Posts tagged Geranium ‘Rozanne’

Musical Chairs

September 19, 2012 · Filed under perennials · Tagged , , ,

I play this game in my garden.  Most gardeners know this game all to well.  It is moving plants around.

Lets take for example, my Geranium ‘Rozanne’. When I originally bought this geranium, I planted it in my Flora Glade at the base of a serviceberry.

I was really impressed with it the first year, it flowered all summer, and heavily, right into the autumn. What a bang for your buck.

So a couple of years later, when Loblaws was closing their garden centre for the season, they had some leftover Rozannes for a dollar each. So I bought all they had, eleven of them.

And I decided to plant them in my Lime Walk, (along with the one from the Flora Glade, so, I would have 6 per side), hoping they would cover the muscari foliage that looks horrible when it is dying back. 

And it looked wonderful weaving  its way through the hydrangea that line the grass path.  But weaving can be good and bad, and it wove its way right out onto the grass path, looking messy.

Not the look that I want for the Lime Walk, it is all straight linear lines, so it had to go.

So last fall I moved to the Allee, which seems to have become a self seeding haven. Foxglove, ladies mantle, honesty, all seed through out this space, while the hellebores and bulbs give early spring colour.

Now Rozanne is starting to weave her way throughout them and twine around the serviceberry. I think she will be staying here for a while.

 

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Oh, It’s a very good year

October 27, 2011 · Filed under bulbs, design, history, shrubs · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

After my huge disappointment last year with my hydrangea, I was fully prepared to return to Kilbourne Grove and find horrible and wilty hydrangea. I had been reading people’s blogs, and they were all talking about how hot and dry the summer had been. No one is watering my garden while I am away (no one had been watering it when I lived in Toronto either), I am a firm believer in the sink or swim method. As a weekend gardener (and now long, long distance gardener),  I cannot afford to coddle plants. So I was very prepared.

And very pleasantly surprised.

My ‘free’ hydrangeas are really settling into their space and starting to fill out.

Hard to believe that these were all ‘blue’ hydrangea at one time. I was a bit of a hydrangea snob, would not take the bright pink ones. Now they are all various shades of pink, and purple, not a blue to be seen. I now that you need acidic soil to keep them blue, which we do not have in Ontario, and I am actually starting to prefer these colours.

I love how the Allium christophii seed heads look with the hydrangea. I wish I had been there when they flowered, very curious how it looked.

You can also see some seed heads of Allium ‘Purple Sensation’, these have been planted a number of years, but I wanted to extend the Allium season by planting the christophii.

The Hakonechloa ‘Aureola’ is just one of the variety of plants that I am testing at the base of the hydrangea. As you know, I have muscari planted there and when it finishes flowering I find it a bit tatty. Along with the Hakonechloa  I am testing Nepeta, Hosta and Geranium ‘Rozanne’. The geranium was the first to go, I dug it up and moved the plants to the Allee in September. I love the plant, and it certainly flowers heavily, weaving its way through the hydrangea. Unfortunately it also weaves its way onto the path, and I prefer something a bit more tailored looking in this section of the garden. You can also see at the top of the photo the nepeta. Looking at at here, I am not feeling it, but I think I should give it another couple of years before I make a decision. See how messy the muscari seedheads get, must hide them.  We shall see how the other plants make out over the next few years.

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An Ode to Rozanne

August 6, 2010 · Filed under grasses, perennials · Tagged ,

Although with apologies to her. For some reason Stings song ‘Roxanne’ keeps coming into my mind every time I look at her, and I have actually called her Roxanne a couple of time by accident.

She came into my life, a 6 inch bundle of joy with an impeccable pedigree.  After all the Perennial Plant Association had named her the perennial plant of the year for 2008. How could I go wrong adopting this little cutie, and for a long hot summer we were happy.

Our problems started the following July. Where last year she was happy and flowered her little heart out, this year she sat sulking, and refusing to move.  The final straw came when she started blushing red, this isn’t fall, she had no excuse for this kind of behaviour.

Look, there she sits, sulking behind her new brother ‘Beni Kaze’, was she jealous at the attention paid to the new arrival? Did she think he was more beautiful than her? Does she not know that a mother loves all her children equally.

I wondered if she was lonely for more of her own kind, and when a garden centre reduced  her siblings to $1.00 each, (yes that is right, $1.00), I took the opportunity to bring them home, all 11 of them, Angelina Jolie has nothing on me, lol.

They were a bit scruffy, and a lot of people could not see past their outward appearance to their beautiful heart.

But there was nothing that a good feed and a haircut could not fix, (obviously picture taken pre haircut, if I took it after, there would be nothing to see). (I know that I said no geraniums in the Lime Walk, but it is a good place for them to put on some weight, no fighting it out with the others in the rest of the garden.)

Hopefully my Rozanne will perk up now that her brothers and sisters have arrived!

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