Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Silver Dollar Plant (Dudleya brittonii)


Silver Dollar Plant
Dudleya brittonii
(DUD-lee-yuh) (brit-TON-ee-eye)
Crassulaceae (krass-yoo-LAY-see-ay)

This is probably a little extreme as this plant is almost completely white I do like a lot of gray foliaged plants. Blue Mist Shrub and Dusty Miller come to mind right away but there is also Lamb’s Ear (Stachys lanata), Snow-in-the-Summer (Cerastium tomentosum) and several Salvia that look good too. They are always a nice accent in the garden to my eye. This page has a lot of information on Dudleya.

I was again feeding, mulching and pruning yesterday. My Inkberry (Ilex glabra) really took a hit over the winter. I don’t I am going to plant this plant anymore unless it is one of the very small cultivars. ‘Compacta’ seems a little variable so I won’t be using that either. One problem I have with it is, if it is not happy then it is a long, slow, and painful march to death. This makes it seem like the plant is worth hanging on to but in reality if it falters now I just remove it. I have had a little success in cutting it back almost to the ground.

The Roses seemed like they made through the winter relatively unscathed. I had uncovered them last week and yesterday pruned them back to the new growth. It is small rose garden with about 24 plants. I used Bayer All-in-One soil drench on the Roses. I have used this for two years with spectacular results. You cannot have nice Roses in Connecticut if you don’t treat for Black Spot and this product seems to stop that.

Yesterday was an amazing day for growth. The Inkberry I was working on (which I was calling, and not affectionately, Stinkberry), were planted by some huge red Azaleas. In the morning I hardly noticed any color on the buds but after lunch more than half of the buds were split open showing a bit of red. You could almost hear things growing.

“Everything is blooming most recklessly;
if it were voices instead of colors, there would
be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. “

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

2 comments:

Unknown said...

"You could almost hear things growing." That made me smile!

I would have thought that the inkberries would be far sturdier... I had been considering planting a few here, but now I think I will research them more. (I'm tough on some things, admittedly, and shrubs and shoes both fall into that category.)

Digital Flower Pictures said...

Hi Kim,

Inkberry culture can be very frustrating. I am going to try and avoid it in the future.