Campanula ‘Viking’: Love at First Sight

There is something undeniably romantic about the blooming presence of old fashioned bellflowers. The blued lavender blooms of Peachleaf Bellfower are a sight to behold in early summer. And then, the magic is over. Undignified and flopping about, the common bellflower is a mess in your garden. Campanula ‘Viking’ is going to change your view of bellflowers completely. Get ready for a love affair that isn’t a flash in the pan two-week stand.

Image courtesy of Plants Nouveau
Copyright © Plants Nouveau 2009

Perennial gardens everywhere in zones 5-8 will be so much lovelier with Campanula ‘Viking’ in May through July. Fat lavender blooms erupting on very upright stems, for weeks on end. The breeding for a compact plant will be the reason that this bellflower won’t be found lolling on the soil surface. No flopping and a vastly extended flowering period. A perennial flower destined to win your heart and be awarded a prized spot in your yard or flower garden.

Do be sure to give Viking all day sun for best flowering and vigor. One of the beauties of Campanula of all types (and there are oodles of them) is that they don’t have issues with pests and diseases some perennial plants can be prone to. You won’t have any problems with it spreading like wildfire and taking over your planting space or creeping into the lawn either. Viking is very well behaved. No runners and the seed is sterile, making it no garden thug you will regret planting forever more.

Campanula Viking will do well in average garden soil, but be prepared to give it consistent moisture. Bellflowers will not reward you with great vigor in heavy clay soils; prepare a well drained planting space. With the proper foundation, you’ll find that the superior strength and vigor of this bellflower, paired with months of luscious fat purple blooms, draws interesting visitors to your garden. Hummingbirds and butterflies will be magnetized to your new stand of Campanula Viking.

You won’t be sorry for adding this perennial plant to your front foundation plantings. The compact nature will keep this perennial in great shape. At only 18 inches tall in full bloom, be sure to plant your Viking Campanula in the middle to front of your border gardens. For those who enjoy a sampling of cut flowers extending the garden to bouquets in the house, Viking is an excellent addition to your cutting garden. For cottage garden and English garden plantings, here you have a winner in plumping up the romantic theme. In your garden or landscape, this lovely and nicely mannered perennial will mature to 24 inches across.

Image courtesy of Plants Nouveau
Copyright © Plants Nouveau 2009

New to the US gardening scene for 2011, Campanula ‘Viking’ PPAF is a Plants Nouveau introduction. You can count on the discerning judgment of anything Angela presents. Plants Nouveau has strict standards in deeming a new perennial plant fit for growing. This gorgeous new bellflower is the breeding work of Arie Blom and A-B Cultivars. This is just one more phenomenal perennial flower crafted by the Netherlands breeder who brought us the Cone-fections Echinacea series. Thanks Arie!

For more information about new Campanula ‘Viking’, contact Plants Nouveau.

In the Pink for Spring

Carpeting blooms so divine,
They named them Flower of God.

Introducing Dianthus gratianopolitanus ‘St. Benedict’

Image courtesy of Intrinsic Introductions
Copyright © Intrinsic Perennial Gardens 2008

Clearly beyond pink. Just look at the brilliance of that bloom. Imagine a perennial plant forming a sliver blue carpet covered with hundreds of these scented flowers in spring. Against the uniquely blue foliage, St. Benedict Dianthus is quite an arresting show. An instant pairing of glorious color springs to mind, I can see the low sweep of these spicy little blooms in front of Gold Variegated Iris (Iris pallida ‘Aureo Variegata’).

Variegated Iris
Image courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden.

Quite an amazing spring rock garden scene would be created with two of these perennial plants, and such a planting situation does both of them justice. St. Benedictine Dianthus, like all Cheddar Pinks, is an excellent easy to grow pink flowering perennial that forms a low mat that is a lovely color both in and out of bloom. While the silvery blue grass-like foliage is not quite as dramatic as those late spring flowers, you will find that it makes a lovely unique note amidst many greener leaved plants in the garden.

If you are wondering where the ‘Flower of God’ comes from, Dianthus is the combination of the Greek words for flower and god. We shouldn’t be surprised; the sight of Cheddar Pinks in bloom during May to June really is quite heavenly. Other forms of Dianthus are known as Sweet William and Cottage Pinks. Dianthus gratianopolitanus is a different variety than either of them and imparts a spicier scent much like cloves. The common name of Cheddar Pinks comes from their source of origination, an area known as Cheddar Gorge in southwest England where they grow in wild, natural abandon.

Image courtesy of Intrinsic Introductions
Copyright © Intrinsic Perennial Gardens 2008

For best vigor and beauty, St. Benedictine Dianthus requires excellent drainage and soil with a 6.6-7.8 pH level. If your soil is more acidic, you can bring it into the desirable balance with periodic additions of lime. You want a full sun spot for this alpine style glory of spring. The more silvered than most foliage of St. Benedictine reaches 6 inches tall and forms a 12 inch wide clump. The splendid almost beyond pink blooms appear on stems no taller than 8 inches. Blooms measure 1” wide with 4-5 serrated edge petals.

St. Benedictine Dianthus is hardy for zones 5-10 and being introduced to the world by Intrinsic Perennial Gardens. For those of you living in the deeper reaches of the hardiness zones, you will do best to give Dianthus filtered shade. St. Benedictine is really a lovely little source of early season vibrant color well worth a spot in the landscape and garden.

For professional growers seeking more information on the plant, visit Intrinsic Introductions.

Spreading Light in the Shade

Evergreen ground cover tends to be a rather boring group of plants, they are generally just green and well … creepy. Everything changes when you try running forms of Tiarella, which is semi-evergreen perennial plant.

Tiarella cordifolia ‘Ocotoraro’
Image courtesy of Plants Nouveau © 2008

The foliage of Tiarellas is always cut in very interesting shapes and marked nicely with black patterns. The new spring growth will always be a brighter, lighter green than last seasons’ or late summer color. The really stunning part about having ground cover forms of Tiarella is the light, airy blooms they produce beginning early in the spring.

In perennial gardens for shady spots, you will find both clumping and spreading forms of what is commonly known as Foam Flower. The proper name for this group of plants is Tiarella. There aren’t that many forms of spreading Tiarella that are beautiful, so the introduction of the River Series has been causing some excitement among plant collectors. Last year we featured Tiarella cordifolia ‘Delaware’. Now you can get a first hand peek at the rest of the current new releases.

From the genius breeding work of Sinclair Adam from Dunvegan Nursery in Pennsylvania, comes this wonderful selection of flowing flowering ground covers. In regions beyond zone 5, this plant may very well be perennial due to extreme winter temperatures. With good snow cover as insulation, it will not die back, but be there and nicely green when spring thaw arrives. Late frost spells will never make this flowering plant in your garden or landscaping look zapped, they adore cold weather. Frost and a late snow will do little to impair the blooming charm.

The Tiarellas in the River Series grow 4-6” high with a spread of 2-3 feet in two or three years. Unlike other evergreen groundcovers like Pachysandra and Ivy, Tiarellas are good mannered bed fellows. You won’t find this lovely flowing foliage choking the life out of your shrubs, hostas and other perennial plants. With the traditional forms of evergreen groundcovers, it is an annual to seasonal chore keeping it cut back from the life space of other plants in your landscape or garden. Pachysandra over a couple of decades can get so thick and determined; I have seen it push over ornamental fences out of the ground!

Tiarella cordifolia ‘Lehigh’
Image courtesy of Plants Nouveau © 2008

You’ll be delighted to know that once established, Tiarella plants will deal with drought quite nicely. While they will grow and fill faster with consistent moisture, a little dryness will not kill your planting off. It is best to give them loose soil that is rich in organic matter like compost that they are natives of on the forest floor. Good drainage is also important to the family of Foam Flower perennials.

Tiarella cordifolia ‘Wissahickon’
Image courtesy of Plants Nouveau © 2008

While they will in the cooler regions of the US do very nicely in some sunshine, your Tiarella plants will be lusher if they only receive morning sun. This is especially true in really hot summer areas. Some sunshine is advisable for best flowering habits. Like ferns, Tiarella is a plant that will grow in some really difficult shaded places but will perform faster with filtered or direct light in the cooler parts of the day.

Tiarella cordifolia ‘Susquehanna’
Image courtesy of Plants Nouveau © 2008

The entire River Series of Tiarella cordifolia should be easy to find for early shopping in 2010. All five plants were released to growers in 2009, making availability for this spring more prevalent. For more information, please visit Plants Nouveau.

Houston … We have a problem.

It seems we’ve run into some moving issues here. The trip from server to server did not go well at all.

Unfortunately, its going to take some time to unpack … It was easy to get all the articles unboxed and placed just so really fast. Now solving the photo issue is left.

Nothing like WordPress to make one absolutely crazy!

Code is only beautiful if you speak PHP fluently. And people think that figuring out plants is difficult. They’re a piece of cake compared to code.

Don’t despair … at least you won’t be the one pulling out your hair trying to make sense of the moving boxes!

Beautiful News about the future of your garden will be back up and running again soon.

Sherlock is on the case but somehow a magician might be the better person for this job. Pulling a rabbit out of the hat would be the perfect instant solution to the problem. 

Two rabbits produced already but the big one, well … he’s in there somewhere. The one with the images in his grubby little paws. He’s now following the magic wand directions at all. Maybe it would be easier to find his wee fluffy tail if the magic wand was replaced with a wee little shotgun? Seems to me he’d be jumpin’ out of the hat instead of cowering down there in the corner somewhere.

Update Friday, January 8th …  Missing rabbit located! Waving about shotguns does help after all. But now there’s a newly discovered varmit still lurking about in the dark shadows inside this hat. Now if only I could fix the fancy slide show’s issues too. WordPress must sell more libations of the alcoholic persuasion worldwide than any other form of website programming in captivity today. (Many website owners agree. We suspect a marketing ploy in partnership with Anheiser-Busch, among all other breweries.)