not difficult to please if you keep in mind hardiness and soil preferences.
You're likely to encounter two main types at garden centers and in standard catalogs: named varieties of tender perennials such as 'Garnet' and 'Thorn', best wintered over indoors in areas with temps that go much below freezing, and barbatus hybrids ('Rondo', 'Cambridge', etc.) plus the foliage plant 'Husker Red' whose flowers are an afterthought.The barbatus types are a very good place to start. Blooming in mid-summer in shades of red, pink, purple and blue, they are a bee's delight and good cut flowers. Cutting encourages side shoots to flower for a longer season. Given sun and good drainage, especially in winter, they will really add sparkle to the garden.For blooms like those of the tender varieties, try growing

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Violets in North Idaho

Violets are a welcome part of gardening in far northern Idaho.  They're among the first flowers of spring and the last in the fall.  Easy to care for, generous with bloom and deer-proof!  Snow cover protects them from winter lows to -20ºF and good rainfall makes them lush.  Growing them in afternoon shade protects them from summer heat spells which can be intense in the mountains.

There are many native violets and I have several here in the woods.  None are fragrant but the sight of hundreds of lemon yellow V. orbiculata spangling the forest floor is not to be forgotten.  They prefer Cedar swamps and Tamarack woods and grow among Trillium, orchids and Blue Bead Lilies. V. adunca, the Early Blue Violet, has leaves like folded valentine hearts.  The flowers are just the lavender side of blue.  Small in the woods (1-2"), in the fat soil of a garden can go to

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Winter Hardy Pansies

Here's an update to my winter-hardy pansy project.  In my climate (USDA Zone 4, mintemp -25 to -30F, with or without snow cover), pansies don't always over-winter as I remember them doing in my childhood.  There's lots of self-sown seedlings, but not much true over-wintering.  After some research I discovered that most of the viola & pansy breeding being done today is done in California, Mexico and Japan, where winter pansy has a whole different meaning than it does where January can mean 4 feet of snow on the ground.

I began trialing a few new varieties each year and what began as a hardiness project has branched out to include color & form.  Some seed catalogs note hardiness but this is rare even in grower's lists or so general to be meaningless.

This winter was relatively brief yet we still saw -26F and anywhere from none to 3 1/2 feet of snow.  The winners are

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