Hostas - Palntain lilies

The Phactors have a lot of shade provided by several notable big trees.  And you do not have perennials in your shady garden without a healthy representation of Hostas.  In one area the big varieties grow; in another area next to the patio, the little varieties grow.  We make no attempt to collect or represent anything more diverse; just a bunch of plants that appealed to us at the time (oh, pretty!), for some morphological diversity to make things interesting.  Over the weekend a number of plants were dug and replanted in an attempt to make them happier, to grow better and look better.  A few other plants were mover around also.  It's always funny how some plants respond so well to new locations, a others show their displeasure by dying.  And then there is the worst part.  In a moment of insanity, TPP bought the Ms. the massive tome ( over 1000 pages) called the Hostapedia.  And now an effort is being made to keep track of the names of varieties just for the heck of it.  You can also download the definitive hosta list with probably almost 30,000 varieties, of which our gardens have a not paltry 65 varieties in a very asymmetrical distribution among plants having several hundred really old fashioned varieties that came with the property, and then 1 or two of all the rest.  This helps describe both our hobby and senior exercise program.

Friday Fabulous Flower - made in the shade, Neillia

The Phactors' gardens are sun challenged because of all the big trees, so shade gardens it is.  Shade loving ephemerals, don't actually love shade, they deal with it by growing in the brief window of spring sun time before the leafy canopy above closes. Then most of them die down, their season being over.  So then what?  In the search for shade-loving and shade-tolerating shrubs, TPP discovered Neillia sinensis, Chinese neillia, (KNEEL-lee-ah cy-NEN-sis) at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was growing at the back of a garden and no one could find the label. However, the flowers had a large tubular hypanthium, and with the double saw-toothed leaves, it was clearly a member of the Rose family. Then it was a not too difficult task to figure out what it was.  Ours loves its shady post, although it takes some space; the shrub is just over 6 feet tall with elegantly arching stems, and it does tend to spread so you either give it a lot of space or continue to spade out the new shoots.  However at the beginning of May these lovely drooping racemes of pink flowers appear that really make this shrub worth having.

Fiddlehead crown

Our gardens can generally be classified as shady, so TPP has been working at increasing our fern diversity while keeping the ostrich ferns and sensitive ferns in check. Winter hardiness is not so much a problem as is the hot, dry summers of the upper midwest and the clay content of our soils. In addition to the usual garden ferns, a couple of more unusual ferns have managed to hang on even if not particularly flourishing.  Here's a Hart's Tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendium) sending up it's spring fiddleheads. As you can readily see, the fronds are long, un-divided, straps, and often persist through the winter.  Given the rather tricky conditions needed for its culture, it's a bit of a surprise that this fern has survived under a Japanese maple although it has remained a fairly small plant and is kept caged to prevent it from becoming bunny candy and much smaller. Since it is native in Michigan and New York, it's no surprise it doesn't like our summers. Our local fern growing guru says it's doing well. His fern and moss garden/collection is impressive, but requires watering and quite a bit of care.  And he's just offered us some new plants. Nice!