Fig leaf hollyhocks rarely suffer from rust disease. Photo by Brendan Zwelling

The light is lasting longer these days, and that spurs my interest in getting things growing. I have an army of primula seeds to germinate, a future investment for spring 2013. Most perennials grown from seed bloom in the second year, but there are a few that flower the first year, if they’re planted early enough. One is fig leaf hollyhock (Althaea ficifolia, syn. Alcea ficifolia, Zone 3), a big (in every sense!) favourite of mine.

Hollyhocks are a useful vertical design reference in a perennial border. Their upright in-your-face posture adds interest to what might be a uniformly low group of perennials. Hollyhocks stand proud at nearly seven feet (2 m) tall, and put their long-blooming flowers at eye level, where you can see them best.

Dwarf perennial hollyhock, Spring Celebrity (stokeseeds.com) also blooms quickly—14 to 16 weeks from seeding. It grows 30 inches (75 cm) tall and the flowers are a mix of semi-double and double in the first year, and all double the second year. Spring Celebrity is bred from A. rosea, and highly susceptible to rust disease, worth knowing if fungal hollyhock rust is a problem in your garden.

I’ve grown lots of different hollyhocks, and encountered a serious problem with rust disease. My garden seems to be the North American source of Puccinia malvacearum spore, just waiting for a hollyhock leaf to peek above ground. For several years my double A. rosea hollyhocks were severely afflicted with the rusty orange pustules filling their foliage.

But hollyhock rust is a distant memory since I switched to fig leaf (sometimes called Antwerp) hollyhock, a more rust-resistant species. The deeply lobed foliage has been entirely disease free in my garden, and it thrives with half day to full day sun. I grow the Happy Lights strain (parkseed.com) that features a pretty mix of pastel and deeply saturated colours. Happy Lights is a single flower with ruffled petals and contrasting golden throats. You can also look at Antwerp mixed hollyhocks (veseys.com) for a slightly different mix with predominately darker colours.

Start seed indoors in February under plant lights or in a sunny window in order for plants to reach blooming size the first season. I start the seeds in two-litre milk cartons (with drainage holes cut in the bottom) to allow them deep root development. I feed them every third week with a close to balanced fertilizer (18-18-21) diluted to half strength. The plants will be about 12 inches (30 cm) tall by the time they go outside in May. It’s not possible to accurately predict the eventual flower colour from seedling foliage. The darker colours tend to make slightly smaller plants, if that’s any help to you, but there’s no guarantee.

The basal rosette is usually about 24 inches (60 cm) wide, and I trim off the outer leaves to reduce the plant’s footprint to about 16 inches (40 cm). The loss of foliage doesn’t seem to inhibit the plant’s ability to produce adequate energy. These tall beauties are impressive in bud and flower, and you don’t need a lot to make a statement. Just one plant is good for placing strategically where it can be seen and admired. For a distant view, try a grouping of three to five plants at the back of the garden. Hollyhocks like good drainage and don’t resent slightly dry soil. If you establish a generous row alongside a garage, well, that’s hollyhock heaven!

Other posts by Judith this week:

• Sweet scents of Nicotiana species
• New uses for tomato cages

Posts by Judith last week:

• New Plentifall pansies
• Planning for more roses
• Shady corners, sweet scents

In my experience, these flimsy cages are useless for tomatoes. A well-tended tomato is a strong, robust plant, quickly overwhelming the height and girth of a standard tomato cage. When the thin wire legs are anchored in soil, the cage stands about 27 inches (69 cm) tall and 14 inches (36 cm) wide, and most indeterminate (vining) tomato plants grow twice that tall, or more. The weight of the fruited branches drags the cage over, and what you have is an alarming heap of metal a   nd tomato.

I suppose the cages would fit a compact determinate tomato cultivar, such as ‘Sunstart’ (veseys.com) with six-ounce (170-g) fruit in 65 to 70 days, or ‘Lunchbox” (stokeseeds.com) with three-ounce (85-g), egg-size fruits in 62 days on a plant reaching 36 inches (90 cm). But you’ll likely come to grief if you’re trying to grow plants like six-foot (1.8-m) yellow-orange ‘Kellog’s Breakfast’ (superseeds.com) or meaty ‘Bulls Heart’ (tomatogrowers.com) with fruit weighing up to two pounds (1 kg). See what I mean?

What I’m really concerned about is finding something else to do with my useless cages. In recent summers they’ve been handy for supporting all sorts of other plants. I stabilize the cages by weaving two or three strong bamboo canes or metal stakes down the sides and anchoring them in the soil. They work well for corralling the stems of sprawling clematis like non-climbing Clematis x ‘Durandii’, which flowers for 12 weeks in my garden. I add additional light bamboo stakes to the sides, tying each clematis stem up to stand vertical and make a blooming tower. I’ve also used the cages for clumps of tall, leaning perennials like meadow rue (Thalictrum rochebruneanum ‘Lavender Mist’) and Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstsonne’, and as a brace for flopping Michaelmas daisies like Aster novae-angliae ‘Alma Potschke’ (syn A. novae-angliae ‘Andenken an Alma Potschke’), which frequently ends up with her face in the dirt. In a pinch, the cages (braced with strong canes or stakes) will even work as substitutes for peony rings.

Just because retailers tell us these flimsy cages are for tomatoes doesn’t mean it’s true. Rise up! Use your imagination!

Other posts by Judith this week:

• Sweet scents of Nicotiana species
• Quick-blooming fig leaf hollyhocks

Posts by Judith last week:

• New Plentifall pansies
• Planning for more roses
• Shady corners, sweet scents

Nicotiana sylvestris. Photo by Wikimedia

In a perfect world—or at least, in a perfect garden—the smell of jasmine flowers would perfume the air as dusk fills the corners with shadows. That’s just the scent I expect from a few plants of annual Nicotiana alata (syn. N. affinis) carefully placed for maximum effect next summer. Making further plans for the empty corners in my garden, next month I’ll be starting seeds for the deeply perfumed species ancestor of colourful nicotine bedding plants sold in garden centres. Not to take anything away from the many dwarf nicotine cultivars, but this taller, white-flowered progenitor has a lot to offer.

Tall N. alata (N. affinis at stokeseeds.com) grows best in partial shade to full sun, although it does well in my garden when planted in bright shade on the north wall of the house. It grows about 40 inches (1 m) tall (slightly taller in direct sunlight), and the central flowering stem rises in mid June from a basal rosette 18 inches (45 cm) wide. At full height in late summer, tall nicotine has a slightly leaning posture that’s part of its charm, and its natural delicacy doesn’t adapt well to staking. Far better to let several plants touch their slightly felty stems and provide mutual support, or plant them alongside shrubs for a steadying influence.

The central stems carry long side shoots like candelabra, with flowers along their length. In bright sunlight the flowers often droop and close their petals, and then open widely into glowing white stars as night falls. The flowers have a long tube culminating in a flaring white star, and jasmine-like scent begins puffing out at dusk. This is a plant for the night garden, and for situating near windows and doors, allowing the fragrance to float inside. Once you smell this perfume, you’ll always want to have it.

Many dwarf cultivars have been bred from species like N. alata, and in the process the perfume has been obscured or even lost. A new selection, F1 Perfume Series, is a colourful group growing 16 to 20 inches (40 to 50 cm) tall with consistent scent. Perfume Purple and Perfume Red (veseys.com) are singled out for their highly saturated colour. However, none of the dwarf cultivars measures up to the intensity of the nightly perfume produced by N. alata and other species.

If you want to make a daytime spectacle in bright sun, it’s worth saving central space in planting beds for N. sylvestris, another tall scented Nicotiana species similar to N. alata. N. sylvestris has an exotic tropical style, with a fountain of drooping white tubular flowers spouting out the top—definitely not for hiding in corners! This is a decorative plant, enough so that one may stand alone as a specimen, or a group can fill and dominate an island bed. N. sylvestris comes on strong in late summer, just when many perennials are finished, and it’s smart to grow a few with perennials to keep the scene alive until autumn. The cultivar N. sylvestris ‘Only the Lonely’ (swallowtailseeds.com) is slightly taller and stout, requiring no staking.

Once you’ve had tall Nicotiana in the garden, you’ll likely find self-sown seedlings the following year. If you’re purchasing your first packet of seed this year, press the seeds into soilless mix in late February, keeping them warm and humid until germination, and grow under lights or on a bright windowsill. Allow the seedlings to grow on until they have three sets of leaves, then prick them out into individual pots. Plant the seedlings outdoors in May, when all danger of frost has passed. By midsummer, be ready to swoon.

Other posts by Judith this week:

• New uses for tomato cages
• Quick-blooming fig leaf hollyhocks

Posts by Judith last week:

• New Plentifall pansies
• Planning for more roses
• Shady corners, sweet scents

Plentifall pansies. Photo courtesy of stokeseed.com

This pseudo-winter has fooled me into all sorts of outdoor thinking. In more rational moments, I know there’s probably a huge wallop of snow coming between now and the end of March. But my more enthusiastic angels are saying to get on with spring planning. And with just the mere suspicion of spring, a gardener’s thoughts turn to—pansies!

Wouldn’t you know, there’s a new pansy bred to do the unexpected. Plentifall pansies are in seed catalogues (stokeseed.com, harrisseeds.com, thompson-morgan.com), and I hope they will also be in garden centres this spring. Plentifall looks like many other purple, lavender, white and yellow whiskered pansies, but its growth habit is semi-trailing. Plants are six to eight inches (15 to 20 cm) tall and spread 18 to 24 inches (45 to 60 cm), making them perfect for hanging baskets and containers, where their long trailing stems of pansy flowers can cascade down the sides. What’s more, they can be planted directly into the garden and used as a groundcover, which seems a startling idea to me. Instead of straggling along, the plants will spread out and meld together into a mat, making a long-flowering display in full sun to partial shade. And Plentifall is nicely scented.

Some hybridizers just don’t know restraint, and they kept working more features into these pansies. Plentifall has superior cold hardiness and can be expected to overwinter in the ground in Zone 6. At the start of winter, plants set out in spring can be covered with straw, and then a layer of leaves; early the following spring, they’ll grow again. Or, seeds can be started in summer for planting out in mid-August for an autumn display lasting until hard frost, then covered for winter, and another growth period in spring.

Plentifall has exceptional vigor; so much so that it can’t be grown in standard cell packs, and requires a larger pot for nursery sales. That brings up the initial cost, but these pansies cover a lot of territory and provide a long season of bloom, with possibly even a second display the following spring, so are worth the investment. I really appreciate it when plant scientists turn their skills to making plants stronger and more useful. The hybridizers at PanAmerican Seeds are my new best friends!

Rene d’Anjou roses. Photo by Heather Hayden

I’ve been lurking around mail-order rose websites (hortico.com, pickeringnurseries.com, palatineroses.com, cornhillnursery.com), because it’s time to plan my annual order of bare-root shrubs. Ordering from rose nurseries is a way to find roses on their own roots, which are often stronger plants. Although I’m drawn to the potted roses in leaf sold at garden centres, more often than not I break some of their foliage in the car, and then shatter the root ball during planting. So it seems I’m not gaining much by purchasing roses that way. Ordering by mail gives me a larger selection, and they can be held in the cold garage for a few days, even if they’re bare-root. They’re much easier to handle and plant when there’s no root ball to worry about, and they usually arrive with red buds ready to sprout. (Sometimes they’ve actually sprouted, and it’s okay if those fresh little stems break off, the plant will quickly make new ones.)

You might remember that I was driven to distraction by Japanese beetles on my roses in recent summers. I’ve devised a workable plan, and that is to plant those that bloom once for an extended period in early summer, which is before the beetles begin to feed. So far I have two in the garden: ‘Etna’, a perfumed crimson moss rose blooming in June; and ‘Canary Bird’, a species hybrid that comes into bloom in mid-May. I’m after another couple of moss roses, because their pungently scented mossy hairs (actually scent glands) on the stems and buds are an added feature before the flowers bloom. I found a Kordes rose, ‘Black Boy’ (Zone 5), with deep purple-red petals flushed with black, deeply perfumed and disease resistant. It was grown at the Montreal Botanical Garden where it was selected as strongly resistant to blackspot, mildew and rust diseases.

Then I came across ‘Rene d’Anjou’ (Zone 6), an old French rose bred in 1853, with globular blooms deeper pink in the centres and silvery pink outside guard petals. It’s highly scented, disease resistant, and like other old roses, tolerates less than perfect soil. Both ‘Black Boy’ and ‘Rene d’Anjou’ have double petals, grow four to five feet (1.2 to 1.5 m) tall and about 40 inches (1 m) wide, manageable sizes for a small front garden. These once-blooming roses are going to be a pleasure to grow and are on the order list.

Then I fell into the perpetual trap of desiring a rose I really shouldn’t consider, a beautiful rose that blooms through the summer, when Japanese beetles are feeding. It’s another Kordes introduction, ‘Rugelda’, a hybrid rugosa shrub with fully double yellow flowers and crimson-touched petal edges. It’s not one of those egg-yolky yellows (like ‘Chinatown’), but has a clear lemon centre and the whole blossom fades to creamy butter as it ages. What style! The crimson petal edges are sporadic and the flower doesn’t appear painted (like ‘Double Delight’). Have I offended anyone’s favourite rose? Hope not. And oh my goodness, the ‘Rugelda’ flower bud is totally gorgeous, a classic hybrid tea-style bud, with yellow petals still furled and boldly flushed with crimson.

Well, I’m a fool for a good yellow rose, even if it’s going to be lunch and dinner for the Japanese beetles. It goes on the list, and if I get totally desperate with the beetle activity, I’ll put a net over the shrub. Rose lust is often the mother of invention.

White Mignonette. Photo by Forest & Kim Star

This summer I want to focus on making shady garden corners more rewarding. It’s so easy to disregard these leftover spaces and leave them unplanted until the weeds move in. My solution is to make wasted corners into “destinations” that I’ll want to visit. And it wouldn’t hurt if something sweetly scented was wafting out of those corners. I’m going to use long-blooming scented plants, some of which are almost forgotten and not so easy to find. These plants are often grown for their ability to perfume the garden from a discreet location, and not meant to be focal point displays.

The first is mignonette (Reseda odorata), an annual that was the foundation of every Victorian cottage garden. Mignonette is the French term for “little darling,” and the deeply perfumed flowers have been associated with romance since Napoleon sent seeds home to Josephine during his Egyptian campaign. It’s claimed that cut stems would last months in a vase of cool water, perfuming a room through winter. There were many cultivars at one time, with names like ‘Goliath’, ‘Red Monarch’, ‘Red Giant’, ‘Incomparable’, and ‘White Pearl’. The Edwardian gardener William Robinson wrote, “ ‘Machet’ is the kind grown so largely in pots for the London market, and it is also a good kind for the open air, and ‘Goliath’ is by far the finest in my garden.” Sounds like he had more than one cultivar to make comparisons with.

Most of the named mignonette is no longer available, although there’s new breeding work going on in New Zealand. There’s a theory that the named cultivars were actually open-pollinated lines, which eventually weakened and lost their scent and upright form. No one really knows, and I’ll be happy to come up with any kind of mignonette seed. The plants are about 12 inches (30 cm) tall, and carry upright wands of fuzzy flowers from chartreuse to white, and sometimes with reddish anthers. Seedlings resent disturbance and are seldom found in garden centres. Growing from seed in pots or in the open soil is easy. Just press them shallowly into soft soil and keep them moist. Mignonette grows best in half-day sun with consistent moisture, but tolerates light shade. It only takes a few plants to perfume an area, and I plan to seed it into pots and stick them into corners, hoping the elevation will give the plants a bit more light.

Most often I see unnamed mignonette seed that could be a combination of varieties (stokeseeds.com, fragrantpathseeds.com). Occasionally named cultivars turn up, and recently I found  ‘Ameliorata’ (chilternseeds.co.uk). I’ve ordered them all and hope to make a William Robinson-type comparison this summer. What’s old is new again!

Watch this space for more scented corner-fillers in coming weeks.

Spring 2012 issue on sale Feb. 27

The Spring 2012 issue of Garden Making will mail to subscribers in mid-February.  You can subscribe now to make sure you get a copy.  The issue will be on sale in stores across Canada by Feb. 27.

It’s packed with expert plant picks for your garden, including:

• Easy, perfect peonies
• 40+ new plants for 2012
• Sunny, showy forsythias
• Lovely lungworts
• Vegetables for small spaces

'Vanderwolf's Pyramid' limber pine. Photo by Judith Adam

There’s a thin blanket of snow on the ground, just enough to put a silvery gloss on the winter garden. This is when I’m grateful for every conifer in my landscape, especially those with soft needles, three to five inches (8 to 13 cm) long. They’re graceful in all seasons, swaying gently in the wind, and have an elegant texture in snow. There is a big Eastern white pine tree (Pinus strobus, 60 x 23 ft. /18 x 7 m, Zone 4) in the back corner with soft long needles, but it’s too far from the house to appreciate in this season. A neighbour brought it down from the north 60 years ago and planted it here when very young. The white pine is the largest of the northeastern conifers, and this baby is still growing—you wouldn’t want it anywhere close to the house!

Just 10 feet (3 m) from the front door, I planted a hybrid limber pine tree, ‘Vanderwolf’s Pyramid’ (Pinus flexilis ‘Vanderwolf’s Pyramid’, 16 x 8 ft. / 5 x 2.5 m, Zone 5), that’s more upright and narrow than others cultivars of the species, with an open, see-through branch structure. Sunlight falls through the tree, and in summer clematis vines wander around the branches, filling it with flowers. The pine’s long blue-green needles catch falling snow, suggesting an enchanted forest on a Hollywood movie set. This is a fast-growing tree (about 24 in. / 60 cm a year, once established) and doesn’t keep anyone waiting. It has strong vigor and shoots upward, with the branches extended in a relaxed, graceful posture.

In the back garden, there’s another long-needled tree, ‘Chalet’ Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra ‘Chalet’, 13 x 5 ft. / 4 x 1.5 m, Zone 4). It’s a slow-growing, compact tree and has a dense conical form that makes a prominent winter profile in a perennial border and adds distinction and structure to deep summer borders.

There is also a dwarf version of Eastern white pine. Called weeping white pine (Pinus strobus ‘Pendula’, 2 m x 3 m, Zone 4), it’s trained on stakes in youth to develop an upright leader, and then allowed to cascade in a strong weeping form that’s wider than it is tall. Each has a unique shape, and should be selected to suit its location. The branches sweep the ground and breezes easily catch their long blue-green needles. This is an elegant tree and should be placed where it can be readily appreciated.

Other posts by Judith this week:

• Dwarf tomatoes
• Moonflowers from seed

Posts by Judith last week:

• Flowers in a cold season
• Fooled you, too
• Scented petunias

'Window Box Roma' tomatoes (Photo courtesy of Veseys Seeds)

I’m getting picky about the tomatoes I grow. But wouldn’t you know it—in the hundreds of tomatoes in seed catalogues, it’s not easy to find exactly what I’m after.

I hope you won’t abandon me when I say I want to grow tomatoes for ornamental display. Of course, I’ll use the fruits and enjoy them, but I want the plants for containers, combined with flowering summer annuals like nasturtiums, cascading verbena and black-eyed Susan vines (Thunbergia alata). Many modern cultivars are vining (indeterminate) types, but I want upright, self-supporting (determinate) plants with limited height, between 16 and 24 inches (40 and 60 cm) tall. And I don’t want small, marble-size berries in trusses that look all bunched up like grapes. I want the little tomatoes to be cocktail size, about 1 1/4 inches (3 cm) in diameter, and reasonably spread out in a spray that displays each fruit. And it wouldn’t hurt if they had an intriguing feature, like shape (possibly pear or plum) or a colour detail (such as striped or purple). See what I mean? Picky.

Already the field of selection is considerably narrowed. The plants I have in mind should be dwarf in size, and are often listed as patio types for containers. Stokes Seeds (stokeseeds.com) has the Tumbling series—‘Tumbler Hybrid’, ‘Tumbling Tom Red’ and ‘Tumbling Tom Yellow’—that have the right-size fruits, and can exist in a six-inch (15-cm) pot and cascade down. Good for hanging baskets, but too small for what I have in mind. Twelve-inch (30-cm) tall ‘Sweet n’ Neat Scarlet’ is too short, with small, sweet olive-size fruit. ‘Terenzo’ might be a good candidate. It grows from 16 to 20 inches (45 to 50 cm) tall with cocktail-size fruit with a tolerance to cracking.

Over at Dam Seeds (damseeds.com) I found ‘Siderno Hybrid’, 18 inches (45 cm) tall, with golf ball-sized fruits. Perfect height, but how big is a golf ball? Well, certainly it’s larger than a grape! This tomato was developed in Germany, and the catalogue says their trial plant had more fruit than foliage. Would that be too many tomatoes on a small plant? Dam also has ‘Totem’, only 12 to 16 inches (30 to 40 cm) tall with disproportionately large 1 ½-inch (3.5-cm) tomatoes, making it a great producer, but too short, and those weighty fruits might require support.

Finally, at Veseys Seeds I found what might satisfy this picky gardener. ‘Window Box Roma’ grows to 18 inches (45 cm) and has bright red, plum-type fruit in clusters of three and four that, from a distance, resemble hibiscus flowers. They look charming in the picture; not too crowded and quite ornamental. This is the one!

Think what you will of me, but I’ve found the perfect tomato for this year’s containers.

Other posts by Judith this week:

• Moonflowers from seed
• Long-needled pines

Posts by Judith last week:

• Flowers in a cold season
• Fooled you, too
• Scented petunias

Moonflower vine (Photo courtesy of Summer Hill Seeds)

Some years ago I found pots of moonflowers (Ipomoea alba, syn. Calonyction aculeatum) started in a nursery. These are a species in the morning glory genus, and you can see the resemblance in their large, pure white trumpet flowers, twining vines and heart-shape foliage. Moonflowers are distinguished by their night-blooming schedule (opening in late afternoon), and an intoxicating fragrance that moves through the garden in the dark hours. The vines grow 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 m) long, and the flowers can be six inches (15 cm) wide. It became an anticipated event each evening to sit with a glass of wine and watch the flowers swirl open right on cue. Just in case you miss this, they stay open until late morning the following day.

Moonflowers love heat, and the ones I found had been growing under glass in a hot greenhouse. They needed only another few weeks of growth before flowers began appearing. However, when I tried to start some myself one year, my garden was too cool and all I got was vines and foliage—no flowers. They grow slowly in cool weather; heat makes them turn on the speed, leap up a trellis and start to bloom. I can’t be sure of finding them in a nursery, so I’m going to try seeds again this spring. Providing constant bottom heat from a heating pad may trick them into growing mode before going outdoors.

The seeds are large, with thick coats that need nicking with a knife or nail clipper before being soaked overnight. Plant them in soilless mix in four-inch (10-cm) pots and provide bottom heat. They’ll germinate in 10 days. Grow them indoors (you may need to provide a small trellis in the pot) under grow lights or in a bright, sunny window for about four weeks. Move them outdoors in late spring when days are warm. Give them lots of sun and consistent moisture, and feed every four weeks with a fertilizer that has a higher middle number (such as 5-10-5) to encourage flower bud development. If you’re fortunate to get blooming plants by midsummer, you’ll also need something nice to drink as you watch the nightly show.

Other posts by Judith this week:

• Long-needled pines
• Dwarf tomatoes

Posts by Judith last week:

• Flowers in a cold season
• Fooled you, too
• Scented petunias