Thursday, April 23, 2009

Challenge: Six plants I can't live without!

My favorite garden writer/blogger Country Gardener - has extended the challenge to write about the Six plants you can't live without.
You would think that would be rather easy - but it is too difficult to really narrow it down, so I have picked the following (after I stopped thinking too much about it because that kept me awake last night!):
My very favorite flowering plants provide hope and promise at the first signs of spring. All the spring flowers are beautiful, yet the Snowdrop (Galanthus) is my favorite.
The European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is the national tree of my native Denmark and a late spring day in the forest is just like the picture - maybe with an added carpet of wild anemones. The light shining through the canopy is like a magic lamp as the leaves are stretched out in almost vertical blankets. During the summer the leaves turn a darker green and in autumn the golden brown is like nothing else. Did you know that the leaves are edible?
I believe that the Nordman fir (Abies nordmanniana) is the cadillac of Christmas trees. I love its shape - open with almost horizontal branches that on older, larger trees will curve gracefully. They have a couple of very large specimens at the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens.
Another favourite bloomer is the Siberian Iris (Iris siberica). I have quite a few of the above blue variety and even though each flower is short lived, it blooms for awhile during late spring as the buds open along the stems. After flowering the grass-like foliage stays fresh and green all summer.
I never liked most rose bushes - I think the plant itself is ugly - but those flowers!! There are many beautiful (and also some climbers whose "frame" is good looking too), but I will choose the floribunda rose Iceberg (Rosa 'Iceberg') which was bred in Germany in 1958 and marketed under the name "Schneewittchen" which means Snow White. The buds have a light pink tint and the flower is almost completely white. It blooms all summer and the foliage is a healthy dark green. When I am ready to put in a rose garden, this one will be the first on my list.
Not much as soothing with the ability to make me feel good as my meadow (hey field) with different grasses, clover, trifoil, ox-eye daisies and more. That's not really "A plant" so the ornamental grasses will make up number six.
I can't pick just one, but here is a lovely summer pic of the early plumes of my Pampas grass (I think - but I don't know for sure) on a sunny summer day last year.
Thank you Yvonne, for challenging us - this was fun.

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting plants you've chosen. I'm very fond of beech trees too, but I can't grow roses at all, as we have too many Japanese beetles in our area.

    I have added a link to your post in my orginal post. Thanks for taking up the challenge.

    Cheers/Yvonne

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