Inspiration at the National Arboretum

I recently made a trip to the US Natioinal Arboretum located in Washington, DC. While the most obviously impressive thing there is the Capitol Columns, seen above, there are many less obvious sights to see.

There is the National Herb Garden, which is full of wonderful smells and sights and colors, as well as an education, if you take the time to read a million tiny placards.

There is also a grove of state trees, an asian collection, as well as collections of azaelas, dogwoods, ferns, and perennials. But yadda yadda yadda, here's the really cool stuff:

The administrative building is surrounded by moats filled with tropical and hardy water lilies, lotuses, various tropical foliage plants and an enormous school of coi, some as big as three feet long. One of the most impressive lilies is Victoria amazonica, seen to the left. The pads on this sucker can grow as large as six feet across, with a 3-6" spiky lip around the outside. These pads can support the weight of a small person.

The pools have pretty much every shape, size and color of water lily you can imagine. A number of the tropical lilies there are night-bloomers, so I'll have to make an attempt to get there in the afternoon or early in the morning (yeah right) to see them.

The water lotus (Nelumbo lutea) is just really cool looking. And check out that seed pod in the middle that will eventually turn brown and stay attached. For some reason it always makes me think of okra. Weird.

Well, this is the part where I feel sad that I didn't take more pictures of the crazy coi in this pond. If you so much as walk up to the edge, eight gajillion coi in all shapes, sizes and colors will immediately begin swarming the edge of the pool, hoping beyond hope that you will feed them. When someone does actually put a quarter in the vending machine and toss in a handful of floating fish food pellets... look out! There were literally fish out of the water, writhing on the backs of their school mates.

Another one of my favorite portions of the arboretum is the Gotelli Dwarf and Slow-Growing Conifer Collection. Many of the conifers found in this display do not seem all that small - some are more than 20 feet tall. Those that have achieved that size are often much older than you might suspect - some are more than 50 years old. And while 20 feet may not seem dwarf, the full size version of the same tree at the same age may be 100 feet or more. I love dwarf conifers, with all their the shades and textures and colors. They provide an essential service in temperate areas - color, texture, and full screening even in the winter months. I'm always looking for dwarfs, well, truly, miniature conifers to add to my collection. A few of my favorites in the Gotelli Collection are:

Chaemacyparis obtusa 'Hage', a false cypress. I don't know that this picture can really do it justice. It has the most frilly, flowing foliage, I think it sort of looks like a medium green version of those meshy scrubby things the ladies use (whaddya call those?) This, and in fact all of the ones shown here are things I covet and would love to get in my rock garden. If I ever get a rock garden, that is.

This one is a mugo pine cultivar - Pinus mugo 'teeny'. This brings to mind one of the frustrating things about the collection - I feel we the gardening public would be better served by the age of each shrub being present on it's placard. While this shrub certainly is teeny; I can't accurately judge how teeny. This situation is rectified in the Bonsai exhibit. But you'll have to wait for that.

One of the really neat aspects of a large collection is having numerous cultivars of the same species. Consider two cultivars of Scotch Pine, a popular christmas tree:

Pinus sylvestris 'repens'

and Pinus sylvestris 'nana compacta'

While the normal growth habit of the Scotch pine is up a broad pyramidal shape up to 50' tall, these two mutations are growing in a flat carpet and a dense little bun. And they're all the same specie.

A few more of my favorite dwarf conifers:

Picea mariana 'nana' a Black Spruce selection...

...and Pinus strobus 'repens', a carpeting version of the common Eastern White Pine.

Have I mentioned that all this damn planting is improving my Latin? It's gone from zero to "eh" in two years. Which I guess is better than nothing.

And here is a Japanese Red Pine (Pinus densiflora)

Actually, that last one isn't a dwarf. It's a Bonsai. Unfortunately the bits about Bonsai will have to wait until Part 2.

If I get around to it.

Hey, it's past my bedtime, whaddya want?

Dammit

I was only gone four days. When I left, two of my nicer dwarf conifers were looking a touch peaked. I gave them a good watering. When I got home tonight, I found two crispy, miracle-if-i-can-revive-them Picea abies 'Little Gem'. And a really nice, congested bird's nest spruce looking like the other two did before I left.

I've only got one more chance on these guys, I think, even under the assumption that "I really haven't tried to grow something unless I've killed it at least three times."

Brilliant

I've just gotten around to starting one of my new gardening books - and so far, Karel Capek is just as brilliant as I have been told:

I will tell you how to recognize a real gardener. "You must come to see me," he says; "I will show you my garden." Then, when you go just to please him, you will find him with his rump sticking up somewhere amongst the perennials. "I will come in a moment," he shouts to you over his shoulder. "Just wait till I have planted this rose." "Please don't worry." you say kindly to him. After a while he must have planted it; fr he gets up, makes your hand dirty, and beaming with hospitality he says: "Come and have a look; it's a small garden, but -- Wait a moment," and he bends down over a bed to weed some tiny grass. "Come along. I will show you Dianthus musalae; it will open your eyes. Great Scott! I forgot to loosen it here!" he says, and begins to poke in the soil. A quarter of an hour later he straightens up again. "Ah," he says, "I wanted to show you that bell flower, Campanula wilsonae. That is the best campanula which -- Wait a moment, I must tie up this delphinium." After he has tied it he remembers: "Oh, I see, you have come to see that erodium. A moment," he murmurs, "I must just transplant this aster, it hasn't enough room here." After that you go away on tiptoe, leaving his behind sticking up among the perennials.

And when you meet him again he will say: "You must come to see me; I have one rose in flower, a pernetiana, you have not seen that before. Will you come? Do!"

Quite witty and apt.

Oops.

Well, I'm no master of saving money, that much is obvious.

I have returned from Lilypons with new purchases in tow. I found the incredibly dwarf water lily I have been looking for since seeing it at Stonecrop. Nymphaea 'Helvola'.

At Stonecrop they had three of these in a single pool that was no more than 3'x4' in size. The total spread of the pads from each plant was no more than 16". I'm pretty excited about this little guy. But I may need another barrel in the yard to keep up with the plants.

I came home with a dwarf papyrus (Cyperus isocladus) and a dwarf horsetail (Equisetum hyemale) as well.

It's also possible I found some "floating island" planters, for future homes for carnivorous plants.

It's also possible I took lots of neat pictures of there 30 acres of ponds, which were full of strange and wonderful birds...

All this and I came home and did some gardenin' too. Fine day.

Field Trip!

Today I'm planning on taking a trip to Lilypons Nursery, they are one of the premier aquatic plant nurseries in the US, and are reported to have a tremendous display facility. How sad that I've never been before and they're a mere 45 minutes away. Reports will be forthcoming.

In other news, I recently ordered a round of rock gardening books from Amazon, the first of which arrived yesterday: The Gardener's Year, by Karel Capek (who is reportedly a well known and critically acclaimed novelist, but I wouldn't know a damn thing about that). It's a book that I've seen references too, particularly in two of Eric Grissell's (see below) books. So I've got it, and I'm itching to dig in. Reports on that soon as well, I hope.