OT: direction from which you see plants

4 years ago

A couple of days ago I was looking down from above the shade garden at a still-bare flowering ash, and thinking how shabby it looked with its dried seed clusters. Normally I don't notice this, though I'm well aware the seed clusters are there. When I walk among the flowering ash trees in the woods, I admire instead their smooth, silvery gray trunks and, looking closer, the heavy gray buds of the coming leaves. They're a handsome tree from this perspective, and the seeds aren't an aesthetic problem as they would be if the flowering ashes were, say, a street tree with nothing much else in the way of plants going on around them.

The Rock, a largeish outcropping in one of the fields, has the largest laburnums I've ever seen, and come spring they bloom magnificently. But I found out last year, which, like now, was blessed/cursed with a sunny spring, that the yellow clusters of blooms show up poorly against a bright blue sky. The laburnums are on the top of the outcropping; they're big; I looked up at them perforce from below. They need a dark background of sober green foliage, or buildings, or cloudy sky, or stone, to reveal their beauty.

This is true for the yellow Lady Banks rose as well. I have two plants of this growing up trees in the woods at the edge of the shade garden. What a fine idea; except that the shiny green foliage and little pale yellow blooms lose all effect in sunny weather, vanishing among the twinkling leaves of the deciduous trees and against the blue sky. The three ramblers that have found their way up the two Leyland cypresses down in the big garden show to better effect. Hope springing eternal in the human breast as it does, I hope that in time the ramblers I've planted between the Italian cypresses that define the main Allée, will one day be big enough--the cypresses, too--that I can train the one up the other.

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Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
Original Author

4 years ago

Bart, it isn't yellow in itself, though. Lord knows lesser celandine (Ficaria verna) is bright enough, as you'll know if it grows in your garden; or dandelions, which make quite a statement to those who don't want them in the grass. Not even roses, for there is no yellow more saturated than that of Rosa foetida, and there are many good strong yellows in garden roses, most of which are larger than R. banksiae's dainty rosettes. But, like me, you grow roses in an open space, where there are no solid surfaces and few dense ones; or, at least that's how I imagine your garden. I would very much like to see it, as it happens, but, like me, you don't take photos, do you? I would like to see the conditions you started with, which sound very like mine, and the solutions you've found to make a garden out of them.

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Comments (7)

User
4 years ago
Well said, Melissa.Probably the main reason why I have no interest in yellow flowers-roses in particular-is for the reason you mention when writing of Lady Banks...
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mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)
4 years ago
My computer desk sits in a corner of the family room, which sits on top of a walk-out basement. So I look out over the side yard from about ten feet in the air. The bamboo that surrounds the deck is overwhelmingly dense at ground level, but at my level it is light, airy, and almost always in motion. The magnolia on the far side of the yard is almost 15 ft high, and is still something I look down on. Things look a lot more floriferous from above.

Right now I'm looking at a snow white Christmas rose in the backyard. Since the trees is grows under have several weeks before they leaf out, the usual shade is absent. When the sun comes out, the white shines, and it is hard to look elsewhere. It is currently late afternoon and cloudy, but the white still shines. It outdoes the snowdrops, which usually take a trip out for close up examination.
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
Original Author
4 years ago
That's nice, mad_gallica! And you still have spring to look forward to. Here it already feels like May, unfortunately.
mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)
4 years ago
Snowdrops mark the beginning of spring. Years ago, I preferred winter aconite because after months of white snow, white flowers seemed anti-climactic. Yellow was new, different, exciting! However, the winter aconite just sits there, spreading only slowly, while the snowdrops jump cheerfully from spot to spot, leaping large shrubberies, dancing around trees, and even venturing into the lawn. It's a trait they are beginning to share with the early crocuses. I, being the human, put the crocuses in the lawn. Something else insists on moving them. So the crocuses are in the iris bed, mixed with the snowdrops, and apparently spreading.

This year, March did not come in like a lion, but like a polar bear. We got about as much snow in early March as we had all winter. March snow isn't a rarity by any means, but snow that stays around for a while is. Aside from the occasional flurry, we should be done with snow for this winter. The first roses, the early Chinese yellows, usually start around May 1st. They don't care what March brings. April is the month that determines when the show starts.
jacqueline9CA
4 years ago
Sometimes the changing view is not because your position changes, but because the garden changes. When we took out 2 enormous bushes and my DH made me a new garden right across the driveway from the house, I could suddenly see the new garden from several windows in several different rooms. However, as it was just starting to be planted, it was a pleasant view, but not really beautiful yet. That all changed in the last week. At the back of that garden (ie, furthest away from our house), actually beyond the fence around it, is a sort of arbor structure on which I have been growing Fortune's Double Yellow for 10+ years. Before we took out the bushes, you had to walk around them and down a path to see FDY when it was blooming, and then you could only look up at it from about 3 feet away. Now it is suddenly in full bloom, and I can see it "straight on" from every room on that side of the house. It is gorgeous, and makes my day every time I look at it. The sun is not up yet, but when it is I will take a picture and post it on here.

Jackie
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8 thanked jacqueline9CA
jacqueline9CA
4 years ago
I decided to start a different thread about Fortune's Double Yellow, but it is certainly also about the direction from which you see plants!

Jackie