Ornamental Seedheads - Clematis

Clematis are a staple in my garden. Most are species or Clematis viticella cultivars for several good reasons: they follow the late spring/early summer flowers, bringing a new and different look to the garden; they have smaller flowers, but many more of them than the dinner-plate types; they don't suffer from the dreaded clematis wilt which can destroy a seemingly healthy plant in less than 24 hours; when they die back in late fall, you cut them down to knee-height and they remain tidy through to the following spring; quite a number of them are scented.

This year, a long and unusual hot spell has driven all but one into shedding their petals early. However, their seedheads add subtle interest to much of the garden.

'Willy', a spring bloomer starts off with tufts of fluff that slowly turn to silver spirals.

'Miss Bateman' prefers the look of brass.

'Nelly Moser', a volunteer that I may not keep because I don't care for its candy cane flowers, presents blond fright wigs.

Little Clematis ochroleuca has a cluster of pea-green seeds with curling shreds of palest yellow.

Clematis  integrifolia is still producing a few cobalt-blue flowers alongside its spidery white seedheads

And Clematis recta is a mass of green fireworks.

Eventually, those green stars will turn to iridescent blue and the wispy tails will turn white and feathery, as they are in last year's post "November Colours"

The Brave Survivors of a Hot July

Why leave Vancouver in summer to go to Sydney, Australia in winter? A new grandson, that's why.

 We came back to a Vancouver that was suffering from unusually hot weather. In fact, little or no rain had fallen during our absence. Wildfires were close enough to the city that the cabin staff on our plane had to reassure passengers that the burning smell as we descended to the airport was not coming from the plane.
Thanks to kind neighbours, the garden was surviving fairly well, although many summer blooms seemed to have wrapped up their flowers already and were going dormant.

Echinops ritro, being in the thistle family, was feeling no pain and making a definitive statement to that effect.

Growing beside it and jostling for space was a single plant of lovage (Levisticum officinale.) At more than 8 feet high it was taller than I've ever seen it. I grow this herb both for its statuesque green presence as well as its usefulness a a celery substitute in home-made soups and stocks.

In front of these two, Rosa gallica 'Versicolor' was shedding crispy brown petals. It looks messy while it is doing this, but its round red hips will brighten fall and winter if I leave it alone right now.

Most plants in the shade of the old pear tree were doing well. While hydrangeas in less protected beds were wilting, leggy-but-lovely Hydrangea 'Kiyosumi' was thriving, even if its colour was paler than usual. A single spire of Actaea ' Hillside Black Beauty' was unfurling in front of it, making a pretty contrast.

Other bright spots were the last flowers on daylily 'Wild Wine' ...

a double pink poppy...

and Salvia viridis, one of my favourite annuals for filling the blank space left by spring bulbs.

Two plants new to me this year were also doing well. The grey foliage of Scutellaria incana was topped with trusses of soft blue flowers. So far it only has a couple of stems, but I think it will make quite a show in future years when it has bulked up a bit more.

And Echinacea 'Green Jewel' was just beginning to open. I rather wish the petals stayed that very Irish green, but the white is attractive and fresh-looking nevertheless.

Lovely Leaves

Although it's now June and the garden is full of flowers, often it's the foliage on certain plants, both alone and in combination that is drawing my eye. For instance, the young leaves on Hydrangea serrata,

... or the bronze-tipped ones of Rhododendron schlippenbachii.

 I find myself admiring the purple veins of Heuchera 'Green Spice'...

 ...and the lacy layers of Cornus alternifolia 'Argentea'...

 ... or the grey foliage of Rosa glauca overlaid on another Hydrangea serrata.

 Sometimes it's a combination of two different leaf forms or colours, like the emerging pale-grey leaves of a small willow, Salix helvetica, against a backdrop of Joe-Pye weed, Eupatorium 'Chocolate'.

 Sometimes it's a flower and leaf combination, such as a crimson peony leaning over Ligularia dentata 'Othello'.

 Or little Clematis ochroleuca, sprawling over the leaves of Brunnera 'Looking Glass'

Or icy blue Hosta 'Halcyon' under the feathery foliage of Nandina 'Plum Passion' with a dark-leafed heuchera behind, all punctuated by the red-stemmed white flowers of a saxifrage.

Time passes

I realize that I've been so busy tending the garden that I haven't spent much time taking photographs. Spring this year has been unusually warm and dry with the result that many plants are flowering ahead of schedule.

 Here's the garden in mid-May, late on a sunny afternoon:

Behind the back fence Rosa pimpinellifolia, which usually blooms in late May, was already full of flowers, attracting dozens of bees and other insects to its generous amount of pollen. The scent, especially in the evening was lovely too. I love this rose for its early blooming, its small fern-like leaves, its delicate, extremely fragrant flowers, its overall health, its colourful fall foliage and rosehips, and even its winter canes that no less an authority than Gertrude Jekyll describes  this way: "even in winter leaflessness the tangle of close-locked branches has an appearance of warm brown comfort that makes it good to have near a house."

Is that enough justification for growing it?

Two weeks later at the end of May the garden looked like this:

Although I'd taken out the pale pink Aquilegia 'Rose Barlow', so visible in the earlier photo, peonies have already filled the spaces. Along the back fence Rosa pimpinellifolia has shed its petals, and begun to produce copious hips,

 ... but 'Ghislaine de Féligonde' behind the car and 'Lykkefund' on the right have taken over and are full of flowers.

Ghislaine de Féligonde

Ghislaine de Féligonde

Lykkefund (Lucky Find)

Lykkefund

In the centre bed 'Rosa Mundi, although barely visible behind foliage in the panoramic shot ,was as vivid as it's ever been.

Rosa Mundi

This year it has done a curious thing, producing a solid pale pink flower on a single lateral.

I've tied a marker on the stem and will try to propagate it later in the year.

Beside 'Rosa Mundi' is my favourite peony, 'Festiva Maxima', always a treat with its dying swan imitation and its delicious scent.

Between  'Rosa Mundi' and 'Festiva Maxima' is the only German iris I care about. I find them as a group too assertive, but 'Midnight Oil' is such a good contrast with its companions in my largely pastel garden, and so dramatic in its own right, that I don't mind giving it a space. A newly opening flower looks like this:

As the flower matures, the petals shift from a voluptuous mixture of purples to silky black.

Meanwhile, in the front garden Verbascum 'Jackie in Pink' is clashing with crimson peonies. I'll let it bloom for now, but it's got to go elsewhere before next year.

I also have the original 'Jackie', a more accommodating pale buttery yellow.

It too will move  - to complement Thalictrum 'Silk Stockings' in the back garden, which needs a leafy neighbour to highlight its black stems. 'Jackie's stamens will also complement the Thalictrum's misty purple flowers

A dark pink combination I'm pleased with is the fuzzy caterpillars of a Sanguisorba with the blowsy flowers of an old red peony, one of the few plants still here in the garden when we bought this place.

I'm also happy with the way Clematis x durandii is using the structure of Hydrangea quercifolia 'Sike's Dwarf' as supports for its cobalt-blue flowers. In the foreground is Geranium x magnificum.

One of my more recent acquisitions (thank you, Jane) is Arisaema triphyllum, a native of eastern Canada. Various common names include jack-in-the-pulpit, bog onion, brown dragon, Indian turnip or wild turnip. It was getting a bit too enthusiastic in the garden so I moved it to a tall pot and placed it by our back steps. That way, you can see the intriguing flowers without having to crouch. Right now it's flourishing, even though the pot is in rather more afternoon sun than it would really like.

The Water Feature

Grand Folly now has a "grand" water feature. This came about because the new house next door installed a heat exchanger close to our shared fence. It doesn't look pretty and what's worse it shuts on and off regularly throughout the day and night. When it's on, the noise of the fan is very noticeable in our garden. The neighbours say they don't notice the noise, so we have been trying to find a way to block the sound from our side of the fence. Our first move was to have a pergola built. You can see what we were trying to block in the photo.

The first year we attached a grid of concrete reinforcing wire and grew runner beans up the wires . They made a nice green curtain, obscuring the object but not the noise it made.

The following year, we replaced the wire grid with bamboo screens, which blocked the view even more efficiently but still did little about the noise.

 So we bought some solid polystyrene insulation panels, painted them dark brown on both sides and nailed them up, facing them with the bamboo. Because we want to be good neighbours, we went to the expense of using the bamboo on both sides of the panels, to make the structure look good from their side too. Then we got a pond liner and commenced the first pond, installing a 900-gallon-per-hour pump to produce a decent column of splashing water.

The noise of the fountain was effective: all we could hear in the garden when it was running was the sound of splashing water - much nicer than the hum of machinery.

However, all was not well. As any Vancouverite could have warned us, and many did, there is nothing raccoons like more than to deconstruct a backyard pond. Every morning, we found the pump knocked over, even when we anchored it with a couple of bricks.

Michael's solution was to make the pond wider and deeper so that the raccoons couldn't reach the pump.  Unfortunately, this uncovered two huge boulders that had to be manhandled (and womanhandled) out of the excavation.

Then the construction began anew. This time, Michael levelled the ground around the excavation and made a frame, which he painted black, to support the edges of the first line of pavers.

The results were more aesthetically satisfying and for a couple of weeks we even thought we had outsmarted the raccoons.

Then they struck again. We have accepted a kind of defeat now. We cover the water with a not very beautiful piece of fencing wire, too thin to support the weight of even a small raccoon. If we are just working in the garden, we leave it in place. When we are relaxing outside or when visitors come, we whisk it out of sight.

Meanwhile, I've started to fill in the edges around the pavers with small lavenders and succulents. Eventually I hope they will spill over the edges of the paved area, disguising any small alignment issues and giving it a more natural look.

Our next problem to solve is how to deal with the algae. Although it is turning the water a pleasant shade of opaque green, we know it will eventually clog the pump if we do nothing.