Plants I Love That Deer Ignore: Mountain Laurel

Mountain Laurel, Kalmia latifolia

I love finding mountain laurel growing in large, lovely masses in the wild.  Its creamy pink flowers glow softly in the forest.  Wild mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, sometimes covers the undeveloped banks of creeks and rivers in Eastern Virginia.  It grows as an understory shrub in our oak and pine forests. 

These evergreen, wild looking shrubs, almost small trees, simply blend into the fabric of the woods through much of the year before bursting into bloom in late April and early May, suddenly elegant and beautiful.  Wild mountain laurel usually has white or pink flowers.  Some cultivars in the nursery trade have been selected for darker flowers of purple, red or maroon.  Ours are probably wild ones, since most of the flowers are white.

Early American botanists first recorded mountain laurel, then called “Spoonwood,” in 1624.  Carl Linnaeus named the shrub for Peter Kalm, a Swede, who explored eastern North America in search of new and useful plants in 1747-51.  Mountain laurel, one of the most ornamental native plants growing along the east coast of North America, was collected by Kalm to export to gardeners in Europe. 

Mountain laurel grows from Maine to Florida in Zones 5-9.  It even grows east along the Gulf Coast from western Florida to eastern Louisiana. But it isn’t generally found near the coast south of Virginia.  It prefers the coolness of the mountains, and its southern range moves ever further west, at elevation, following the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains.

Mountain laurel, part of the Ericacea family of plants, is related more closely to blueberries than to bay laurel, which is native to Europe.  It prefers moist, acidic soil and requires at least partial shade.  Although the shrubs flower more abundantly in bright shade than deep, Kalmia don’t like growing in full sun where summers grow hot.  These plants are best mulched, and fertilized, with shredded leaves, pine straw or pine bark mulch.

Read More on Our Forest Garden

Mountain Laurel, April 2017

Sunday Dinner: “A Discipline With a Deadline”

~

“Butterflies used to reproduce

on the native plants that grew in our yards

before the plants were bulldozed and replaced with lawn.

To have butterflies in our future,

we need to replace those lost host plants,

no if’s, and’s or but’s.

If we do not, butterfly populations

will continue to decline

with every new house that is built.”

.

Douglas Tallamy

~

~

“We were the product and beneficiary

of a vibrant natural world,

rather than its master.”

.

  Douglas W. Tallamy

~

~

“Knowledge generates interest,

and interest generates compassion.”

.

  Douglas W. Tallamy

~

~

“We can no longer afford

to consider air and water common property,

free to be abused by anyone

without regard to the consequences.

Instead, we should begin now

to treat them as scarce resources,

which we are no more free to contaminate

than we are free to throw garbage

into our neighbor’s yard.”

.

  Douglas W. Tallamy

~

~

“Our privately owned land

and the ecosystems upon it are essential

to everyone’s well-being, not just our own.

Abusing land anywhere has negative ramifications

for people everywhere.”

.

  Douglas W. Tallamy

~

~

“My point is this:

each of the acres we have developed for specific human goals

is an opportunity to add to Homegrown National Park.

We already are actively managing

nearly all of our privately owned lands

and much of the public spaces in the United States.

We simply need to include ecological function

in our management plans

to keep the sixth mass extinction at bay.”

.

  Douglas W. Tallamy

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

.

“Conservation biology . . .

[is] a discipline with a deadline.”

.

E. O. Wilson

~

~

To Learn More (These books should top the reading list of every serious naturalist and gardener…. Woodland Gnome)

Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens by Douglas W. Tallamy

Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy

 

 

Sunday Dinner: Cycles

~

“Every good thing comes to some kind of end,

and then the really good things

come to a beginning again.”

.

Cory Doctorow

~

~

“Time has a way of eternally looping us

in the same configurations.

Like fruit flies, we are unable to register the patterns.

Just because we are the crest of the wave

does not mean the ocean does not exist.

What has been before will be again.”

.

Tanya Tagaq

~

~

“It’s all a series of serendipities
with no beginnings and no ends.
Such infinitesimal possibilities
Through which love transcends.”

.

Ana Claudia Antunes

~

~

“What was scattered
gathers.
What was gathered
blows away.”

.

Heraclitus

~

~

“I think that to one in sympathy with nature,

each season, in turn,

seems the loveliest.”

.

Mark Twain

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019

~

~

“People can’t live with change

if there’s not a changeless core

inside them.”
.

Stephen R. Covey

 

Sunday Dinner: Time and Time Again

~

“There are those of us who learn to live completely in the moment.

For such people the Past vanishes and the future loses meaning.

There is only the Present…

And then there are those of us who are trapped in yesterdays,

in the memory of a lost love, or a childhood home,

or a dreadful crime.

And some people live only for a better tomorrow;

for them the past ceases to exist”

.

Salaman Rushdie

~

~

“You never know beforehand what people are capable of,

you have to wait, give it time,

it’s time that rules, time is our gambling partner

on the other side of the table

and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand,

we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives.”

.

José Saramago

~

~

“Measuring time isn’t as simple

as adding or subtracting minutes from a clock…

You must find your own measuring stick.”

.

Lindsay Eagar

~

The Williamsburg Botanical Garden

~

“Brass shines with constant usage,

a beautiful dress needs wearing,

Leave a house empty, it rots.”

.

Ovid

~

~

“Spend one more day

in pursuit of art that only you can produce,

and somewhere, someone

is envying your courage to do just that.”

.

Teresa R. Funke

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019

~

~

“Everything passes,

but nothing entirely goes away.”
.

Jenny Diski

 

Fabulous Friday: Bonus Days

~

Winter is already closing in on so many parts of the country, bringing snow to areas where the leaves haven’t even fallen.  With less than a week left in October, every soft, warm, late autumn day feels like a bonus day on the season.

~

~

It has looked like rain all day, with only an occasional glimpse of sunshine breaking through the gloom; perfect weather to putter around outside.  And ‘putter’ is a good description of the bits and pieces I’ve strung together to make a day.

I’m in process of digging Caladiums.  It is always tricky to catch them before they fade away, leaving no trace of where their plump rhizomes lie buried.  But just as they leaf out on their own varietal schedules, so they fade according to their own rhythms, too.

While many in pots still look very presentable, and I’m procrastinating on digging them, others have already slipped away.  I need to sit awhile and study photos of their plantings to dig in the right places to recover them.

~

~

A gardening friend and I were puttering together yesterday, at the Botanical Garden.  I was digging Caladiums as she was planting Violas.  I was digging Caladiums from her bed, and she gently suggested that I not waste too much energy digging until I knew I was in the ‘right’ spot.  That was good advice, and gave me a good reason to dig less and chat more.

Today hasn’t been much more productive, I’m afraid.  Until the forecast calls for colder night time temps, I won’t feel motivated to begin hauling in the pots and baskets.

And yet the signs of autumn are all around in the brown, crinkly leaves skirting the drive and softly gathering on the lawn.  Bare branches come into view all around the garden, as their leafy garments slip away for another season.

~

~

Instead, I’m watering, admiring.  I spent a while potting up Arum tubers in the basement, and planting Violas from their 6 packs into little pots, to grow them on.

These are the bonus days when I can daydream about where I’ll plant them, even as summer’s geraniums and Verbena shine again with their vivid cool weather blooms.

~

~

It is a relief, quite honestly.  The plants have perked up in the cooler, damper weather of the last two weeks.  The Alocasias are sending up new, crisp leaves.  The Mexican Petunias bloom purple as the pineapple sage proudly unfurls scarlet bloom after scarlet bloom.

~

~

Every sort of little bee and wasp covered the Salvias yesterday, reveling in warm sunshine and abundant nectar.  A brilliant yellow Sulphur butterfly lazed its way from plant to plant, bed to bed, and I found some fresh cats here and there.

The Monarchs are still here, though I’ve not seen a hummingbird since early October.  Perhaps they have already flown south.

~

~

Like a band playing one more encore, reluctant for the evening to end, and then leaving the stage to party on with friends; I’m reluctant to admit the season is nearly done.  I don’t want to rush it away, in my haste to prepare for the coming winter.

It is a calculation of how many hours, days, weeks might be left of bonus time, before the first frost destroys all of the tenderness of our autumn garden.

~

~

I’ve been content to admire it all today, and make a few efforts to prepare for the changes to come.

Flocks of goldfinches gather in the upper garden, feasting on ripe black-eyed Susan and basil seeds left standing.  Pairs of cardinals gather in the shrubs, sometimes peering in the kitchen window or searching for tasty morsels in the pots on the patio; sociable and familiar now in these shorter, cooler days.

~

~

We rarely have frost until November, here in coastal Virginia.  But colder weather is on its way.  Snow this week in Texas, and Oklahoma, and a cold front on the move promise changes ahead.   I’m hoping that we’ll have a few more sweet bonus days, before ice transforms our garden’s beauty into its bony, frost kissed shadow.

~

Begonias and ferns sparkle in today’s dim sun, enjoying another day in the garden before coming indoors for winter.

~

Woodland Gnome 2019

“The strangeness of Time.

Not in its passing, which can seem infinite,

like a tunnel whose end you can’t see,

whose beginning you’ve forgotten,

but in the sudden realization

that something finite, has passed,

and is irretrievable.”

.

Joyce Carol Oates

Fabulous Friday:  Happiness is contagious. Let’s infect one another.

Sunday Dinner: Hang Tight….

~

“Once you make a decision,

the universe conspires to make it happen.”

.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

~

~

“You may be the only person left who believes in you,

but it’s enough.

It takes just one star

to pierce a universe of darkness.

Never give up.”

.

Richelle E. Goodrich

~

~

“The difference between a successful person

and others

is not a lack of strength,

not a lack of knowledge,

but rather a lack in will.”

.

Vince Lombardi

~

~

“F-E-A-R has two meanings:

‘Forget Everything And Run’ or

‘Face Everything And Rise.’

The choice is yours.”

.

Zig Ziglar

~

~

“The thing about a hero,

is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,

he’s going to keep digging,

he’s going to keep trying to do right

and make up for what’s gone before,

just because that’s who he is.”

.

Joss Whedon

~

~

“You can have anything you want

if you want it badly enough.

You can be anything you want to be,

do anything you set out to accomplish

if you hold to that desire

with singleness of purpose.”

.

Abraham Lincoln

~

~

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance.

The wise grows it under his feet.”

.

James Oppenheim

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019

.

Dedicated to loved ones, who live this each and every day.

~

~

“I am not anxious to be the loudest voice

or the most popular.

But I would like to think that at a crucial moment,

I was an effective voice of the voiceless,

an effective hope of the hopeless.”
.

Whitney M. Young Jr.

~

At Work or at Play? Hummingbird Moth

~

“This is the real secret of life –

– to be completely engaged

with what you are doing in the here and now.

And instead of calling it work,

realize it is play.”

.

Alan Watts

~

~

“The best way to not feel hopeless

is to get up and do something.

Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.

If you go out and make some good things happen,

you will fill the world with hope,

you will fill yourself with hope.”

.

Barack Obama

~

~

“Without ambition one starts nothing.

Without work one finishes nothing.

The prize will not be sent to you.

You have to win it.”

.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

~

~

“Your purpose in life

is to find your purpose

and give your whole heart and soul to it”

.

Buddha

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019

~

~

“Pleasure in the job

puts perfection in the work.”
.

Aristotle

Photos are of a hummingbird moth, Hemaris thysbe, feeding on Lantana camara ‘Chapel Hill Yellow’ at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden September 2, 2019.

Sunday Dinner: Exercise of Imagination

~

“What I’ve always found interesting in gardens

is looking at what people choose to plant there.

What they put in. What they leave out.

One small choice and then another,

and soon there is a mood,

an atmosphere, a series of limitations,

a world.”

.

Helen Humphreys

~

~

“When tended the right way,

beauty multiplies.”

.

Shannon Wiersbitzky,

~

~

“Humility, and the most patient perseverance,

seem almost as necessary in gardening

as rain and sunshine,

and every failure must be used

as a stepping-stone

to something better.”

.

Elizabeth von Arnim

~

~

“It is only our limited time frame

that creates the whole “natives versus exotics” controversy.

Wind, animals, sea currents, and continental drift

have always dispersed species into new environments…

The planet has been awash in surging, swarming species movement

since life began.

The fact that it is not one great homogeneous tangled weed lot

is persuasive testimony to the fact

that intact ecosystems are very difficult to invade.”

.

Toby Hemenway

~

~

“I’d love to see a new form of social security …

everyone taught how to grow their own;

fruit and nut trees planted along every street,

parks planted out to edibles,

every high rise with a roof garden,

every school with at least one fruit tree

for every kid enrolled.”

.

Jackie French

~

~

“Dandelions, like all things in nature,

are beautiful

when you take the time

to pay attention to them.”

.

June Stoyer

~

~

“Gardening is like landscape painting to me.

The garden is the canvas.

Plants, containers and other garden features

are the colors. I paint on the garden of canvas

hoping to create a master piece with my colors.”

.

Ama H.Vanniarachchy

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019

~

“Half the interest of the garden

is the constant exercise of the imagination.”

.

Mrs. C.W. Earle

~

~

“A visitor to a garden sees the successes, usually.

The gardener remembers mistakes and losses,

some for a long time,

and imagines the garden in a year,

and in an unimaginable future.”
.

W.S. Merwin

~

Six on Saturday: Portraits

~

Our garden buzzes and hums with the voices of hundreds of hungry bees and wasps.

~

~

The butterflies silently float by, elusive and aloof.  A dragonfly lights on a petal, watching me, patiently posing while I take his portrait.

Our garden is filled with such beauty this week.  We are enjoying the butterflies and bunnies, expanding perennials, trees clothed in their summer colors, expanding ferns and flowers.  Oh, so many flowers opening each day.

~

~

As we celebrate the summer solstice, our garden is still becoming fuller and fuller with each passing day.  Vines grow so fast we wonder whether they are under some magical, summertime spell.  Clusters of grapes on their wild vines swell, well out of reach, in the tops of some dogwood and rose of Sharon trees.  Our family of cardinals swoops through the garden, clearly playing tag, and watching for the opportune snack.

~

~

I wander about with my camera, trying to capture a portrait here and there to savor the beauty unfolding all around us.  It is so much bigger and more expansive than my tiny lens will capture.  And so I focus on the details, the tiny bits of beauty we might otherwise overlook.

Here are six portraits from our garden today.

~

~

Woodland Gnome 2019

~

~

“When magic through nerves and reason passes,
Imagination, force, and passion will thunder.
The portrait of the world is changed.”
.

Dejan Stojanovic

Many thanks to the wonderful ‘Six on Saturday’ meme sponsored by The Propagator.

 

Fabulous Friday: Floods of Rain

Native sweetbay Magnolia virginiana, in bloom this week at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden, fills the garden entrance with its musky perfume.

~

This Friday dawned humid and grey, and I set out as soon as we finished a quick breakfast to meet a friend at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden.  While I am all about the plants, she is all about the cats and butterflies.  Today, she was hunting for a few special cats to use in her upcoming program  at our local library  about protecting butterflies and providing habitat for their next generations.

We checked all of the usual host plants: Asclepias,, spicebush, Wisteria, fennel, Passiflora vines, and parsley.  We weren’t equipped to check out the canopies of the garden’s host trees, like the paw paw or the oaks, but we were left empty-handed. There were no caterpillars that we could find today.

~

A Zebra Swallowtail butterfly enjoys the Verbena bonariensis at the WBG last week.  Its host plant is the native paw paw tree.

~

In this peaceful nectar and host plant rich environment, where are the butterflies and their young?  We both happily snapped photos of interesting views and blooms as we searched, took care of a few chores together, and then she was off.

By then the first Master Naturalist gardeners had arrived.  All of us had one eye to the sky and another on our ‘to-do’ lists.

~

Native Asclepias tuberosa is one of the Asclepias varieties that Monarch butterflies seek out as a host plant to lay their eggs.

~

I have great admiration and affection for the Master Naturalists who work at the WBG, and I appreciate the opportunity to ask questions when they are around.  I hope to join their ranks one year soon.  The course is rigorous and the standards high, and the volunteer work they do throughout our area is invaluable.

~

This is our native Carolina wild petunia, Ruellia caroliniensis, that blooms near the gate at the WBG. 

~

One of the Master Naturalists was also working on an inventory of butterflies in the garden today.   He checked out all of the tempting nectar plants from Verbena to Lantana, the Asclepias to his blooming herbs, the pollinator beds of native flowers, the various Salvias and Agastache.  Where were the butterflies today?

~

Native spiderwort, Tradescantia ohiensis, also grows near the garden’s gate.

~

I had the constant company of bees buzzing around my knees and ankles as I climbed into a border to weed and deadhead.

But no Zebra Swallowtails danced among the Verbena.  Not a single butterfly fed on the Salvias where I was working.  A Monarch showed itself briefly and promptly disappeared.  We observed the heavy, humid air and decided they must be sheltering against the coming rain.

~

Native Iris virginica blooming last week at the WBG.

~

But as the storm grew closer, there wasn’t much time for sociability today.  We could hear the thunder rumbling off in the distance as we weeded, cut enthusiastic plants back, potted and chatted with garden visitors.

My partner kept an eye on the radar maps at home and phoned in updates.  When he gave the final ‘five minute warning!’ it was nearly noon, and the rain began as I headed back to my car.  It was a good morning’s work and I left with the ‘to do’ list completed.

~

Seedpods ripen on the sweetbay Magnolia

~

But the rain has been a constant presence this afternoon, falling loudly and insistently all around us.  There are flood warnings, the ground is saturated, and I am wondering how high the water might rise on local roads and along the banks of the James and its feeder creeks.  It has been a wet year for many.

~

The James River last week, before this last heavy rain brought it even higher.

~

There was a timely message from the James River Association in my inbox.  The river is brown with run-off, and has been for a while now.  They are encouraging folks to address run-off issues on their properties.  The best advice there is, “Plant more plants!”  But of course, the right plants in the right places!  Successful plants help manage stormwater; dying ones, not so much.

~

I use both rock and hardwood mulch in our garden at home to help protect the soil during heavy rains. This is a native oakleaf Hydrangea in bloom.

~

Rain gardens are encouraged to catch the run-off and allow it to slowly percolate into the earth instead of running off so quickly.  There are programs available that help plan and fund new rain gardens to protect local water  quality.

Where there is no good spot for a rain garden, then terraces help on slopes like ours, and solid plantings of shrubs and perennials help to slow the flow of water downhill towards the creeks.

Most anything that covers the bare soil helps with erosion.  But deeply rooted plants help hold the soil while also soaking up the water and allowing it to evaporate back into the atmosphere through their leaves.

~

Groundcover plants, like this golden creeping Jenny, also hold and protect the soil.  Our Crinum lily is ready to bloom.  This hardy Amaryllis relative gets a bit larger each year as its already huge bulb calves off pups.

~

We’ve been watching flooding news roll in from all over the region this afternoon.  Streets and sidewalks underwater, cars floating away, and families chased indoors by the weather.  It looks like a wet stretch coming, too.

I’m glad have a new garden book, The Thoughtful Gardener by Jinny Blom waiting for me; the prose is as inspiring as the photographs.  I love seeing how other gardeners plant and how they think about their planting.  There is always more to learn.

Once these flooding rains subside and the soil drains a bit, I expect to be back outside and “Planting more plants!”

~

~

Woodland Gnome 2019

Fabulous Friday:  Happiness is Contagious; Let’s infect one another!

~

Echinacea, purple coneflower, delights pollinators and goldfinches  in our forest garden.