Local wild flowers in my garden

5 Feb '07 3:16 am

For some weeks I have been collecting photos of wild flowers to show you. By wild I mean mainly flowers that are endemic to the farm and area, in other words true local natives. In South Africa we usually talk about indigenous plants. However there is a culture of ‘as long as it grows within the geographic boundaries of SA it is good’ which annoys me. We have such diverse climatic regions that it a quite senseless approach to ‘sensible’ gardening – it is only misguided patriotism. I believe one should grow that which is happy in your area, no matter where in the world it comes from, as long as you are responsible about using those plants which could become invasive and avoid those which are destructively invasive: those that grow AT THE EXPENSE OF indigenous species.

Of course there are large tracts of pristine – or near pristine – indigenous flora in our area, and I believe they should be protected at all costs. But most of our mountain is lost to pine and gum plantations. My garden was for many years potato lands or grazing for cattle and mules used in forestry. To call it pristine is ridiculous. However nature has so often dictated how we manage the valley, and the bird life alone compared to 25 years ago, makes me believe we are doing the right thing here. One of my dreams is that I shall still see my meadow covered in the variety of wild flowers to be found in the most pristine grasslands hereabout.

There are a few wild plants which are actually cosmopolitan ‘weeds’ and I shall still do a post on them, and one naturalised garden escapee which crops up in this post. Unless I identify them as exotics however, the plants I discuss here genuinely grow wild on the farm or the immediate area. One of the things I am most proud of in our garden, is the way not only wild plants, but nature itself is incorporated and encouraged: we could not garden on this scale if we did not have the co-operation of Nature – providing groundcovers, seasonal focal plants and a marvellous ecological balance, not to mention a rich variety of beautiful and interesting plants; plants I love not only for their flowers but often for their foliage, texture, colour and scent. I like to think that even when my gardens are at their most contrived – and some are highly artificial spaces – they sit comfortably in the natural landscape, and it is the wild plants that sew all the elements together successfully.

I intend to keep this an ongoing post, and seasonal, although strictly speaking some of my material is already a little out of date. But I will start with something which was the highlight of my day on Saturday!

One of our most interesting plants is an herbaceous Agapanthus called A. inapertus. It is unusual in that, upon opening, the flowers droop so that the typical starburst is absent. It makes up for this with a particularly lovely, deep shade of blue, especially in the bud. It grows quite freely on the farm, and I have used it in places – it has also sown itself in some flowerbeds. However this afternoon on my way back from a strategic planning week-end for the school at a nearby centre, I suddenly realised that off to my left was a veritable field of agapanthus. Luckily I had my camera with me and I set off through the undergrowth. As you can see they are past their best, but I have set a diary entry to be there in the last week of January next year…

5 Feb '07 3:49 am

Crocosmia paniculata is another of our wild flowers which is quite spectacular and can in fact become unruly if one is into neat gardening and strict control. On my way to the planning meeting yesterday I stopped to photograph an impressive field of red by the roadside. I grow it in the Long Border with what is affectionately known as the Haenertsburg Lily. Lillium formosanum looks much like a Madonna lily; however it flowers later in the season and has a purplish shadow on its flanks. It is strange that with lilies being specialist playthings in this country, L formosanum should have taken to our mountain climate so well that the powers that be declared it an invasive weed, ignoring a great many less noticeable but infinitely more destructive and horrid weeds. Ten years after the event I still get so angry at this that I can paint greenies red! Evil or Very Mad

I let it grow in my meadow and use it in several places in the garden and even though it is not a native, I hold it in my heart as one, if only to annoy the greenies. Twisted Evil

It is at its happiest growing on steep banks, and makes a spectacular impression along the roadside, where I photographed it growing ‘naturally’…

And talking of roadsides - I've just realised that all three my 'growing naturally' photographs to date are 'by the roadside': I promise - they DO grow on Sequoia Farm as well!

5 Feb '07 4:09 am

Jack, I enjoyed immensely all your narrative and your photos! I guess, you know how much I love that great Agapanthus photo of Moosey's , which has served as my avatar during the whole summer season! I love the Agapanthus blue, as much as the Delphinium blue, a little more brilliant..This funny little Agapanthus of your photos is exactly the same with a variety found in Beth Chatto's garden, called "Agapanthus Cambanullatus"! This last one exists in white, too, and it is about 60-70cm tall only. I find the "cambanullatus" so descriptive and funny!

The photo I mostly loved is the Rudbeckias-Agapanthus one! Yellow and blue are one of my favorite color combinations for flowers, found all the time in my garden..

And talking of wild flowers, how can I forget the Olive Trees woodland in Corfu (and in lots of Greek countrysides), having every Spring underneath a carpet of brilliant red splashes of Poppies, Divinely combined with white and golden Daisies!! Some wild Sweet- Peas and Salvias add to the whole painting the needed blue and purple! A living colourful dream! I'll send you some photos to have a slight idea...

While I was posting , you were creating your second wild flower post! Dear me! These are exceptional wonders, Jack! And I have many Crocosmias Lucifer in the garden, equally brilliant red with your wild ones! Thank you for posting these wonders, Jack!

5 Feb '07 5:31 am

Jack and Liza, your wildflower photos were all magnificient! So many of these "wildflowers" are favorites that have been planted by me in my own gardens. The Crocosmia, Rudbeckias, Verbena bonariensis, Formosa Lily, Agapanthus and red poppies. I have tried to encourage all of these to spread and self sow. The only one I have not had much success with is the Agapanthus. They are too tender to survive very well here in winter, so they don't usually make it in my garden. I don't enjoy digging plants up to overwinter, which is what it would take for the Agapanthus.

I will continue to watch this thread for more lovely wildflowers.

6 Feb '07 3:59 am

Jack and Liza, I agree with Faith - what a wondrous spectacle you have given us! Thank you.

Although we are experiencing more cold weather (and set to get even colder with possibly more snow later in the week), at the weekend I nearly finished clearing the area I planned for all my own wild flowers. I've been on dandelion and nettle duty (got stung twice - through my gloves! Evil or Very Mad

) and have transplanted about a thousand crocuses and snowdrops (I've put almost all the snowdrops underneath my acer so I'm hoping for a lovely white carpet under there!). Now the area is nearly ready for sowing - I'll keep you all posted with my success/failure!

6 Feb '07 6:20 pm

Bambi your natural snowdrop and crocus carpet will be gorgeous! Photos, please!

6 Feb '07 7:37 pm

Eucomis, or pineapple lily is, at the best of times an amusing plant. Like some fritillaries it has a little topknot above the flowers. This combined with the way first the flowers and then even more so the seeds resemble the fruit of a pineapple give it its popular name. So striking is the resemblance that I remember, when first noticing the plant as a child, exclaiming ‘Look! It looks like a pineapple!’ Its scientific name (thought of you, Liza!) means ‘good hair’ in Greek, something I only discovered yesterday when writing the photo captions. We seem to have at least two and possibly three species on the farm, but there also seems to be a great deal of variation between plants. I suspect that we might in fact have some that are escapees from the neighbour upstream, about whom I reread a fascinating passage during the week in the diary of Eve Palmer, my South African gardening guru. (I must complete my ‘most important books’ post!)

She writes about a period which was ending by the mid-sixties; of Box Thompson (as we knew her) “whose farm in the Woodbush Mountains of the north-eastern Transvaal was ideal for growing the wild plants of the summer rainfall areas. She is known today principally for her ornamental cherry trees and azaleas, one of the sights people travel across South Africa to see in spring, but then it was for wild flowers that she was famous, and her farm was stuffed with them, old favourites and new garden treasures she brought in from the wild, hundreds and hundreds of different species and colours, sizes and habits, adventures and stories.” Two things put pay to all of this, perhaps three: her cherries and other trees grew to shade out the light and conditions became less than ideal; more importantly wild pigs and porcupines discovered her treasures and brought up their families on them; and the extended drought of the sixties must have whittled away at her market, for I remember my mother’s gardening despair during those long hot summers when in the city we were only allowed to water by hand and at certain hours.

We only discovered her (and her garden) in the late 70s and I remember my dad exclaiming as we walked through acres of azaleas: ‘the woman is mad, she has allowed her whole farm to become a garden!” Little did I know then the influence she and her sister would have on me and my approach to gardening…

Today her farm belongs to her niece, the garden is still one of the most famous in the country and cottages for weekenders are dotted about. It is still beautiful… but I must admit: I think mine, with its greater variety and more open spaces has in the last three years matured to become the more beautiful.

That whole long side-track to say: I sometimes wonder about specific plants I find on the farm - are they descended from plants she first brought to the mountain?

Back to Eucomis: we find at least two species – the tall, elegant whitish flowered E. comosa and the squat, much greener E. autumnalis. I don’t know if the ‘purple’ version is a variety or a hybrid, but it seems to me much like E. comosa. I bought a dark plant many years ago from a nursery somewhere, and have propagated the seed successfully, resulting in a wide range from equally dark to quite green plants. The one among the rugoses is one of the darker descendents.

E. vandermerwii is a plant to make me smile. Firstly it is named after some or other ‘Van der Merwe’ a common Afrikaans surname and the traditional butt of jokes about stupid people. Secondly it is a miniature, and a cheeky one at that. I have twice lost it after planting it out, so this time it will stay in a pot on the windowsill. But if ever there was a plant with attitude, this is it!

7 Feb '07 4:52 am

What unusual plants, Jack! I had heard of Eucomis but never seen one. I like the way the leaves lie flat with the flower stalk rising out of the middle - a bit like an abandoned umbrella! Very Happy

Moosey, a few of the snowdrops have opened now so when a few more have, I'll take some piccies and show you.

7 Feb '07 5:11 am

How gracefully described this...Eucomis/Lovely Hair (!) beauty by you, Jack! I enjoyed the photos (the no 12 being my favorite) as much the intelligent notes underneath...Thank you so much!

3 Mar '07 9:44 am

In a good year there are a great many of these subtly coloured flowers around in November – January; this year the porcupines seem to have found an inordinate number as they were about to flower. Luckily they are messy eaters, and bits of the juicy bulb often survive to form new plants. There are two versions I particularly enjoy – one is a chartreuse green and the other is spotted and striped with red – the denser, the ‘less green’ the flower is. Often they are simply a muddy green though. Strangely another flower is also a subspecies of G. dalenii. It is a bold orange and yellow (nothing subtle there!) and flowers in late March, enhancing the early autumn colours. It is not endemic to the mountain. Our excellent stock was decimated by porcupines some three years ago. G. dalenii is said to be one of the parents of the highly hybridised “florists’ gladioli” (Just before posting: so much time has passed since I took these pics that I can now include the first of the orange-yellow ones to flower!

The two meadow pics are already nearly two months old – there are now several white lilies visible among the other flowers, but the year has been dry, and their stems are short, so that they don’t rise above the grasses as they usually do.

Local wild flowers in my garden

Local wild flowers in my garden

Crocosmia paniculata

"Wild" Agapanthus and other lovely things!

Wildflowers

Eucomis

Lovely!

Gladiolus dalenii