Category Archives: Plant Portraits

Best Evergreen Floor Plants

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2013/05/27

A Suitable Plant for Memorial Day : Vinca The word ‘Vinca’ can be derived from the Italian verb ‘Vincere’, which refers to success by winning or conquering, whether I, you, he or she. The Vincas are a seriously reliable and handsome Genus of plants, so it is easy to think of them being referred to [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged evergreen floor plants, Vinca minor alba 'Gertrude Jekyll', Vinca minor argenteovariegata, Vinca minor Ralph Shugert | Leave a comment

Good Green Words

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2013/03/17

____Green Words You May Enjoy Knowing___ Viridescent = Iridescent Green ___________________________ Etymology: Latin viridis green + iridescent Originated Circa 1847 An iridescent surface is one that appears to change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. “It is hard to photograph sparkle” Isaac Mizrahi, 2009 _______________________________________ ______________________________________ When you [...]

Also posted in Plant Stories, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged good green, green words, Hildegard of Bingen, Mizrahi, viridescent, viriditas, Viridity | 6 Responses

Free Flowers for Valentine’s Day and Beyond

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2013/02/12

Free Flowers for Valentine’s Day and Beyond In February and later, nicely shaped cut branches of Forsythia brought inside to a vase with lots of water will flower gracefully within 2 weeks. Yes, it really is as simple as that. Just keep the water refreshed, nearly to the top of the container. If you cut some [...]

Also posted in Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged Abbracci a Milano, Arum italicum pictum, force forsythia, forcing forsythia, Forsythia, free flowers, Free Hugs Campaign Italy, Free Hugs Day, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOTW1FHTEoI, pruning Forsythia, Salix hakuro nishiki, Valentines Day, Winter Arrangements | 7 Responses

Potatoes and Rocks on Long Island

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/07/31

The Rock who Tried to be a Potato When you hand harvest potatoes in Eastern Long Island you soon learn that the sandy earth coats the stones which also inhabit the earth there so thoroughly that, before washing, the two entities are often virtually indistinguishable. Their weight difference is the only clue sometimes. If you [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged Long Island, long island potato, Long island stone, potatoes | 1 Response

Thalictrum rochebruneanum and Other Fabulous Flower Fireworks

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/07/02

Thalictrum rochebruneanum is a Star for the Fourth of July. You can expect Lavender Flowered Fireworks, every year. … Sometimes called ‘Meadow Rue’, or ‘Lavender Mist’, this plant is elegantly vertical. When in bloom, each individual is like a 6’ magic wand, with delicate foliage and perfect lavender sparkles, which fluff out at the top [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants | Tagged flower fireworks, fourth of july plant, fourth of July plants, hardy annuals, keeping self sowing plants, long blooming plants, miniature plants, self sowing plants, shade plant, shade tolerant plant, star plants, tall skinny plants, Thalictrum kiusianum, THALICTRUM ROCHEBRUNEANUM, Thalictrum rochebrunianum, Verbena bonariensis | 1 Response

Volunteer Vegetables : Edible, Ornamental…and they come back every year.

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/06/07

Red Leaf Shiso = Perilla frutescens crispa I first met the red leaf Japanese Perilla, also known as Shiso, at a supermarket in a plastic bag. A bouquet of 15 or so rooted, leafy stems of a plant I had never met were being sold with the herbs, next to the Basil, so I took [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance | Tagged antique garden ornaments, Ao-Shiso, asian vegetable, bronze fennel, Chinese medicine, come back food plants, edible ornamental, evergreenseeds.com, foeniculum purpureum, food plants, immune system, local plant nursery, local plants, marblehead plants, omega 3 acids, ornamental edible, Perilla, Perilla frutescens crispa, self sowing edible, self sowing herbs, shade herb, shi-so, Shiso, unusual plants | 6 Responses

Long Blooming Hardy Perennial Plants : Prizewinning Series, May 2012

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/05/08

May 2012 Awards A First Prize in the category of Longest Blooming, Hardy Perennial Self – Sowers goes to: Corydalis lutea and to Corydalis lutea alba. …… Easy, long flowering friends can be found among the many perennial choices in the plant world. Among the handsomest of hardy, long blooming plants, these two enthusiastic Corydalines [...]

Also posted in Authorship, Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts | Tagged a reasoned landscape, best friend plants, Corydalis lutea, Corydalis lutea alba, ellen cool, H. Lincoln Foster, hardy longblooming, Laura Louise Foster, long blooming, long blooming plants, Naturalising, prize winning plants, prizewinning plants, Rock Garden, Rock Gardening, self sowing plants, stone garden designs, street champions, street champs, street plants, tough plants | 1 Response

Hypertufa and Stone Container Gardens

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/03/07

The Smallest Gardens Miniature gardens can be very satisfying elements within the small personal landscapes that many of us inhabit. Hypertufa and stone troughs and pots are very versatile planting containers, remaining in place outdoors through all the seasons, and lasting for many years. After a while, when in touch with the earth’s surface and [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged container garden, Corydalis lutea, Corydalis lutea alba, Cymbalaria alba compacta, encrusted saxifrage, fine gardening magazine, Helen Dawson, Hieracium pilosella, hypertufa, Kenilworth Ivy, making planters, Mini Hostas, miniature garden, miniature hostas, north american rock garden society, planting troughs, rock garden society, saxifraga callosa, Saxifraga cuneifolia, saxifraga umbrosa, Saxifrage, shaping planters, silver saxifrage, small garden, stone sink, sustainability, Thalictrum kiusianum, trough, troughs, tufa | 50 Responses

Happy Valentine’s Day……. Love, Earth

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/02/09

A Heartful Potato Plants are not exactly friends, but they’re friendly. This potato was born in a heart shape. It was harvested last year in Newtown, Connecticut at the Sticks and Stones Farm. This farm of moss and stone is a living gallery of ideas and instruction on how to design, build and live with [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance | Tagged potato, sticks and stones farm, valentine, valentine vegetable | Leave a comment

Halloween Orange

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/10/30

An organised colony of mini Pumpkins for You. … Pumpkins in Kindergarten, early 1800s.

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance | Tagged Halloween, orange, Pumpkins | Leave a comment

Long Blooming Hardy Plants : Prizewinning Series 2011

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/08/24

August Awards A First Prize in the category of Longest Blooming, Best Standing Self Sowers goes to: Linaria purpurea (purple) and to Linaria purpurea Canon J. Went (pink) Linaria purpurea Canon J. Went The pink form of this Linaria is named in honor of Canon J. Went (ecumenical), and was his horticultural ‘goal’ plant. This [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts | Tagged easy plants, Linaria Canon Went, linaria pink, linaria purpurea, linaria purpurea canon went, long blooming, long blooming plants, longest blooming, prize winning plants, reliable perennials, roadside plants, self sowing, self sowing plants, street champions, street plants, tough plants | 27 Responses

Euphorbia, Beautiful but Sometimes Dangerous

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/07/06

EUPHORBIA WARNING!!! BE CAREFUL OF THE SAP !!! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ When you trim ANY Euphorbia variety – and there are many lovely ones among the 2000 or so species in the Genus – Be Careful not to get the latex like sap that bleeds from cut stems onto your hands or face ……and Oh my Goodness, [...]

Also posted in Long Blooming Plants, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged deer proof plants, deer repellant plants, Euphorbia, euphorbia allergy, Euphorbia chamaeleon, euphorbia cyparissias, Euphorbia diamond frost, euphorbia dulcis, euphorbia dulcis chameleon, euphorbia graminea, euphorbia graminea diamond frost, euphorbia pulcherrima, euphorbia sap, plant allergy, poinsettia, poinsettia sap, tecnu | 18 Responses

Long Blooming, Self Sowing, Comeback Plants

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/04/10

Prizewinning Naturalising Plants : Annuals and Perennials .Self Sowing Comeback Plants for Zone 5BIt is a good feeling to have some favorite plants that you know are So Happy in your place that they will be coming back of their own accord, year after year, through generations of new individuals. These are your Naturalisers. Some [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts | Tagged Alyssum snow crystals, annuals, annuals come back, California poppy, comeback plants, Corydalis lutea, Corydalis lutea alba, Delosperma cooperei, Eschscholzia californica, euphorbia cyparissias, Gypsophila muralis, Johnny Jumpups, Linaria Canon Went, Lobularia maritima snow crystals, long blooming plants, longblooming plants, longest blooming, Naturalisers, Naturalising, perennials, plants that self sow, prize winning plants, prizewinning plants, self sower, self sowing, self sowing plants, site sowing, subtractive gardening, viola koreana, Viola tricolor | 352 Responses

Fall Tending

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/11/22

Good Housekeeping Tending your gardens thoroughly in fall will help all the winter compositions to show at their best. There shold be nothing to detract from the pictures, even in this season. Most herbaceous plants are trimmed down close to the earth now, but any that still look nice, by flowering or being evergreen, perhaps [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged blowers, compost, December, decomposition, Good Housekeeping, mulch, topdressing, using compost | 5 Responses

November Nor’easter

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/11/14

………………………………………………………………. * The small grove of Maples I pass each late night Today were moon – lit Cross black blue and star white. …………… Nor’easter behind them, Their yellow leaf hands Waved wildly at me, Those last leaves of the stand. ……………… Soon to be fallen, tonight was so dear, “Till next year” we said [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged Corydalis lutea alba, John Novak, Laura Louise Foster, Lincoln Foster, maple poem, Racket Shreve, Rock Gardening, Timmy Foster | 10 Responses

Pumpkins and Other Long Island Characters

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/10/24

Harvest Holiday On 10/10/10 I drove slowly through the Orient Point Park and wildlife reserve, which lies like a ribbon stretched out alongside the Atlantic Ocean at the easternmost tip of Long Island, New York. I was on the lookout for my old friends, the box turtles, who live quietly there (with turtle crossing signs [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Most Popular Posts, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged amagansett food institute, butterfly migration, Cucurbita maxima Jarradale, Cucurbita maxima Moschata, Glover perennials, halloween decorations, Hubbard squash, lavender farm, Long Island Cheese pumpkin, Long Island pumpkins, long island wheat, Marblehead squash, Monarch butterflies, Orient Point, pumpkin farms, pumpkin stories, unusual pumpkins | 178 Responses

Long Blooming Vines: Loniceras

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/10/06

Favorite Long Blooming Vines: Some Prizewinning Honeysuckles If you find a place in each view for one or more kinds of the longest blooming plants, and build your landscape pictures to complement their colors and character, your beds can nearly always be freshly beautiful. These Loniceras are tough and reliable and contribute substantially to a [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts | Tagged climbing plants, climbing structure, climbing vines, favorite vines, flowering vines, fourth of july plant, growing lonicera, growing vines, long blooming, long blooming honeysuckle, long blooming plants, Long Blooming vines, longest blooming, longest blooming vines, Lonicera dropmore scarlet, Lonicera periclymenum Graham Stuart Thomas, lonicera sempevirens dropmore scarlet, native vine, orange plants, orange problems, plant colors, prize winning vines, prizewinning vines, pruning lonicera | 60 Responses

Plant Names and Why They Matter

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/09/30

“Most of us are bored with gossip and photographs of people we do not know. The beginner feels the same way about plants”[1] … The plant scene becomes more interesting when you understand the cast of characters a bit. To develop relationships with the plant players, you will want to get to know them as [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged A Nonsense Botany, beginning gardener, beginning landscape, Botanical names, Christopher Lloyd, Edward Lear, Fletcher Steele, gardenworthy, generic names, Geoffrey Grigson, identifying plants, landscape plant names, landscape plants, Latin names, Michael Dirr, naming plants, oxalis triangularis, plant information, plant names, Plant Names Explained, plant naming, plant varieties, Racket Shreve, species names, taxonomic names | 70 Responses

Plants as Beings

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/09/26

Plants are such dynamic living beings that ‘It’ just never seems to me to be the right pronoun to use in conversational and prose references. As one Horticulturally minded friend has said, “referring to a plant as ‘It’ is absolutely Rude” For fun, try referring to particular plants, shrubs and trees too, as ‘he or [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged Jennifer Pederson, papaver rupifragum, plant friends, plant names, plant pronouns | 35 Responses

Growing Your Own Moss

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/09/19

ESTABLISHING MOSS If you have Moss and you want to encourage it, or you are bringing some into your land………. Choose or create an ecology like the one in which your moss was originally thriving. Look for clues as to the favored habitat of your particular candidates. Think about the soil and exposure around each [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Most Popular Posts, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged biophilia, choosing moss, E.O. Wilson, gathering moss, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, growing moss, local moss, moss, moss growing, mosses, new england moss, propagating moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer | 61 Responses

Mosses You are Likely to Meet

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/09/01

Accurately labeled, this display identifies many of the prevalent resident mosses of New England so that they can introduce themselves to you. Once you know the name of the kind you are curious about, you can find out more about it with the help of Google. I wanted you to know the names of these [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Most Popular Posts, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged Annie Stiefel, buy moss, identifying moss, moss, moss garden, moss information, moss names, mosses, Newtown Connecticut, sticks and stones farm, Tim Currier | 96 Responses

Encouragement

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/08/23

The Tuft of Flowers ………………………..Robert Frost I went to turn the grass once after one Who mowed it in the dew before the sun. The dew was gone that made his blade so keen Before I came to view the leveled scene. I looked for him behind an isle of trees; I listened for his [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged .Robert Frost, Tuft of Flowers | 14 Responses

Propagating your Clematis

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/08/02

Certain methods of propagation are so simple that it would be a shame not to use them. If you take a stem or branch of some cherished woody plant, bend it down and bury it a few inches (or more) in the ground adjacent to the parent, you will have a good chance of getting [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged gardeners edge.com, layering clematis, multiplying clematis, multiplying vines, propagating clematis, Rooting Horomone | 60 Responses

Pruning Your Clematis

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/08/01

Prune After Flowering. This is the the General rule for all Clematis, as it is for most plant materials. But When After? This is the Question that has the Longer Answer, but the shortcut to remembering easily what to do and not to do is contained in this rhyme : CONCERNING FALL CLEANUP “If it [...]

Also posted in Garden Making Guidance, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged choosing clematis, clematis, early clematis, late clematis, long blooming clematis, Long Blooming vines, pruning clematis, training clematis | 51 Responses

The Longest Blooming Clematis of my Acquaintance