My always magnificent crop of Virginia Bluebells, geographically speaking got in the plant nursery school in West Virginia to Indiana. But as is often true from the plant world, geography, history and personal preference get somewhat tangled in the journey.
Yes, even the Virginia Bluebells title came at the Colony of Virginia from their 17th century discovery, but they are actually native from New York to Alabama and west to Kansas and Minnesota — also showing up from 18 species along the way.
Photo from Monticello
If it’s a specific date you need, American Father Figure and Garden Guy Thomas Jefferson composed of the Monticello bluebells in his backyard publication about April 16,1766, coverage”a brightly colored, funnel-formed blossom in the lowlands in bloom.”
That a man with a present for words will so understate the beauty of my favorite native plant is nearly criminal. Come on Tom! Where is the fire in”bluish coloured and funnel-formed?”
I, for one, desperately for the Virginia bluebells coming every spring, stomping around in the fat layer of magnolia leaves that dropped on my patch.
It’s March Magic. Winter is history. As they grow, their leaves poke through the leaf decay in dark shades of purple but turn a nice green. The”funnel-formed blossoms,” and I’ll give Thomas Jefferson his because of this, stream from a wealthy pink to the celestial shade of baby blue, although that could vary according to the dirt from whence they emerge.
That color change is the result of changes in the pH of the cell sap, though, like hydrangeas, Virginia Bluebells rise maybe 14 inches over a love-starved picture and also increased in soils that are acid will turn into a deeper shade of blue.
Pulmonaria
Moving deeper into the plant history, blossom color change that is such is rather typical from the family. And bluebells whined using pulmonaria, which offers exactly the identical flow of pink and blue.
Hello Mertensia virginica!
Here a few smiles at the next garden club meeting.
Such designations have consistently seemed arbitrary to me — and that I need in. The afternoon — I live — or maybe may have to die for some ephemeral with blossoms and also hot green leaves is termed Hilltensia hoosierca.
Given its own colors pioneers to the New World also believed Virginia bluebells to be lungwort, which had been used to deal with lung diseases. It didn’t work over here. Dead men tell no stories.
Another early blue title was”oyster foliage,” but was apparently not a hit thing from the Colonial diet. Another name was”Mountain gloomy cowslip,” about as illustrative as Jefferson’s”funnel-formed” blossoms.
How do I love thee? Allow me to count the ways.
1. My initial in-your-face encounter with Virginia bluebells proved to be a creature spot spread out with its arms raised toward the sun, a near religious experience under a gigantic pine tree. It was a religious experience.
2. The leaves and blossoms buddy with all Bloodroot, crocus and poppies, offering a palette of white, blue, purple, yellow, pink and green.
3. Their leaves show up in precisely the identical period since the NCAA basketball championship, so if your team loses you have a fantastic excuse to go outside to the garden where nobody could see you, and shed tears.
Photo from Monticello
4. Yes folks get paid to research all that stuff.
5. The very same people also report Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds may also sometimes stick their noses into”funnel-formed” Virginia bluebells, an event for which I would gladly pay $10 to sit and observe a bright Spring day in April and May.
6. Leaving little mess supporting, Virginia bluebells go off by summer, dropping just four seeds (the specialists call them”nutlets”) per blossom to disperse the species. These little nutlets — politically speaking and otherwise — are ovoid and flattened on one side, their surfaces minutely wrinkled.
7. Virginia bluebells can be bought as nutlets or in bare root divisions. My naked roots came in Sunshine Farm and Gardens in West Virginia where Forever Hippie Barry Glick has hauled forth in rather distant refuge for at least 40 years.
8. Virginia bluebells are not. They can die outside in four or five years to be substituted by store-bought nutlets, their nutlets or root divisions, but no matter their entry, they consistently leave us better.
It was a warm, glowing and beautiful HALLOWEEN day! I was fortunate to do garden work daily. There are not so several of these excellent outdoor days . Here’s what I did:
– Finished my seed listing. (Last year I started a list of all the seed packets I’ve that includes the folder they are saved in and once I planted them. By moving through my seeds now I place lost ones back in correct folders and recognized seed packets that were consumed this year so I know exactly what to buy for next year.)
– From my home garden I awakened for overwintering in baskets at the garage 3 year artichoke crops harvested some carrot and bulb , then also dug 4 or 5 Belgian endive plants and place them out to heal underneath many layers of row cap.
– I photographed 3 kinds of mushrooms growing in my house garden. One on untreated pine increased bed timber, and 2 birch logs that border my flower bed. I’ll get these recognized by means of an expert. I THINK two are edible, a different possibly an oyster mushroom and one possibly a turkey tail. I have.
– I unpacked 4 or 5 of the 10 so micronutrients that I am gathering email order to refurbish the soil of my small orchard (3 apple trees, a cherry and a cherry ).
– And the job that out me, I awakened a bed of potatoes at my neighborhood garden. I recovered about 20 lbs of amazing russets from the mattress in soil that has been REALLY heavy. I was delighted to have a fantastic harvest and should not whine, but it had been lots of job!! We have had here and the dirt is heavy even though I dig sausage after a few of dry days. I’ve dug two beds up to now, one more to go, plenty of rain in the forecast…
Are they here yet? Are they here? Reblooming ‘Major Wheeler’ coral honeysuckle offers hummingbird attracting flowers from quite early spring to very late in fall.
As I write this in the end of March, millions of faces have been peering out their windows freshly stuffed feeders. Friends south of them have reported that their first sightings of goodness, and this year, what kind of human being would need to emphasise an hummingbird?
When a freak summer snowstorm was spitting flurries once I stepped out into the porch I remember an April morning several years back. I was horrified to find that a hummingbird hovering in the precise location of last summer’s feeders. It broke daily, When there is Guinness World Record for the speed of dissolving sugar water. Until I watched him drink my face had been pressed into the glass.
Salvia greggii ‘Glitter’ made a 3′ cushion of flowers in one growing season.
Me convinced that hummingbirds return to the feeders and bless people who meet our curiosity and ring the feisty critters, since it’s verified that occasionally they do. I don’t know if hummingbirds fantasy, but if so, is it of my deck around Whippoorwill Hill? I decide to believe.
There is discussion about sugar levels, although There’s absolutely no dispute love for hummingbirds. Most hummingbird enthusiasts depend on the normal 1 part sugar to 4 parts as the”top” recipe. But when I learned that our indigenous jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) has nectar quantified at an astounding 43% glucose solution, I set out to explore some of their other favourite flowers, also found that a number of the salvias that they regular have concentrations at the 30% and higher range.
I understood that hummingbirds were mostly insectivores. They’re insect eating birds as my friend put it. Sugar provides the necessary calories to keep their exceptionally high metabolic rates as they search.
I found studies which compared feeding frequencies on various solution concentrations. They revealed since they simply require a specific number of calories per hour that hummingbirds fed on solutions that were more powerful. After I read thatI was comfortable in creating my solutions part sugar to 2 parts water.
Why would I need my hummingbirds to come? Mama is being helped out by me.
The female gets a longer, leaner body, likely because she does all of the job. If the light isn ’ t right the mature s red gorget does not always reveal.
She tend to her chores and can grab a fix that is metabolic. Of us don’t understand that man hummingbirds are fathers. All they do is furnish the semen. They don’t help construct nests. They feed the female while she incubates or do not help eggs, nor can they help nourish the young. They simply zoom about being at the claws and looking lively, while she’s scrapping to feed the young’uns. She has to harvest thousands of little pests and regurgitate them blended with nectar into the mouths of their babes fighting off starvation for himself. Damn right I’m giving a few of the stuff that is great to her.
There is no lessening of activity in my own feeders, so much as I can tell. Word has to be out that the feeders at Whippoorwill Hill are currently supplying virtual hummingbird crack. At summit late summer/early fall migration, even as the birds have been going down the continent, I’ll be operating every day, eight 48 ounce feeders which will require a refill. I buy as much sugar in the supermarket they think I am making moonshine.
I “captured” a number of the explosive jewelweed seeds and managed to establish a number of this reseeding yearly in my shady areas near the home. Angus doesn’t care.
Not coincidentally, this contrasts with the bloom time of jewelweed, a wildflower in our bottomlands. These blooms are adapted to pollination, by creating a little book for the large drive ahead and the hummingbirds benefit from the rich sugar content.
Naturally, I also plant a lot of those hummingbirds’ preferred flowers perennial forms, both annual and salvias. Luckily there are lots of that reunite for me here in Southern Tennessee, a Zone 7, one of them collections of Salvia greggii, microphylla and guaranitica. I have already bought five this spring to add to the collection. The plants that are blooming are not only nectar sources but bring those insects that are all-important. Also I like looking at pretty flowers too, so there’s that.
Remember attracting insects is a target, so not all plants must be nectar providing “hummingbird plants”.
But back to the selfish, I am more than a bit touched by how many human beings supply for all these critters. Here’s the spring scenario seen from space. We would see millions of hummingbirds dispersing the Western continent, completely unaware of how many million people have been expectantly preparing , if we had vision. These hummingbirds have no idea people underlining and are writing SUGAR! On the grocery , or scrubbing their claws, or paying hummingbird plants at garden centres. They don’t know we love them. They do not care. They don’t thank us.
In a time when it seems easy to become mad with people, does that not make you smile? Keep lovers, peering and friends, they’re on the way.
I thought I knew how to grow daffodils – since that doesn’t? They’re perennial, critter-proof, drought-tolerant, and so on. Or so I believed until Brent Heath, co-owner of the beloved bulb firm Brent and Becky’s, disabused me of my assumptions from his recent discussion at Brookside Gardens outside DC.
Traveled the planet and having been in the bulb biz, Brent knows his stuff. Here are my take-aways out of Brent’s really informative talk.
(Incidentally, I met Brent if we kids vacationing with our families at Nags Head, NC. My sister turned into friends, or anything like that.)
Daffodils aren’t great pollinator plants. It hadn ’ t occurred to me that that included pollinating insects although I understood that creatures don ’ t consume them.
They’re not native to the Americas, rising in the wild only in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. They were attracted here sewn. Bulbs could endure months that way, enabling immigrants whenever they got here, to grow just a small something from home.
Daffodils want sun to keep prospering. Thus which ’so why some of mine harbor ’t produced flowers long-term. As Brent mentioned, folks proclaim, “Oh, but that my daffodils DO get sun if they’re blooming, until neighboring trees have leafed out! ” But that’s not enough; they want sun for the 8 weeks after they blossom – you know, the next year that period when you want to remove the foliage but understand it ’ ll reduce the blooms.
Daffodils also need to get fedup, and Brent recommends great aged compost. I really don ’t believe I’ve ever done that but will now since Brent (who ISN’T selling me a fertilizer product) advised us .
Daffodils are greatest chosen , not even cut . Brent says to snap them off as near the floor as you can.
The 4th hottest daffodil is the Dutch Master, the 3rd is Ice Follies (which multiply very well), and that I didn’t catch numbers 1 and 2. Damn my own note-taking!
Hydbridizing takes patience, like 5-7 decades of it to receive a single bloom on a new daffodil. Brent’s talk included images of varieties which are clearly show-quality and others not, and don’t ask me to remember which are which or why.
Above, ancient tulips and hyacinths were blooming that day at Brookside.
In the immortal words of Brent Heath: “Plant bulbs and harvest smiles. ”
Shot: stays of a Quinceañera celebration in the gardens before in the day.
Yesterday my long-time favourite garden center announced it’ll near soon. Here’s my tribute to the business and its people on a local site . I’m reposting it here for your Rant ’ s wider audience since the final is part of a national fashion that is very miserable. It reveals what great garden centers do for clients and the community and their disappearance is a loss that is massive. (Sob!)
It’s official. In the present press release, Behnke Nurseries declared that after 89 decades, it is going to be heading out of business in June. This loss will be mourned by thousands of local gardeners.
Why It’s Closing
It seems not because business is bad, and that the time has come; it is because there are. The only Behnke still working there is vice president Stephanie Fleming, granddaughter of the founder, that told me”We love our clients but also the Behnkes are in their 80s. The time has come.”
To answer your protestations of”However,…” every possible solution to closure as a garden center has been researched. Selling to some other garden facility or a buyer considering renovating and keeping the nursery open isn’t feasible in the modern market, together with separate shops closing and almost not opening. A number of the remaining garden facilities are morphing into”lifestyle” shops, promoting beachwear and puppy supplies.
What about an employee buy-out, you state? If only! Many are retirement and really, could they buy nearly 12 acres along busy Route 1? Hardly, at today’s prices.
What’s Next for the Site
Zoned for miscellaneous usage, the house could be another auto dealership, but the family needs whatever is participating directly in growth of the house, rather than selling to a developer and replaces the nursery. For this end, the household has solicited suggestions and input in the local and county neighborhood groups and has obtained additional zoning that would allow their favored use of their house — for townhouses, with a 1-acre green area in the center and a walking path around it.
Albert Behnke at the 1960s
Albert Behnke, who was born in 1904 in Germany founded in 1930 the nursery. He worked for his dad’s climbed and cut-flower company and made a decision to immigrate together with his wife Rose to the U.S., for much more opportunity, settling Beltsville.
Initial Behnke greenhouse, together with three of Albert and Rose’s kids
That the Behnke greenhouse was a affair attached to the side of their family house. In 1946, Rose and Albert Behnke needed a modern steel and glass greenhouse and from 1951 there were five greenhouses.
Albert Behnke in his most dapper. Rose Behnke at the office. Her granddaughter Stephanie Fleming says she is”was the one which was why we had been so profitable.” Sonja Behnke in 17, and also more lately
The 17-year-old daughter Sonja of Rose and albert was featured on the cover of the Washington Star weekend magazine watering violets, which had been one of the mainstays of those nursery. Behnke’s delivered Nancy Reagan violets, and they have thank-you notes to show to it.
A Gardener’s Appreciation
Here’s just a few of the things Behnke’s has meant to its thousands of customers that are long-time, such as me.
Behnke’s has always stood out of the bunch of garden facilities such as types, with its selection. It is so renowned for its selection that garden club excursions out of country have comprised Behnke’s in their itinerary when visiting the garden highlights of the DC area.
According to perennials expert Larry Hurley,”Choice has ever been our claim to fame. We are’plant people’ and we all love plants, and we are constantly excited about what’s new.” It transported 1,500 to 1,800 of them when its perennials grew. It offered a lot more types compared to say, the box shops after its growing facilities have been shut down. (According to company documents, Behnke’s transported 1,465 perennials in 2014.)
Another reason the plant selection changed, particularly for perennials, has been the plague of bull in this region. Larry says it has created a”huge difference in the need for hostas and daylilies.” I will bet.
Teaching Gardeners
Peter Kukielski, writer of Roses without Chemicals
Staff did not just market and source plants, by a long shot. They gave courses and workshops throughout the area and at garden clubs at the store. They sponsored more free talks by well known writers and experts from across the East.
Learning opportunities through the nursery included beehives, display gardens, and a stormwater demonstration site.
The company’s website, website and social networking reports have been packed with accurate gardening info and resources perfect for local gardeners. (You do not see Home Depot doing that.) Stephanie Fleming tells me that they’ll be keeping the Behnke’s website and blog live online after the store closes, Provided That there’s attention,
Environmental Direction
In 2000 Behnke’s became involved with the movement to study and also stem the tide of invasive plants through the horticultural sector, a daring move for a merchant! John Peter Thompson, grandson of Albert Behnke, directed that project and finally left the company to chase this issue full time.
Because of this, they stopped selling problematic plants like English Ivy and Burning Bush Euonymus, also for plants such as Barberry earnings to the better-behaved types that make no fruit or little.
At exactly the exact identical period, the nursery improved its accent of native plants, for that there had begun to be a current marketplace for pollinator plants. They have published many articles about native plants on their blog.
Behnke’s was also an industry leader in forbidding the application of neonicotinoids and urging their grower-suppliers to use the options.
Goods ceased regardless of the enormous demand for their products ginned up by expensive advertising through the media, by Scotts Miracle-Gro. (Here’s my own round-up of reasons that company has few lovers.)
Who’s Hasn’t Worked There?
Behnkes staff clockwise from top left: Christopher Lewis, Larry Hurley, Bill Mann, Constance Cleveland, Susi Ohara (who began in Behnkes as a teenager), Marian Parsley, Terri Poindexter, Miri Talabac, and in the center, Orion TaylorBy abandoned, Patrica Bouton, Anita Garner and Becky Beaver
The large staff of behnke is known for its fulltime specialists prepared to answer every issue, not one ridiculous or special. They’ve answered them all!
Just how did they train or find their staff? Most are Maryland Accredited Professional Horticulturists; a few have college degrees in horticulture or related fields. All of them receive in-house training and are encouraged to attend training offered by other educational opportunities and the UMD Extension.
However, their staff is also known for durability and for loyalty. President Alfred Milliard, by way of instance, began there when he was 13without abandoned and would be the longest-serving worker. The second-longest is currently Hank Doong, the company’s CFO, who began in 1970 when he was 14. Operations director Larry Bristow was with the company since he was a teen. Helmut Jaehnigen is another long-timer. Imagine their job searches in an ever-shrinking marketplace for their knowledge.
Since Larry Hurley wrote ,”We have a lot of very old and grizzled team members and we try to impart our expertise to the younger folks. Many people oldsters grew up working for Mr. Behnke (consistently”Mr.”), Helmut, and another Behnke icons”
Workers obtained their start through the PG Police Department’s Young Explorers Club at Behnke’s, where Officer Hibbert has a knack for finding the potential workers from among the applicants at High Level as well as other nearby schools.
Behnke’s workers have moved on to have jobs at these institutions: White House greenhouses and grounds, the National Arboretum, the Naval Observatory grounds, the Smithsonian Institution Gardens, the University of Maryland, along with the Architect of the Capitol. Others have moved on to create their own nurseries, including Gardens, Jos Roozen Nurseries and Metzler’s Nursery.
Supporting Local Clubs and Societies
Lastly with this lengthy list of ways which Behnke’s will probably soon be missed will be the many events in the nursery — that the Garden Party where clubs and societies could recruit members, the many organizations that held their events at Behnke’s, rent-free (including Brookside Gardens, local societies such as roses, and gesneriads, orchids and bonsai), holiday celebrations, yard sales, and even paper-shredding.
Of course the company donated to dozens of causes, such as the food bank in the United Methodist Church, to of Beltsville.
Other frequent recipients of Behnkes’ generosity are the Beltsville Lion’s Club, the Beltsville Rotary Club, the Beltsville Fire and Police Departments, and Toys for Tots.
That is me using Behnke granddaughter Stephanie Fleming
Clients Mourn, Especially ME
In anticipation of the dreaded closing, my local anglers buddies happen to be consoling each other, or trying to, with limited success since we’re devastated by the information ! No exaggeration. We fight to suggest sources for plants ideas and fun gardening gatherings but these stores are farther away and honestly pale in contrast.
I’ve bought almost all my plants in Behnke’s because the’70s and loved the nursery as well as the men and women who worked , but not nearly as much as I came to love them once I started composing their site and other substances for their site at 2010. That’s when I got to work. Since retiring, I visit Behnke’s any time I need to get surrounded by fabulous plants and the men and women who know and love them, if I want to buy a thing or not.
Will I ever say that around Home Depot or perhaps Patuxent Nursery, our independent option that is nearest? I’m guessing never.
As a result of Stephanie Fleming for the photos and information that she’s contributed for this specific article.
Like I haphazardly follow gardening training on social media Facebook, but frequently on Instagram, I notice enormous variances in the quality and content of this discourse. I’ve also noticed the way that the discussion among gardeners spreads to networks doesn’t even seem to encourage conversation or alternative points of view. As an example, our variant of this local discussion team, Nextdoor, needed a post by a member flatly saying that pollen from plants bought at Home Deport tagged as comprising neonicotinoids would, when planted, lead to mass destruction:”bees accept the pollen from these treated plants back to the hive, where they die.” The problem using neonics is a bit more subtle than this. As many here know, HD is one of the few retailers that bothers to tag and they are pretty much phasing out their use of neonics, which are still debated as to their parasitic harm (although the EU has now banned them). You wouldn’t understand any of this from the discussion that followed. It was shocked assurances that HD would be avoided by all.
This is very well; I hold no brief for HD or big boxes. There are not any warranties since my little retailers don’t require labels that the plants I purchase haven’t been treated with anything. That point was not brought up in the conversation I saw. Or I see. Houseplants are supposedly toxic to cats and other creatures. All types of folk wisdom about care is dropped with depart into plant groups. Companion planting remains frequently adviced (marigolds repel aphids, etc.).
What if there was a Snopes for gardening, manned by a band of scientists, all and expertise with the industry as well as real world studying? As fresh questions/myths appear This kind of organization could pull together reasoned rebuttals to the most frequent gardening myths and add answers. I suppose the Garden Professors offer this into a certain degree, but it isn’t as especially question-responsive.
There’s something really satisfying about Snopes coming into the rescue as a different social networking buddy posts even a scare or a meme. It is often a bastion of reason in a maniacal world class, although I know Snopes is by the bogus news crowd on event.
I got a box full of one-day-old baby girls in the email now. 17 of these! They are cute and quite tiny. They are currently below a heat lamp at a puppy cage converted to some chick incubator.
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
It’s official. In the present press release, 
