Dwarf Witch Alder
Fothergilla gardenii
(foth-er-GIL-luh) (gar-DEN-ee-eye)
Hamamelidaceae
Since I have houseguests coming from Santa Fe for the week I have much to do around the house. Like cleaning up and moving the stuff out of the extra room (no more storage area). I don’t have much of a garden because I am renting the house I am living in but I am going to tune up the outside too. For the most part I spend almost every day in great gardens and that is enough for me. I guess I live vicariously through my customer’s gardens and the trips to the Botanical Gardens.
Just a couple of words about today’s plant, I love it! Last year I thought this one was dead since it been having a slow decline. The area that it is located in has seemed to get wetter each year but I cut it back and fed it and it has come back. It never ceases to amaze me how plants can hang on and how well they respond to a little extra care. I think this one is one of the dwarf ones and is quite old as it predates me in the garden. It is a lovely elegant shrub when it is happy. The foliage on this one is a bluish/green and it has a whole second season with great colors in the fall (orange, yellow and red).
I wish I had more time to write about Fothergilla and all it's attributes. I am posting this next picture not because it is the best flower picture I have ever taken but for reference about a comment I posted at Ki’s Garden Blog. It is quite an interesting blog that shows a mini-estate garden’s journey through the seasons. Just kidding about the estate part but in my mind it shows what you can do with a little slice of America, and in a way is an example of the quintessence of American gardening. They treat gardening over there, as they should, like an adventure. This is a species (I think) of Weigela. It has pink, red and yellow blooms on the same plant. I had forgotten how nice it looks. The plants are about 5 feet tall but I lop off about 1 to 2 feet a year. The garden has about 25 different cultivars of Weigela and this species. I tend to like all of them.
By the time I got home the doctor had already left for the day so I am going to go up to the emergency room for my tick bite. I just can’t seem to extract the piece of tick still stuck inside. That should be fun, maybe I can take a number and come back when they are ready to see me.
7 comments:
I love the dwarf fothergilla and wish more people would plant them. Virtually trouble free, don't need any pruning, flowers in spring, good green color in the summer, followed by good fall color. What more could one ask for from a shrub?
Hope all ends well with the tick bite.
Hi Chris, thanks for the link, have you ever thought of armour plated plasters that you could put on in vulnerable places, it's just an idea!!!!LOL
Cheers Mark
Hi Digital Flower Pictures/Chris...thank you for commenting on my blog. Your photos are intimate and beautiful, and even if your own garden is small, you sure don't lack for wonderful plants to feature!
Either Ki's garden is a mini-estate, or he and his wife are walking single-file, elbows-in between all the flowering trees, flowering shrubs, perennials and bulbs. You and your camera would have fun there, wouldn't you?
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Hi Chris, thanks for mentioning the blog. As Annie wrote we will be soon have not an mini-estate but a jungle. We are quickly being overgrown. We intend to leave before we have to hack our way through the vegetation as we have not allowed space for vegetative growth. Maybe we'll move to Austin. :)
What an interesting Weigela. With the long calyx it looks almost like a miniature Brugmansia! Even the colors remind me of the Angel's trumpet.
Hope you get that tick head out.
Annie,
Thanks for stopping by. You are right about that thing with the camera. Maybe he will invite my over for tea in the formal rose garden someday. :lol:
Ki,
Your welcome. Thanks for the support.
My dwarf Fothergilla that I'd had since fall of 2005 was lunch for the bunnies this spring. They chewed it all the way to the ground. I thought it was a goner. Guess what? It's coming back! I think it will survive this onslaught just fine and I never would have guessed. I had even bought a replacement at the Cincinnati Flower Show, but it wasn't necessary. No matter, now I have two! :-)
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