My Growing Stewartia Garden
My Stewartia Garden continues to thrive at the farm.
If you follow this blog regularly, you may recall that the area across from my long clematis pergola went through quite a transformation a couple years ago. It used to be planted with rows and rows of ferns and lilies. Now the garden is filled with beautiful Stewartia trees and lush, green shade-loving plants. Over the years, we've planted many different specimens including Epimediums, Syneilesis, Polygonatum, and Astilboides - I am so pleased with how well it is doing.
Earlier this week, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, added more plants to this thriving green space. Enjoy these photos.
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- We’ve been working hard in this garden behind my Tenant House. It has developed quite a bit since we first created it in the spring of 2016.
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- The area is located behind a stand of distinguished bald cypress trees and across from my long and winding pergola. The Stewartia garden is among the first guests see when driving along the carriage road to my Winter House.
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- Here is Ryan with some of the latest plants ready to go into the ground. These plants are called Solomon’s Seal, or Polygonatum.
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- Solomon’s Seal is a hardy perennial native to the eastern United States and southern Canada. These plants produce dangling white flowers, which turn to dark blue berries later in the summer.
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- Ryan carefully placed the potted plants where they would be planted first before actually planting. This is always a good idea before digging the holes, so they can be positioned where they would look best.
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- Solomon’s Seal looks great planted in clumps. These plants like dappled shade, rich and organic soils, and plenty of moisture. Once they are established, they can survive short droughts fairly well.
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- We also have more muscari in this area. These cobalt blue flowers grow to about six to eight inches tall. Muscari are better known as grape hyacinths, which have tight clusters of fat little bells with a grape juice fragrance. Muscari bloom in mid-spring, at the same time as tulips. Deer and rodents rarely bother them, and the bulbs multiply readily, returning to bloom again year after year.
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- While Ryan plants all our new specimens, Carlos is careful to pull weeds from between precious plantings by hand. Getting the entire plant, including as much of the root system as possible, is critical. Many weeds will resprout from dormant buds in any large pieces that remain in the soil.
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- Ryan creates a hole twice the size of the container. A plant’s roots grow out more easily into loosened, enriched soil. Here, he is planting astilboides.
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- Astilboides is an interesting plant with huge, bright green leaves that are round and flat and measure up to 24-inches across. The effect is dramatic, and beautiful among other hardy perennials.
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- White bleeding hearts, Dicentra spectabilis, also make a stunning addition to the shade garden, with pure white, heart-shaped blooms that hang from arching, pale green stems. They look great planted among ferns, hostas, and other textural shade plants.
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- Jeffersonia, which is also known as twinleaf or rheumatism root, is a small genus of herbaceous perennial plants in the family Berberidaceae. They are uncommon spring wildflowers, which grow in limestone soils of rich deciduous forests. Twinleaf is a clump-forming plant that typically grows to eight-inches tall when in flower in early spring, but continues to grow thereafter eventually reaching about 18-inches tall.
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- Here is a clump of twinleaf next to a clump of columbine – the different shades of green look so pretty together.
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- The columbine plant, Aquilegia, is an easy-to-grow perennial that offers seasonal interest throughout the year. Its flowers come in a variety of colors, which emerge from dark green foliage that turns maroon in fall. The bell-shaped flowers are also a favorite to hummingbirds and may be used in cut-flower arrangements as well.
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- This is Disporum flavum, or Korean Fairy Bells. These are wonderful for shade or woodland gardens. They form large, yellow bell flowers in spring and blue berries in summer.
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- Podophyllum peltatum is commonly known as mayapple, American mandrake, wild mandrake and ground lemon. Mayapples are woodland plants, typically growing in colonies from a single root.
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- The palmately lobed umbrella-like leaves grow up to 16-inches in diameter with three to nine shallowly to deeply cut lobes. The plants produce several stems from a creeping underground rhizome.
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- Here, Ryan plants an epimedium. When selecting locations for any plant, always consider growth pattern, space needs, and appearance.
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- Epimediums are long-lived and easy to grow, and have such attractive and varying foliage. Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop’s hat, and horny goat weed, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae.
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- This is Pulmonaria, or lungwort – a beautiful, versatile, hardy plant. Lungworts are evergreen or herbaceous perennials that form clumps or rosettes. They are covered in hairs of varied length and stiffness. The spotted oval leaves were thought to symbolize diseased, ulcerated lungs, and so were once used to treat pulmonary infections.
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- Also in this garden – fothergilla – a slow-growing, deciduous ornamental shrub that is native to moist lowland coastal plain bogs and savannahs in the southeastern U.S. from North Carolina to the Florida panhandle and Alabama. It grows two to three feet tall and as wide. The whimsical flowers are bottlebrush-like spikes that bloom in spring.
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- And this is Fritillaria Uva Vulips, or Fox’s Grape. These dusky maroon bells are tipped with yellow. The pretty bloom gets its common name from the intense scent of its bulbs and blooms, said by some to be “foxy”.
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- This garden is coming along so beautifully – I am looking forward to watching it flourish for many years. I hope this blog has inspired you to do some planting in your garden.
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