My Thriving Stewartia Garden in Summer
My Stewartia Garden continues to thrive at my Bedford, New York farm.
My Stewartia Garden is located across from my long clematis pergola. The space was once planted with rows and rows of ferns and lilies. Now, the garden still has growing tiger lilies and ferns, but it is also filled with beautiful Stewartia trees and lush shade-loving specimens including Cotinus, Epimediums, Syneilesis, Astilboides, and more. I am so pleased with how well it’s matured over the last few years.
Enjoy these photos.
-
- Behind my Tenant House, I designed lovely gardens of shade-loving plants that are thriving. Beautiful views of these gardens can be seen from the large windows of the home where my daughter and grandchildren stay when they visit.
-
- Right now, the garden is dotted with gorgeous tiger lilies. Native to China and Japan, these robust flowers add striking beauty to any border. I love how they look with their bright and showy orange colored blooms.
-
- Tiger lilies, Lilium lancifolium, bloom in mid to late summer, are easy to grow and come back year after year. I also have them across the carriage road in my long and winding pergola garden.
-
- One can see them here. And on the left is a row of towering bald cypress trees, Taxodium distichum – a deciduous conifer. Though the bald cypress is native to swampy areas, it is also able to withstand dry, sunny weather and is hardy in USDA climate zones 5 through 10.
-
- The leaves are compound and feathery, made up of many small leaflets that are thin and lance-shaped. Each leaflet is less than two inches long, alternating along either side of a central stem. They are a medium green now and turn russet brown in fall. Like trees with leaves, bald cypress trees drop their needles in the fall leaving the tree – well, bald.
-
- One of the most interesting characteristics of the bald cypress is its knees. Known by the scientific name pneumatophores, these growths are specialized root structures that grow vertically above the moist soil near the tree. It is believed that these structures aid the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange in the roots. Looking carefully at the ground, one can see many of these unique knees.
-
- If you didn’t already guess, I named this garden the Stewartia garden because I planted several Stewartia trees in this space. Stewartia is a species of flowering plant in the family Theaceae, native to Japan and Korea. All varieties are slow-growing, all-season performers that show off fresh bright green leaves in spring, white flowers resembling single camellias in summer, and colorful foliage in autumn. Some of the varieties in this garden include: Stewartia gemmata, Stewartia x. henryae, Stewartia pseudocamellia ‘Ballet’, Stewartia monadelpha, Stewartia rostrata, and Stewartia henry ‘Skyrocket’. And do you know why I love Stewartia trees? Well, Stewart is my last name after all. However, there is no relation. “Stewartia” is named for Scottish nobleman and botanist, John Stuart, who had imported the plant to his personal London garden. He later served as British prime minister from 1762 to 1763.
-
- Stewartias feature stunning bark that exfoliates in strips of gray, orange, and reddish brown once the trunk attains a diameter of two to three inches. This one is maturing so nicely.
-
- I also have Cotinus in this bed. Cotinus, the smoketree, or smoke bush, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs.
-
- Their smooth, rounded leaves come in exceptional shades of deep purple, clear pinkish-bronze, yellow, and green.
-
- Some of the plants in this area include the Japanese painted ferns – beautiful mounds of dramatic foliage with luminescent blue-green fronds and dark central ribs that fade to silver at the edges.
-
- Lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris, grows along one edge. It is a clumping perennial which typically forms a mound of long-stalked, circular, scallop-edge light green leaves, with tiny, star-shaped, chartreuse flowers.
-
- 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.
-
- This is Syneilesis palmata. Over time, these plants form a sizeable patch of green umbrella-shaped leaves. Mature foliage can be more than a foot across with deeply toothed, narrow leaves – it is really an interesting plant.
-
- Thalictrum, or Meadow Rue, is a robust, upright, clump-forming perennial featuring clouds of lavender mauve flowers. These flowers bloom profusely mid to late summer on tall burgundy upright stems above foliage of lacy, green leaves.
-
- 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.
-
- I also planted Cotoneaster in one corner of the garden. Cotoneaster is a vigorous, dense, evergreen shrub with soft arching stems studded with leathery, glossy, rounded, dark green leaves. These plants work well for a low hedge – I only wish I had planted more.
-
- The hostas are so lush with their varying in leaf shape, size, and textures. Hostas have easy care requirements which make them ideal for many areas. I have them all around the farm. Hosta is a genus of plants commonly known as hostas, plantain lilies and occasionally by the Japanese name, giboshi. They are native to northeast Asia and include hundreds of different cultivars.
-
- Here is a beautiful white hosta flower. The plant flowers feature spikes of blossoms that look like lilies, in shades of lavender or white. The bell-shaped blooms can be showy and exceptionally fragrant.
-
- 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.
-
- In another area, the bright red berries of the Viburnum. These berries replace the creamy-white, flat-headed flowers that bloom in spring.
-
- This garden bed continues to be a work in progress, but I love how it looks. Every year, more and more plants cover the space and create a lush, green carpet of beautiful foliage.
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
