Flowers on Friday: Roses and Camellias, Straight Out of the Camera

I don't use my Nikon D70 DSLR very often anymore.  I like the in-the-moment convenience of my iPhone, which is always in my pocket when I'm outside.  Earlier this week, the light was lovely, and I took my trusty Nikon outside to see what I could capture.  Photos in this post are almost exactly as they were when they downloaded from the camera .... all I did to them was reduce the size, sharpen them a tad, and apply the watermark.  

'Paul Ecke, Jr.'  This color is SO difficult to photograph accurately.

'Tagalong'  Miniature rose.

Today is November 3, and most of the garden is feeling the autumn chill and preparing for its winter sleep.  Still, there are a LOT of flowers out there.  Many of the repeat-blooming roses have flowers.  Even a few of the spring-blooming roses have a produced surprise out-of-season flowers.  

'Morey's Pink'  Shrub rose.

'Perle d'Or'  Polyantha.  One of my favorites.

'Irish Elegance'  Three perfect flowers, all in a line.

As the roses put out their final flowers of the year, the Camellias are just getting started.

Camellia oliefera

'Winter's Star'

'Autumn Moon'

I love camellias!  They are a perfect evergreen transition from sunny to shady areas of the garden.  For me, the fall/winter blooming Sasanqua camellias perform better than the spring-blooming Japonicas, whose buds are eaten by squirrels and flowers are usually damaged by spring freezes. 

'Winter's Interlude'

Lost the tag on this one.

'Yuletide'

I found a wonderful surprise in the garden by the pavilion ... a little clump of Saffron Crocus flowers!

I brought these home from my 2015 visit to the Antique Rose Emporium in Texas.  The little bulbs grew leaves but didn't flower in 2016.  Last winter, voles tunneled through this garden and ate every single bulb in it, or so I thought.  This clump was spared ... probably because it is slightly away from where the others were and surrounded by Hellebores.

I had already harvested the Saffron threads from the flowers before I took these photos.  They're drying now.  There's not many of them, three threads per flower.  I will have to carefully decide what I want to cook to use them.

Today is a beautiful, sunny day here in Virginia, and I will be outside soon.  How is it where you are?

Plants in the New Shade Garden

I spent a good part of yesterday finishing the new shade garden that I showed you earlier ... choosing plants from my stash and arranging them to my liking.  Putting together a shade garden is all about the challenge of playing with size and color and texture of the plants ... very little or no consideration for flowers, because the leaves of the plants are the stars of the show.

Here is what the garden looks like as of earlier this morning:

The plants in here are:

1.  Hosta 'Zebson'
2.  Pink Lily of the Valley
3.  Camellia japonica 'Pink Perfection'
4.  Hart's Tongue Fern
5.  Disporopsis (evergreen Solomon's Seal)
6.  Fortune's Holly Fern
7.  Seedling Hellebores
8.  Hosta 'Blue Mouse Ears'
9.  Hosta plantagenea, existing
10.  Camellia sasanqua 'Yuletide', existing
11.  More seedling Hellebores
12.  Hydrangea paniculata 'Bombshell'
13.  A group of a few assorted plants in pots that will be planted later on the other side of the garden.

With the addition of cardboard and newspaper on the ground, and spreading three bags of shredded cypress mulch, this area is finished!  I will start work on the other side of the bed once the digging and destruction of replacing our water main is over with ... probably late next week.  

On a rose-related note, Fortune's Holly Fern is a cultivar that was collected by Scottish botanist Robert Fortune in the mid-1800s on one of his plant finding expeditions to China.  Fortune is also known as the namesake of Rosa fortuniana and Fortune's Double Yellow roses.  Just a bit of useless trivia to brighten your day.

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day

I recently found a cool little gathering in the blog-world.  On the 15th of every month, dozens of garden bloggers check in over at May Dreams Gardens to show photos of whatever is blooming in their garden that day.  I decided to try to participate, figuring that our recent frigid weather, snow, and rain would leave almost nothing to photograph.

As I walked the property with my grandson, we found a few flowers.  I wasn't surprised to see camellias ... they're supposed to be flowering now.

(Camellia japonica 'Rosy Red')

(Camellia japonica 'Pink Serenade')

Tucked into the grass here and there, were dandelions.

There was one lonely flower left on the Climbing Aster (Aster caroliniana)

It was a big surprise to find tiny a spray of flowers on a volunteer Money Plant.

The roses are all sleeping now.  We only found one photo-worthy rose ... a freeze-dried flower on Awakening.

This was fun.  I'm not accustomed to wandering around in December looking for flowers to photograph.  I think it was cool that we found any at all.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog)

Flowers on Friday

Earlier in the week, I hinted about today's Friday Flowers post.  It's time for you to see why I was so excited.

Last Saturday, after we left Brent and Becky's Bulbs (and had a fabulous lunch at Olivia's, a restaurant in downtown Gloucester), we headed to Yorktown to visit the garden of Pamela J. Harper, author of many books on gardening and perennials ... her book "Time-Tested Plants" is sitting beside me on the desk right now.  Mrs. Harper is an extraordinary gardener, designer, and plantswoman.  Everywhere we turned, there were wonderful vignettes with carefully chosen plants. 

We began our tour just off the quiet suburban street, at the beginning of the most wonderful driveway.  (Get used to the superlatives, because I expect to be using a lot of them.)  This view hints at the wonders ahead for us as Mrs. Harper led us through her garden.

This waterfront location, near two rivers, is at least a full zone warmer than my Zone 7A garden in Hartwood. There were flowers blooming in Mrs. Harper's garden the day we visited that would have been killed by our hard freeze up here the night before.

The camellias, in every size, shape and color, were some of the stars of the garden this day. There were huge ones as tall as the trees, in shades of pink and red, in the background. I tried to take a photo to show the effect, but I couldn't get one that was any good.

(Maybe I should have saved this one, with its 'puddle' of fallen petals, for White Wednesday)

The spaces within the garden were divided by paths into beautiful 'rooms'.  Everything I read about garden design says that we should be doing this, and I have never seen the concept executed as well as it is in Mrs. Harper's garden.

Everywhere within the garden, we found lovely vignettes and focal points.

I loved her vine-covered potting shed, with Autumn Joy sedum in the foreground.

A bench, made from a fallen tree trunk, sits beside one of the paths.

This was my favorite arrangement ... granite owls arranged on a tree stump, with hosta, ferns, and a concrete leaf.

Mrs. Harper paid careful attention to the smallest details ... like snowdrops planted under a camellia, bathed in fallen petals. 

Here are a few of the asters and chrysanthemums.

My very favorite element in this garden were the hardy cyclamens.  I loved these so much that I've ordered some seeds to start my own little cyclamen colonies. 

Since I'm a rose gardener, and this is mainly a rose blog, I'll leave you with a couple of rose images.

Visiting Mrs. Harper in her garden has given me a new perspective on what I want to accomplish here in my own garden.  I hope to be able to implement some of the ideas I saw, and some of the design details I loved, as the gardens here evolve and grow.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog)

Touring Brent and Becky's Bulbs

This weekend, my husband and I went on a road trip with my garden club. The first stop was Brent and Becky's Bulbs in Gloucester, Virginia, about 2 hours southeast of here. (Our second stop will be the subject of Flowers on Friday this week ... you don't want to miss it.)

Our group was treated to a guided tour by Brent and Becky themselves. We walked the gardens and the greenhouse, saw the warehouse and catalog areas with crates of bulbs stacked to the ceiling, and finished at the retail store on site.
 
This beautiful camellia is right beside the parking lot, by the sidewalk as you approach the entrance to the building.

This is the shade structure over part of their catalog garden.  All the bulbs in this garden are planted in rows, in the same order as they appear in the catalog.

There were still a few flowers in the garden that survived the previous night's first freeze of the season.

Even the trimmings destined for their compost pile were attractive.

Here's Brent in the greenhouse, demonstrating how they make aerated compost tea.  Everything at Brent and Becky's is grown organically.

This part of the warehouse was probably my favorite part of our visit.  These stacks of drawers were built when Brent's grandfather owned the business, and they're still being used in today's modern incarnation of the operation to hold miniature bulbs.  I can see that this design may show up some day here in Hartwood .... if you listen closely, you can hear the ideas whirring in my head.

I was very impressed with Brent, and Becky, their company, their operation, and their attitude.  Click HERE to visit their web site, and see all the wonderful things they have for your garden.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog)