Zanthan Gardens
Category: Plant Highlights

Maybe God heard my lament about the too blue garden. Today when I went to look at the bluebonnets there were three white ones (two are a rather muddy white and one tends more toward the palest pink).This is an interesting development as I tend to select seeds from the darkest blue plants each year. Still, their are lots of plants out from seeds that sow themselves.
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Last fall, I impulsively bought two packages of Dutch iris from Home Depot. The grower listed is Van Zyverden. This is the first year I’ve tried to grow bulbous irises. But my Mom, in Las Vegas, has great luck with hers. The packages did not provide much information, so I gleaned the following from the net.

Iris reticulata ‘Harmony’
Dwarf or miniature irises (to 4 inches tall) with proportionally large flowers. ‘Harmony’ is cornflower blue with yellow accents. Should bloom in February. Suited for pots or rock gardens.

Iris xiphium hybrid ‘Van Vliet’
(I assume this is ‘H C van Vliet’)
A group of hybrid irises, commonly known as Dutch irises, developed by the Dutch firm Tubergen from the Spanish iris, Iris xiphium, and Iris tingitana. Requires rich, well-drained soil and grows well in zones 8 and 9. Blooms in June or July. Height to 24 inches. Makes a good cut flower.

“…a bitoned blue with midblue standards and lighter blue falls with a small orange signal. Mid season bloom.” Graeme Grosvenor. Iris: Flower of the Rainbow. p. 208.

References

* World Online: Dutch Iris
* American Iris Society

Unable to find any specific growing guidelines on the net, I turned to Graeme Grosvenor’s Iris: Flower of the Rainbow and came across these encouraging passages.

I. xiphium “bulbs grow naturally in hot, dry summer conditions and unless you can provide soil that is hot and dry in summer and not overly cold in winter, the bulbs should be lifted…” Well if that doesn’t describe Austin weather exactly. The next paragraph is equally encouraging.

“I. xiphium will grow best in a heavy soil with good drainage…They enjoy an alkaline soil.”

Garden History

2002-01-09.
According to the package instruction, in the South (zones 7, 8, or 9) Dutch Irises need to be chilled six to eight weeks before planting. So, dutifully, I put the ones I bought last fall in the fridge and didn’t get around to planting them until today. The ‘Harmony’ bulbs were already drying out, so it’s obvious that I waited too long.

2002-03-19.
‘H C van Vliet’ blooms. It’s the first and, probably, only flower for 2002. The hard freeze in late February froze the buds just as they were emerging from the ground.

2002-11-08.
The Dutch iris bulbs, ‘H C van Vliet’; are sprouting. I dug them up separated and replanted them in the same spot by the ‘Heritage’ rose. There are 11 rooted bulbs sprouting and 7 bulbets.

2003-04-11.
Although the plants grew well this year, they didn’t bloom. (The Iris reticulata didn’t come back at all.) Apparently to flower Iris xiphium need a longer cold period than we get here in Austin. I dig them up and will chill them this fall before replanting them. Given how cheap they are, it’s probably not worth the trouble. Especially since I only had one flower in two years.

2016-02-27.
I thought I had lost these over the years but this year they bloomed again, and better than ever.

2016-05-28
Dug these up.

2017.
Moved them to the front yard, east square ahead of construction in May of 2016. They really liked being lifted and moved, and they bloomed very well in the spring of 2017.

2018-05-23
Dug these up again because they didn’t bloom at all in the spring of 2018…a huge disappointment after their great show in the spring of 2017. Will chill them before replanting them this fall.

Here is an unexpected success. I bought a lavender plant in a 4-inch pot last year and planted it. It produced a small bushy plant but did not flower. Sometime in the fall, it was looking straggly so I cut it back. I decided to try to root the cuttings (although I’ve never had any luck doing this with any other plant I’ve tried) and stuck them in the vegetable garden. In January they began putting out new growth. The other day, I was about to pinch them back (to make them bushier) when I recognized little flower buds. Not only did my cuttings root, they are flowering!

Notes

L. ‘Goodwin Creek Gray’.
Discovered at Goodwin Creek Gardens in Oregon.
Possibly a intersectional hybrid: Lavandula x heterophylla. A hybrid supposedly of L. dentata and L. augustifolia.
Hardy to 10 degrees (F).

Garden History

2002-02-25
First flowers.

2002-03-12
The mother plant looks a bit scraggly, so I trim her back and plant the trimmings hoping that I will have luck rooting them a second time.

2002-05-25
The mother plant is in full bloom and looks great. The cuttings I took in March are blooming. The cuttings I took last fall are blooming and the plants are getting bushy.

First flowers of the year opened on the Tommie crocuses today. These are the tiny crocuses with the huge name. They are tiny, even smaller than the Crocus chrysanthus ‘Blue Pearl’. I think that you must have to have a thousand of them before you’d even notice them.
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I posted a new plant profile on the Grand Primo daffodils that are blooming right now.

I’ve spent the last couple of days weeding some beds and transplanting the self-sown larkspur in them. The larkspur plants are about 4 inches tall. I’ve read in several places that they are difficult to transplant but I have never found that to be true. They do have a long tap root, so you have to be careful when digging them out. They don’t come up in bare earth; they seem to prefer the mulched paths and beds. This habit suits me as it is easier to clear out a bed, add some wood ash and superphosphate and then replant them about eight inches apart than it is to let them seed in place and then thin them. And if you want them to grow to any decent height, you have to thin them.

Related

For more information and photos, see the Zanthan Plant Profile.
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Although the bluebonnets, larkspur, and love-in-a-mist, are all green and growing, about the only flowers in bloom this week are the violas. Violas are a miniature relative of the pansy. Both are popular winter bedding plants here in the south. I prefer the more delicate viola.

Violas tolerate both cold and warm weather. Here in Austin they bloom constantly from whenever you plant them in mid-fall until late April or May; that is, whenever the temperatures rise above 94.

The viola series I find most often at Austin nurseries are from the ‘Sorbet’ series. I especially like the pale yellow ‘Sorbet Lemon Chiffon’ and the pale blue. Although these sometimes reseed, F1 hybrid will not come true from seed.

2002-03-27. Viola cornuta ‘Sorbet Yellow Frost’

Notes

Violas need dark to germinate.

• Viola cornuta (tufted pansy)
• Viola tricolor (Johnny Jump-up, heart’s ease)
• Viola x wittrockiana (pansy)

In 1998, the University of Georgia’s Horticulture Garden rated violas by series and color class.

I don’t know where my frostweed came from, but it has established itself in my north border among the nandina and it will not go away. I tried cutting it back to the ground for several years and it just kept coming back. During the summer the large coarse leaves suffer from heat and drought and look ragged. But come fall, it brightens the shady spot with large heads of small white flowers which attract bees and butterflies. With all the rain we had in 2001, it produced absolutely stunning flower heads with a scent reminiscent of alyssum.

So I’ve decided to live and let live.

As it turns out, frostweed likes the loamy soils by creeks or in the shade of large trees. So with a little more care on my part, it might become a welcome addition to the north border.
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