Apologies to the Abeliophyllum

In my last post I was extremely miserly with my praise of this early flowering bush - and I admit that I'd completely missed the boat with the most wonderful feature of this shrub - its scent. When I was cleaning up the garden bed I took off a couple of small branches, trimmed them back and put them in a bud vase beside my bed. I was overwhelmed with the lovely sweet fragrance that completely filled the room.

Here it is growing in a dry corner bed under a large eastern white pine that has been amended with compost. It took me a couple of years to figure out how to prune it properly, but I finally figured it out. I like to select branches to remove from the base of the plant so that it remains an open natural looking shrub. Basically it should be pruned the same way as a Forsythia - no cubing, canning or muffinizing permitted!

If I had a large garden I'd be tempted to plant several now that I'm a convert. Abeliophyllum appears to want to sucker and left alone would probably provide a pretty white/pink thicket of flowers that would look terrific against a evergreen border - or naturalized in an open forest situation.

Shade Perennials from Seed

Over the years I've started a number of shade perennials from seed. Here is one of my favourities: Symphyandra hoffmanii. It grows to 60 cm in height and width, has lovely white bell-shaped flowers and simply blooms its little brains out. In fact, the plant may act like a biennial and die at the end of the second year, but fear not - there will be a tonne of seed that you can let fall, or share with friends. Symphyandra grows in either sun or shade and also can handle very dry and hot weather without looking the least bit wilted. It is almost annual-like in its period of bloom - once it starts at the end of June, I have blossoms often right into September. I got my seed from Gardens North outside of Ottawa and see that they still offer it. Its an easy germinator and will reward you with lots of flowers with hardly any effort at all - what could be better?