23 August 2007

Help

H. coronarium
Finally, after eighteen months, I got my first "butterfly ginger" (Hedychium coronarium) flower. The smell is amazing, very like gardenia. But I suspect it will never be terribly free-flowering here, so we are talking about a lot of water for a paltry return, however beautiful.

[Furthermore, this flower turns out not to be the mysterious "mariposa" that I was looking for, although it is also fragrant and white and called a mariposa in Mexico.]

So the jury is still out... H. gardnerianum flowers better here, I think, but the color is a little dreary... Maybe 'Tara' has more going on.

first lily
Which brings us to a small dilemma. The ginger is currently in a large pot (fear the rhizome) next to a small bed of Casablanca lilies. The first one opened this morning, 1 day after the ginger. (If they all get going at the same time I will probably just keel over from aromatic overload). There is some room around the lilies for companion plants, but the question is what. I try to make sure they're (relatively) dry in winter and (more or less) well-watered in summer, i.e., the opposite of my climate. It would be nice to have something to look at when the lilies die back.

Intoxicated gardener (and lily freak) Elizabeth and Saskatchewanian (?) Kate have kindly offered some interesting suggestions, but the more the merrier! [Also -- I say this as gently as possible -- their ideas of winter interest are perhaps obscured by a bit more snow than the average Californian's].


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4 Comments:

Blogger Margaret said...

Stunning, stunning photos. Well done!

8/28/2007 6:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How about some Boltonia asteroides which is about four feet tall with frothy white flowers blooming in late August, early September in RI. Lovely foliage and small aster like white flowers. Could be a good filler.

8/29/2007 8:36 AM  
Blogger lisa said...

If you want to keep with the white flowers, how about sedum 'Hab Grey'...Plant Delights says the flowers are pink, but they are white for me, and the gray leaves are pretty cool. 'Gooseberry Fool' is another one with white flowers, and it gets taller.

9/06/2007 9:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, H. coronarium loves lots of water. I had some miserable specimens in the front yard in Savannah and moved them to the edge of my bog garden, where they went berserk in the space of a few short months.

12/26/2007 4:22 PM  

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