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Assistant Director of Public Programs Laurel Rimmer highlights what’s new in the gardens this week.
It’s hard to keep up with what’s in bloom in the Palm House this time of year—by the time we draft a bloom list, the display has already changed. It’s enough for the harried garden interpreter to throw out pencil and clipboard in distress. Gardener Susannah Strazzera is in charge of the display in the Palm House, bringing out new plants from our growing areas in back and tweaking the arrangement of the plants currently on view. Each corner of the greenhouse has a theme, with colors and textures in both flowers and foliage carefully considered, and pots staged in levels to show them to their best advantage.
This week, our large (and deliciously fragrant) variegated lemon is dressed up with colorful pots of Moraea ochroleuca, one of the many South African natives featured in this greenhouse in late winter and early spring.
The northeast corner is vibrant with the fiery colors of Clivia miniata and Mimulus aurantiacus, shown to perfection against large-leaved Acanthus mollis ‘New Zealand Gold’.
While many of these blooms are fleeting, a graceful Cyrtanthus species on the window sill produces tubular flowers for months.
Out on the grounds, it’s easy to get distracted by the dizzying display of flowering trees and shrubs, but be sure to look down to see some fascinating flora at ground level.
Check out the pair of shots below. On the left, an Asian ginger Asarum maximum ‘Green Panda’ flaunts its fascinating brownish-purple flowers in the Shade Border; the same species, shown below right, is in full bloom in the T. H. Everett Alpine House.
Our old shadbush (Amelanchier canadensis) is showing its delicate white flowers in the Wild Garden; look down at its feet to see the claw-like stems of Arisaema ringens emerging from the ground, show below in the last shot here. Check back in a month or so to see this robust jack-in-the-pulpit in bloom.
Wave Hill Horticultural Interpreters offer highlights of what’s blooming now in the gardens. Photo credit: Betsy Ginn.
More delicate in appearance than other members of the protea family, the lavender grevillea is native to southeast Australia. The foliage and habit is very similar to lavender, but the flowers are quite different. The cultivar ‘Penola’ has dark red blooms that have graced the Palm House for many weeks this winter. Look for it in the Palm House, the central space in Wave Hill’s Marco Polo Stufano Conservatory.
Marilyn Young is the Horticulture Assistant at Wave Hill.
We love Lotus, even when it is not blooming. A Canary Island native, this tender perennial in a classic terracotta urn has trailing stems of delicate, silvery blue leaflets. When it blooms, as it is now, Wave Hill gardener Nancy Talley tells me visitors stop in their tracks. Nancy’s bailiwick, by the way, includes the Palm House in the Marco Polo Stufano Conservatory, the Conifer Slope below Wave Hill House and the plantings around Glyndor House and Wave Hill House.
The flame-colored, sweet pea-shaped flowers set this calm and elegant container ablaze like a plant on fire. Right now it can be seen just inside the doorway to the Palm House. Later it may be moved out to the Flower Garden, or perhaps on the platform behind the Potting Shed. These wonderful portraits were taken by Wave Hill Gardener Susannah Strazzera.
