Yardflower.com

Welcome to the Cajun Prairie Restoration site in Eunice, LA.

Saturday, I visited a couple of prairie sites in and near Eunice, Louisiana.

The tours were part of the Cajun Prairie Habitat Preservation Society meeting.

I have been a member of this group for many years and am totally humbled by the wonderful things they have done.

The Cajun Prairie Society formally started in 1989.

The two main movers and shakers were Dr. Charles Allen and Dr. Malcolm Vidrine.  These two had begun exploring tallgrass prairie remnants in south Louisiana.

White false indigo and bee balm mingle with dewberries and grasses at the Eunice site.

As a group they were able to obtain a lease on a piece of wasteland adjacent to an abandoned railroad track and a low income neighborhood.

They quickly began seeding and transplanting prairie plants to the site.

The society was eventually able to buy the land and over the years has installed a pic-nic shelter, sidewalks, signage and benches.

It is a grand place to visit.  The best time is at one of the society’s two annual meeting.  The first is in late spring – usually late April or early May and the second in late summer.  I just attended the early meeting.  The benefit of a meeting and not just a self-guided tour is that you can walk the site with Dr. Allen and Dr. Vidrine.  What a treat!

It may seem that you are lost in a sea of gamma grass and bee balm until you notice the adjacent houses.

Blooming highlights of the Eunice prairie were masses of white false indigo (Baptisia alba), bee balms (Monarda fistulosa and Monarda lindheimeri), early rosin weed (Silphium gracile) and black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta).

There were scattered hot pink rose gentians (Sabatia campanulata), pristine white butterfly gaura (Gaura lindheimeri) and magenta sensitive briar (Mimosa microphylla).  The first of the narrowleaf mountain mints (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium) were starting to turn frosty white.  Later two other mountain mints will bloom along with two species of obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana and P. intermedia).  The perennial hibiscus or rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) sported buds and button snakeroot (Eryngium yuccafolium) looked like a robust blue yucca just waiting to burst into flower.

The grasses were beginning to assert themselves – soaring upward.

We wandered through the prairie pausing to graze on dewberries lost in the tallgrass.  We seemed to be miles away from civilization but a glance at the horizon showed houses in the distance.

Today’s blog post will consist mostly of pictures taken at the Eunice site this year and last year at the May meeting.

Malcolm Vidrine explores a mass of yellow false indigo loaded with seed pods.

One day I hope to visit the site when the yellow false indigo (Baptisia sphaerocarpa) is in full bloom.  This is usually in late March.  Last weekend they were loaded with seed pods as far as I could see.  I can only imagine what a spectacular thing it must be to see them in full bloom.

Another goal is to make it to the prairie in late summer to see the gayfeather in flower.  The tall stately Liatris pycnostachya is a lovely thing and this site it full of it.  Two other species of gayfeather (L. acidota and L. spicata) bloom earlier in the summer.

If you want to learn more about the Cajun Prairie, I highly recommend Malcolm Vidrine’s wonderful book, The Cajun Prairie: A Natural History.

My 3 year old 'Semmes Beauty' on left grows in my garden beside an established 15 year old oakleaf hydrangea.

The oakleaf hydrangeas are gradually coming into bloom.  All are still showing a good bit of green color except for the lovely and precocious ‘Semmes Beauty’.

Instead Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Semmes Beauty’ is in full glorious bloom.  The flowers are much larger than the norm and are a gleaming pristine white.

There is a reason why this wonderful plant blooms so much earlier than the other oakleaf hydrangeas.  I have been told that it was selected by the late Mr. Tom Dodd, Jr.  from a wild population near Semmes, Alabama.  The small town of Semmes is just a few miles from Mobile and is a community of nurseries.

Since ‘Semmes Beauty’ comes from the Deep Deep South it usually blooms about two weeks earlier than the wild oakleafs here and may bloom as much as a month earlier than a cultivar such as ‘Snow Queen’ (which hails from New Jersey).

I bought ‘Semmes Beauty’ from Mark Bronstad who manages a wholesale nursery in east Texas.  Mark thinks that ‘Semmes Beauty’ is a superior selection but as a nurseryman, he loves it most because it is easy to root from cuttings.

It's easy to see 'Semmes Beauty' from the deck above. My husband keeps stopping on the stairs to ask "What IS that?"

It seems to be a very vigorous plant to me.

My ‘Semmes Beauty’ is planted in terrible soil but has outgrown other oakleaf hydranges that were planted at the same time.  It is rapidly catching up with oakleafs in the area that have been in the ground for 10+ years longer.  Perhaps the ease in rooting makes it quicker to establish.

It is always described as being heat tolerant.  Go figure – it is from Semmes, after all.  If you live in Semmes and are not heat tolerant, you die!

Some references even list it as sun tolerant.

All in all it is such a great plant that I am writing about it in the hope that if I rant about it enough, it will become more widely available.  Right now, I can’t find a single retail mail order nursery that is selling it.

I did find 3 wholesalers who grow it – one in east Texas, one in south Alabama and one in North Carolina.

So… if you live in the south, it is out there somewhere.  It is languishing in a retail garden center just waiting to get in the car with you and go home.

I often sang verses of the old Woodie Guthrie song ” I ride an old paint….” when I was perched atop my geriatric Craftsman riding mower.

I bought Old Paint as a used mower and she served me well for at least eight more years.

Old Paint and I are working on a trail beside the timber bamboo.

Most people use a riding mower to cut lawn grass.  Old Paint was more like a mini-bushhog.   Together we forged new trails all over this disturbed 6 acres. With Old Paint I could attack a privet thicket or horse my way through a briar patch that left me looking as if I had tangled with a mean cat.  It was almost magical!

My technique involved cowboy-ing over small Chinese privet.   Then when I had some work space, I could come back and remove the large ones with my trusty Japanese pruning saw.

Once established I would mow the trails two or three times a year to maintain.

Late one night I was listening to a gardening podcast from the West Coast.  The host was one of the Garden Rant ladies and Billy Goodnick was the guest.  They were quite entertaining as they bashed the lawn and all that it stood for.  I agreed with most of their comments.  The consensus was, however, that anyone who would own a riding mower was ecologically irresponsible and should perhaps be put in the stocks.

I would love to give the Ranting Ladies and Billy Goodnick a tour of my land.  We could wander past the bee meadow that was planted after Old Paint chewed up the resident privet.  We could walk the woodland trails that were formerly choked with privet and Chinese wisteria and observe the native vegetation creeping back in.

We could admire the “Bottom” – a wetland formed by city drainage.  The Bottom has reached a state of balance where the native vegetation dominates and mowing is no longer necessary.  It is a beautiful place but it was here that Old Paint made a fatal encounter with a cypress knee.

Old Paint still has a good engine but her deck was compromised and she will no longer mow.  She is heading out to pasture and will now pull a small garden wagon around the place

So I just got a new mower last week.  It is a Zero Turn shiny red thing.  It has a heavy duty deck that will hopefully survive encounters with a few cypress knees.  It rides smoothly and can cut close to desirable plants.  This is a bonus because I do not have enough upper body strength to use a weed-eater.

I like the newbie but it seems way too fancy.

And what song will I sing while I mow now?

I spent half of my Earth Day doing computer stuff on the couch.

I did finish the blog post on baptisia that has been lingering in my “Half Finished” Box for over a week.

But… sitting on the couch is not what one should be doing on Earth Day so off I went to explore the land with Richard and our pack of dogs.

We rambled on the nature trails.

I photographed some flowers.

But mostly we sat and went snake-eyed – just gazing with no comment.

Queens Maria, Elizabeth and Latifa manage the hives in the foreground. Cleopatra can be seen in the background.

As we drove past the bee hives, I was inspired to write a blog post even though there was already one for the day.

I started thinking about how the honey I harvest from my bees allows my palette to have a taste of the land.

My honey is flavored by red maple, henbit, redbud, buckwheat titi and Japanese apricot.

It tastes of willow, native hawthorn, spring beauty, blackberry, vetch and clover.

At times there is a tinge of wild plum, huckleberry, wild cherry, black locust and black gum.

Then the essence of tulip poplar, native holly, persimmon, palmetto, rattan vine and milkweed comes to the table.

Woodrow strolls toward Queen Kelly Mitchell's hive.

And… the savory nectars of sumac, cyrilla, sourwood, clethra, goldenrod, boneset, Spanish needles, asters and eastern baccharis are added to the medley.

I tend to think that the honey is tainted by the less desirable plants on my land like Chinese privet, Chinese wisteria and popcorn tree.  But these invaders are part of my land and so it is only fitting that they put their own peculiar spin on the final product.

I guess it was inevitable that a flower freak like me would become a beekeeper.  A spoonful of my honey is a distillation of the flora of my land.

This melange of nectars results in a spicy honey different than any I have tasted before.

It melts on my tongue and I know that I am tasting a unique representation of my land.

So tonight I will pour a glass of home-made mead and drink a toast to my queens – Latifah, Elizabeth, Maria, Cleopatra and Kelly Mitchell.  This Earth Day post is in honor of them.  They have changed my perception of the land.

This delightful stand of white baptisia is gracing an Alabama roadside. Hope it's still there when I return to get seed.

Here in Mississippi, even though it is only April, we seem to be rushing madly toward the summer.

The baptisia or false indigo is in full bloom unseasonably early.   For me, that lovely perennial wildflower normally indicates that late spring is upon us.

I still remember the first time I saw white wild indigo on a Mississippi roadside.  I was driving in adjoining Neshoba County when I spied a mounding 5′ plant that was covered with white spikey flowers.   I came to a screeching halt and rapidly approached the interesting specimen.  It looked like a lupine on steroids and had curious glaucous blue green leaves that were compound like clover.  The stalks were purple.

I stood and gaped in amazement.

Immediately I knew that this was a member of the bean and pea family.  I even knew that it was a false indigo or baptisia.

The florets sparkle against white baptisia's charcoaly purple stems.

I soon had my find identified to species by my botany professor, Dr. Sidney McDaniel, as Baptisia leucantha, a white blooming false indigo.  At that time, there were 4 or 5 white blooming species listed.  Since then the taxonomists have consolidated all into a single species with two sub-divisions.  So our Mississippi species has become Baptisia alba var. macrophylla.

I returned about 6 weeks later and collected a sack full of the lovely purple inflated bean pods from the plant.  I shucked them out as if I were shelling butterbeans and soaked them overnight to kill a pestilence of weevils.  In spite of the bugs, I had great germination and soon added this baptisia to our nursery list.  I am glad I did because the highway department eradicated the mama plant and all her kin the next year.

This strain of yellow baptisia from south Mississippi is happily blooming in the bee meadow.

Later I started visiting the Cajun Prairie in Eunice, Lousiana, where I discovered and fell in love with the yellow baptisias.  To me the most beautiful of the several species of yellow false indigos is Baptisia sphaerocarpa.  The plants themselves are smaller than the white species – usually 2′ to 3′ and are sometimes called bush clovers.  The Cajun prairie is full of this lovely plant and in Mississippi we have it in a few southern counties.  I was lucky enough to get a start of our Mississippi strain from my friend Allen Anderson.  Again – it was collected from roadside population that has since been demolished.

Alan’s lovely yellow form is thriving happily in my bee meadow.

Both of these garden gems will cheerfully prosper in any site with reasonable moisture and full sun.  A long tap root allows them to survive drought. They are at home in the baking heavy clay prairie soils in sites that are annually burned.   I have grown them in sunny perennial borders in heavy clay with great results.

In addition to these two species I am fond of a couple of cultivars.  ’Screaming Yellow’ is a loud yellow selection of B. sphaerocarpa made by the illustrious Larry Lowman in Arkansas.    I haven’t actually seen it in bloom yet since I started with small plants.  However the foliage is a beautiful healthy emerald green and the pictures of the flowers are striking.  ’Carolina Moonlight’ is a cross between the white and yellow species.  This variety was a volunteer discovered by Rob Gardner in the North Carolina Botanical Garden. Flowers are a pale yellow color and plants are quite vigorous.  This hybrid produces no fruit.

The baptisias are lovely in all seasons.  In late winter they emerge as curious purple-ish shoots that look a little like asparagus.  Wonderful lupine-like  flower stalks appear in late spring.  Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery carries a good selection and calls them “redneck lupines”.

After the flowers are gone, interesting purple inflated pods can be used in floral arrangements or collected and shucked for the seed.  I have learned to collect much earlier than I used to.  I harvest as soon as seed pods begin to turn from green to purple.  The seed inside should have just turned tan.  Plant them immediately and they will sprout in a couple of weeks or so.

Or… you can leave the pods for ornamentation.  Then for the rest of the year – except in the dead of winter – cool blue foliage provides the perfect backdrop for other flowers.

These baptisias are pest free and extremely long lived unless they encounter the staff of your local highway department!

Chinese foxglove is peeking from beneath my 'Tameukeyama' maple. A giant leopard plant and purple gazing ball accent the front entrance.

As I have previously remarked, I am totally enamored of my new front yard bed.  I wrote a blog post about Phase I of that implementation a couple of days ago and more details will soon follow.

This week, however, the 3 year old foundation planting has been catching my eye.

Back in the day, when this was a rental house, I devised a landscape plan for the front yard.

My plant list came from an eclectic collection that had accumulated over a period of years.  The plants were in a holding pattern in my little nursery.  They needed to go in the ground and nursery space was sorely needed.

So I set about to design what I have since described as the hinkiest rental house landscape ever.

I allowed myself to do this with the thought that we would probably move back in here one day.

And so we have!!!

Up close and personal with Chinese foxglove.

My  ’Tameukeyama’ Japanese maple is the star of the planting.  It is strategically placed in front of the “picture window” so that I can admire it from both sides.

My husband Richard (a.k.a. The Timekeeper) tells me that I bought this plant as a 3 gallon nursery plant in 2006.  By the time it was planted in the ground here, it had been stepped up to a 7 gallon pot and was almost 3 feet tall.

‘Tamekeyama’ is a threadleaf Japanese maple.  These maples have leaves with very narrow thread-like lobes.   Foliage is reddish as it emerges after winter and intense orange red before winter leaf drop.

A carpet of Chinese foxglove  (Rehmannia elata) grows beneath the maple.  At bloom time, this perennial produces hot pink flowers on 2′ stems.  The foxglove-like blooms are lovely peeking through the maple foliage.  I started with about 3 Chinese foxglove plants and these have formed a thick stand.  I would be afraid that this plant might become a bit invasive in a better growing situation.

The view from my front walk with Hinkley's columbine and a purple gazing ball perched atop Richard's Grandmother's bird bath pedestal.

I walk past this lovely vista several times a day.

A couple of weeks ago the star of the planting was a lush stand of Louisiana phlox.  Those blooms are mostly gone now but as a consolation, the giant leopard plant (Farfugium japonicum ’Giganteum’) is coming out of dormancy.

During our move, the giant leopard plant fell on hard times.

I was distracted and did not water during a drought.  Then it was stepped on by someone helping us move.  I am happy to report that it seems to be in recovery mode and back to its old state of robustness.

And that’s not all – a volunteer Hinkley’s columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha var. hinckleyana) is blooming next to the sidewalk.

Since the columbine seeded itself, it is much too close to the walk but… I’m not complaining.

Marc used the pick to dig all the planting holes and here he is using it to dig a trench to border the bed.

I haven’t been blogging due to the lovely weather and abundance of gardening projects.

Of all the projects I am most obsessed with the new bed in the front yard of my new house.

Several months before we moved, I discussed the dilemma of the front garden with my bud Marc Pastorek.  My house is barely 50′ off a busy street.  The area was graveled and had been used by my renters for parking.

I wanted to create a bed to screen the unsightly street view but we still had to park in the small space and there is a low power line that crosses the property.

So Marc & I discussed the options.  We used a paint marker to define a proposed planting space and then test drove Richard’s giant F-150 through the loop.  With a little modification we defined our shape – a half oval bed that measured 19′ across and 16′ back from the street.

Then I got busy with the process of renovating, moving and settling in and let the idea simmer on the back burner.  And so… five months passed.

I crawled along the edge and installed chunks of petrified wood in the trench to make a border.

In March, Marc came for a visit and we laid out the bed and did the first stage of planting.  Due to the compacted nature of the soil, Marc dug the planting holes with a pick.

The plant list included tall evergreens for screening.  A loblolly bay (Gordonia lasianthus) was planted as far away from the power line as possible near the edge of the bed.  This lovely native is upright and narrow.  My specimen had been pre-trained to a single trunk and had been nurtured in my nursery for a couple of years until it was ready to bust out of a 7 gallon pot.

The rest of the screening was provided by 3 star bush (Illicium floridanum) that I bought this past spring.  Star bush should be just the right height to screen without getting into the power line.  However it is such a tough cookie that it could be cut to the ground to regrow if the power company decides to tamper.

I added a small collection of Virginia sweetspire or Virginia willow (Itea virginica).  There are two dwarf selections and three with long flowers from the Chunky River.

The star bush is blooming now. Since we started with large plants, by the end of the summer they will offer the suggestion of a screen.

Most of the rest of the plants are tough perennials or prairie species including ‘Screaming Yellow’ baptisia, Mr. Hubricht’s amsonia, ‘Forest Frost phlox, and ‘Henry Eillers’ sweet coneflower.

We generously amended the terrible soil with cottonseed meal and composted chicken manure.

My plan was to edge the bed with a border of petrified wood.  My friend Peter Loos hunts petrified wood near his home in East Texas.  Pete had gifted me with several buckets full of small pieces.

After the planting was complete, Marc used the pick to dig a trench along the edge of the bed.  Meanwhile, I crawled along (on my hands and knees like a dog) installing pieces of the petrified wood into the trench.

We were both extremely tired but proud at the end of the day.

I am growing 'Tangerine Beauty' crossvine on a pine in the front garden - very easy!

I will be giving a talk at the New Albany Home and Garden Show this Saturday, March 31.

The garden show is held at the Union County Fairgrounds.

My presentation starts at 10:15.

I will speak on “Easy Garden Color”.

My goal is to highlight ways to add color to the garden without planting high maintenance annual beds.  I will emphasize my favorite small flowering trees,  old fashioned shrubs, bulbs, antique roses and wildflowers.

Hope to see you there.

The Louisiana phlox really is a perfect backdrop for the purple gazing ball by my front door.

I’ve got to admit that most of the mainstream groundcovers seriously annoy me.

Asiatic jasmine is very aggressive.  It forms deep dense mats and constant pruning is required to keep it in bounds.

English ivy will climb and strangle a tree.

Liriope and mondograss have better manners but are somewhat boring.

Out of necessity I have developed a short list of wildflower groundcovers that I use in my design work and around my own place.

The criteria for this group of plants is simple.

First, like traditional groundcovers, they must be low growing – usually no more than two feet even in bloom.

The Louisiana phlox was mingling with the atamasco lilies on our wildflower field trip yesterday.

Second, they must have interesting foliage even when not in bloom.  It is really nice, or course, if they are evergreen.

Third, like every other plant I buy or recommend, they must be relatively free of pests and easy to maintain.

The star of my garden right now is the very lovely Louisiana or woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata).  It is planted throughout the garden in shade or partly shaded situations.

This phlox has done remarkably well in my front flower bed on the shaded north side of the house even though the soil is abysmal.

The plants have attractive fine textured leaves all winter.

The cool icy blue blossoms are lovely right now.  In fact they have been blooming for almost three weeks and will probably continue for three more.

What a champ!

This lovely mass of woodland phlox was even more beautiful in person.

Yesterday I went with the Mississippi Native Plant Society to see wild Easter lilies a.k.a atamaso lilies (Zephyranthes atamasco) in bloom.

Our site was low, wet and shady.

The woodland phlox was in bloom there as well.

So there you have it – my wildflower groundcover in its natural habitat covering the ground in a swamp forest.

I had been to the site before but this was the first time I caught the phlox in full flower.

Still – maybe that’s where I got the idea!

Junebug (aka Muffin) grazes behind a righteous clump of Spring Beauty in a disturbed area on our land.

Right now in my part of the world a humble little wildflower adorns the roadsides.  It even occurs in fields and lawns if herbicide has not been rampantly applied.

I am speaking, of course, of a frothy little thing known as Spring Beauty or Claytionia virginica.

Many years ago my friend Peter gave me a carefully nurtured pot of Spring beauty.  I accepted politely, but as he handed it to me I wondered “WTF?”.

After all it was not a very showy plant even in full bloom and it was everywhere in the Black Belt Prairie where I grew up.

Why propagate it and label it with a carefully scripted tag indicating date and place of origin?  Seemed like overkill…

But I was younger then.  I missed a few subtleties.

And I was not alone.  For the most part, I don’t think young people notice Spring beauty.

It is too small.  It is white or pinkish and seems to disappear in certain kinds of light.  It is difficult to photograph.

Now, however, my attitude has certainly changed.

I’m on a crusade.  I must have more Spring Beauty.  I crave it like Chris Walken craves the cow bell.  I’ve learned that the power of Spring Beauty lies in numbers.

I want it in every patch of lawn.

I want to watch it feed my honeybees.

I stop people and point it out to them.  They look quizzically at me.

And I realize that I’ve come full circle.