WhatFinger


Bedding Plants, annuals, perennials

May gardening



Many, many years ago a popular musical, Naughty Marietta, came to the stage. Subsequently, plant breeders having the same savour-faire as they do today, the name was bequeathed to a new marigold. Hence the delightful description of this Tagetes in an English seed catalogue: “‘Naughty Marietta’ is good for warm bedding.”

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The home improvement purveyors and similar retail Reeperbahn label such plants ‘annuals.’ Even more than before, however, many are not annuals but tender tropical perennials. Once danger of frost is over and temperatures like gardener’s hopes are on the rise, these plants are candidates for warm bedding. Avoiding maidenly blushes, though, they often become bedding plants. Not everyone has been enamoured with them. Sir William Hooker disliked formal bedding because it was both botanically boring and wasteful of gardeners’ time, explained Wilfred Blunt of the famed 19th-century director at Kew Gardens. Blunt went on to complain of the “grinning, screaming bedding-out plants” to be found there in 1978. Fifty years earlier, Gertrude Jekyll had expressed her displeasure at “lines of blue, yellow and scarlet.” Despite this, everywhere one looks in the week proceeding Mother’s Day, bedding plants proliferate. As one of our favourite poets, Ogden Nash, penned a number of years ago:
Oh, Mother’s Day is a very fine day, And not alone for mothers. The florist finds it to his taste, And so do a lot of others.
This Merry May of 2008, Mother’s Day falls on the 11th, by strange coincidence preceded on 10th by International Migratory Bird Day (www.birdday.org) and followed on 12th by Canada Health Day, which latter also happens to by Nurses Day. Doubtlessly nurses and mothers alike, and surely others, would appreciate such as gifts although for nurses terming them even as “bedding plants” may be misconstrued. The Roman goddess of flowers and the spring was Flora. In the days of Ancient Rome, her festival was celebrated at the end of April and the beginning of May. How appropriate that horticultural hybridizers have been busy of late with additions for devotees of hortus. The past few seasons have seen a positive plethora of such marvels as the South American Brugmansia shrubs, or angel’s trumpet, in white, pinks, yellows and even reds, some deliciously fragrant at night. Although familiar to travellers in the tropics of the Old World, Bougainvillea originated in Brazil. The scrambling, woody vine, like the Poinsettia, fools us with what look like spectacular, profuse blooms, are actually bracts, botanically highly modified leaves. The true flowers are easily overlooked, hidden inside these bracts. Trust botanists to be busily peering at plants’ sexual organs. Incidentally, if the odd poinsettia is still around, they make a fine centrepiece for a container planting, with the dead bracts cut away and the normal green foliage permitted to develop. Perhaps not so easy to find is Cordyline terminalis ‘Chocolate Queen’ but worth it for an astounding centrepiece change from the overused ‘Spike.’ Up to two-feet tall, it has cream-edged purple leaves with reddish veins that mature to chocolate. Ornamental banana plants have been making gains the past few years. Ensete ‘Tandarra Red’ has lush purple-red foliage to add a dramatic touch to patio plantings. Musa sumatrana ‘Zebrina’ is another banana that grows to about 5 feet tall. The foliage is maroon on the underside, red and green mottled on top. Yet another somewhat smaller ornamental banana is Musa ‘Hi Color Mint’ which, unlike its cousins, produces edible fruit. There is now a black leaf philodendron with bright pink variegation, ‘appropriately named Pink Princess.’ Unlike most philodendrons though, this requires bright light to bring out the glorious foliar colour. Not all warm bedding exotics require blazing sun. Tropicanna® Black Canna, for example, requires some shade or its red-orange flower spikes to reach up to six feet over almost black foliage. Spectacular when used in large containers or as a focal point in a shaded city townhouse garden. Stranger and stranger, as a small girl once remarked under somewhat different circumstances, that retail outlets appear aloof from advising on how to save these tender perennials from year to year. Are we not urged on every hand to save the planet’s resources? Better yet, most make splendid houseplants when overwintered indoors, conspicui divitiis, veste fulgentes, circumdati assentatione multorum, as the Latin tag has it. We will return to the subject at a later and appropriate date. Those with dubious taste have defined Mother’s Day as nine months after Father’s Day. How could though the Fates have decided that this year’s Victoria Day Monday be followed on Tuesday by a Full Moon. Then Thursday, 22nd May, sees International Day for Biological Diversity, including bureaucrats, even those whose natural habitat is the UN, recently recognized by Peter Foster as Socialistus rattus rattus. Although excitement mounts with merchants at the prospect of Victoria Day weekend in truth, many gardeners have forsaken the traditional spring extravaganza. True, the risk of cool weather remains, but many annuals and most vegetables can be planted or seeded earlier in the month. Others, such as tender impatiens, begonias, canna, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant can be delayed a week or two. Doubtlessly some overwrought retailers will already reduce their prices by that time. It will be the wise gardener, however, who forsakes the allure of cut-price big box store plants as well as the annual extravaganza laid on by assorted supermarkets. A survey at the end of April showed all manner of plants arriving in good to excellent condition. Just 24 hours later, massive wilting was apparent as the mass merchandisers failed to assign staff to watering. This month, one of the principle tasks is to apply nutrients. Natural or artificial, granulated fertilizer are required by lawns, perennials, shrubs, evergreens, trees and even spring-flowering bulbs, boosting the latter for next season’s display – gardeners are ever planning ahead. Plants in containers, both outside and indoors, will benefit from feeding with liquid fertilizer on a monthly basis. While many manufacturers recommend biweekly fertilizing, we achieve equally satisfactory results at four weekly intervals. It might occur to the more cynical that the manufacturers’ suggested rate would double their sales, but we find it difficult to attribute such devious behaviour to them. Beyond these activities, mowing, edging, weeding, deadheading continue apace. Keep an eye out also for early pests. Other than these, recline back and watch the neighbours become osteopathic fodder. It only remains to note that 28th May is the centenary of the birth of Ian Fleming (1908-64), creator of James Bond novels. Born in London, he served with Reuters in Moscow 1929-33, became a London banker and stockbroker 1933-39. British naval intelligence in World War II gave him inspiration for his future writing, although first he was foreign manager Sunday Times 1945-59. His first acclaimed Bond novel, Casino Royale, appeared in 1953. By strange coincidence, Monte Carlo’s casino opened 13 May 1858 and dedicated by the local bishop who assured that in the right cause gambling was no sin. It was banned at the time everywhere else in Europe. All trivia that has absolutely nothing to do with gardening although it is passing strange that, unlike Naughty Marietta, no trace of superspy 007 appears commemorated in horticultural fashion. A pesticide, perhaps?


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Wes Porter -- Bio and Archives

Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.


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