notes and musings from a perennial gardener
A Pennsylvania gardener
I say ‘diva’ because delphiniums are attention-grabbing, gorgeous garden stars, but also notoriously temperamental to grow and sustain. Their finicky needs demand high maintenance and a considerable tolerance for unreliability. Since they are arguably one of the most beautiful perennials on the planet, we “delph” lovers grudgingly carry their water (literally!) in hopes of a spectacular show. If you think you’d like to try growing a few, read on.
One of the most useful colors in any garden is silver. Aside from white, no other color produces such a strikingly pale neutral that coordinates with virtually everything. Silver defines boundaries and balances color. It helps anchor a garden through strong contrast and visual buoyancy. It can even sit quietly in the background and let everything else shine.
Excluding metal objects, when we say “silver” in gardening terms we mean living foliage with a silvery bloom or cast. The color isn’t metallic, obviously. “Silver” foliage is closer to gray, powder blue, sea-glass green or pistachio, often with white fuzz. A few flowers can also pass as silver. All are valuable to the gardener for their high-contrast properties. In both very low and very strong light, these cultivars often reflect a silvery or pale countenance, hence the term “silver”.
Daylilies are as common as lawn turf these days, and their displays are often about as interesting. They blanket medial strips at the mall, brighten business parks, dot roadsides and figure in nearly everyone’s landscaping plan at some point.
And no wonder. Daylilies are fantastic problem-solvers. They routinely survive harsh conditions, need virtually no care and provide oodles of color when it’s needed most, midsummer.
Even so, waves of Stella d’Oros and Happy Returns have lost much of their mojo for many of us. Let’s explore how else we can utilize daylilies, primarily through color, form, and companion plantings.