A display of striking, contemporary glass vases waited on the counter where I paid for my bulbs in the Heath family’s Bulb Shop in Gloucester last week. A Hyacinth bulb nestled in the curves of one of them; with thick white roots emerging from its base reaching into the water below. These were tall, crystal clear vases designed for forcing bulbs indoors during the winter. Their height allowed room for the bulb’s roots to grow freely, as they do...
Vibrant Fall Foliage Are you drawn to bright scarlet leaves in autumn? You have probably admired sumac shrubs growing along the roadsides even if you didn’t know their name. Sumac’s huge, compound leaves can grow to two feet long, made up of as many as 31 leaflets arranged along its colorful central stem. They are deep green and glossy through much of the year, until they turn golden, orange, scarlet, or even deep purple from September until the leaves finally...
A Window of Opportunity Your window to destroy any Japanese stilt grass on your property closes when its seeds emerge in late August through October. This tenacious, invasive grass has all the adaptations it needs to gobble up real estate in private yards, public spaces, and in woodlands across America. But your swift action now, before this year’s seeds ripen, can help stop its spread. Japanese stilt grass, Microstegium vimineum, is an annual that will die back with...
Maidenhair ferns look so delicate and fragile I avoided planting them for the first thirty-odd years of my gardening adventures. I had no confidence in keeping them alive through a Virginia summer because I expected them to be fussy, requiring far more skillful care than I could offer. Native Northern Maidenhair Ferns When I first toured the Williamsburg Botanical Garden as a newly minted Master Gardener intern in April of 2018, our guide, Dr. Donna Ware, pointed out a...
Fragrant Gardenia Flowers Fragrance often announces the shift in our seasons, alerting us to look more carefully for what has changed since the day before. In June, a languid sweetness in the air calls our attention to the first flowers opening on the Gardenia shrub, a fixture in many Southeastern gardens, including residential gardens in coastal Virginia. Pristine, white and elegant, Gardenia flowers tend to fade all too quickly. Their beauty is ephemeral as they fade first to beige...
Dangerously Beautiful Opuntia Opuntia is a dangerous plant. A beautiful plant, perhaps, useful and delicious; but always dangerous to anyone who comes near it. Approach any Opuntia (Oh-POON’-tee-ah) you see with great care. Wear gloves. Wear heavy shoes and long pants. Study it carefully before approaching and consider its mysteries with an open mind. It is rife with contradictions. Opuntia is a native cactus that looks entirely out of place in most Virginia landscapes, though it grows here easily in...
A New View of our Earth American soldiers and scientists working at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico took the first images of Earth from space in late October of 1946 when they attached a 35-millimeter movie camera to a confiscated German V-2 missile they were testing. The missile reached an altitude of 65 miles, just above the limit of ‘outer space,’ before crashing back to earth with the film protected in a steel container. Subsequent missile tests...
Fallen leaves carpet the ravine behind our home, broken only by thick green stems of bamboo, taller than most of our trees; a few young pawpaw and scarlet buckeye trees; and the thick trunks of century old beech trees. There are also a few fallen, decaying trunks of trees lost to storms, but none of the undergrowth you might expect to find in a wild ravine bordering a small lake. The soil is rich and deep. Dappled sunlight illuminates...
Perennial plants feature prominently in most gardens. They may be evergreen or deciduous, have showy flowers or may be grown mostly for their foliage. Some steal the spotlight for only a few weeks while others remain productive over several months. Flowering perennials, whether native or not, help support a variety of pollinating insects. Those that produce seeds may support birds long into the winter. Plants readily available in the nursery trade are most likely hybrids or named cultivars of specific...
The question of invasive plants is an interesting one, in part because the list keeps growing. Some of the plants on this list may surprise you because they are so commonly found in our local yards and landscapes. A few plants have just been added to the list over the past year. While some, like stilt grass are noxious weeds, many of these ornamental plants are still available in the nursery trade. Several are beloved by local butterflies and...