Bulletin - July 1956 - North American Rock Garden Society

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78 AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETYbut we got along fine. The bath boy mounted his bike and rode in front of usout to the road; we tried to tip him, but he refused.We then headed south to Kyoto, the only large city in Japan not bombedduring the war. It is a lovely old city with four hundred Buddhist temples andshrines, and the summer palace of the emperor. The azaleas went right along withus, A. mollis this time, in yellows, oranges, and brick reds.(To be continued)SOME ATTRACTIVEPETER P. KRIEGER, Princeton,ALLIUMSIowa.Too often we think of the alliums only as strong-smelling onions or garlic,but among the three hundred members of this genus we find some excellentmaterial for our rock gardens. All alliums are of the easiest culture, as long aswe provide them with fairly rich and loamy soil. Most of them like a sunnyposition among the rocks, and all are propagated by either division or seed.First let us look among our native wild onions. Here we have A Ilium canadensewith its grass-like leaves and pale lavender flowers on twelve inch stems,blooming in late spring. A. cernuum enjoys a sunny or half shady ledge in ourrock garden in neutral or somewhat acid soil. The nodding pale lilac flowersbloom in summer on foot-high stems. A. tricoccum is our woodleek. The leaves,resembling those of Convallaria majalis, are more ornamental than the clustersof small white flowers. This species prefers a partly shady position in rich,neutral and moist soil, A. stellatum is especially useful in the rock garden,because its lilac flowers come when most of our other rock garden subjects arethrough blooming. Nothoscordum bivalve is a garlic without the objectionablegarlic scent. The star-shaped white flowers with yellow eye come on eight ornine inch stems.The European and Asiatic alliums supply us with many fine rock gardensubjects. A. karataviense, a native of Turkey with white flowers, and A. victorialiswith greenish flowers, a native of eastern Europe and Asia, are rathertall growing plants and suitable for only the larger rock gardens.Among the smaller species is the little yellow flowered A. flavum fromsouthern Europe, which blooms in our gardens in June. Another worthwhileEuropean plant for our collection of alliums is the pink flowering A. valdense,just a little taller than the preceding and blooming somewhat earlier. Both areexcellent for the smaller rock garden. Some of the earlier flowering ones areA. rosenbachianutn with its rose colored flowers and the white flowering A.triquetrum. Earliest of all is A. ursinum: this harbinger of spring greets usin early April with its pure white flowers.Allium azureum from Siberia and the lower growing A. cyaneum, a Chinesenative, provide us with pure blue flowers in June. A. moly with bright yellowflowers, a southern European, blooms here in <strong>July</strong>. A. narcissiflorum is a beautywith rose colored bell-shaped flowers in nodding umbels on stems of about a foot.For many years we have had A. oreophilum with purple flowers blooming on topof a double dry wall in our old rock garden. Another fine southern European isthe white flowering A. neapolitanum. A. ostrowskyanum is a Turkish native withcarmine flowers.Some of the British catalogs are listing many more members of the onionfamily whose acquaintance I have yet to make. All of the species mentioned inthis article have been tested and found perfectly winter hardy in our midwesternclimate.
AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY 79THE VERONICA TRIBE( Continued)WILL INGWERSEN, East Grinstead,EnglandT> EFORE CONTINUING, and concluding, the tale of veronica, space must be foundfor an apology. I observe with shame that it was in the January 1955BULLETIN that I wrote "to be continued" at the end of the first half of thisarticle. It was no lack of interest in either veronicas or the A.R.G.S. whichcaused the hiatus, but an exceptionally busy season during which much importantwork has had to be shelved. A recent visit from Mr. Harold Epstein, who soindefatigably employs the rolling wheel and soaring wing to carry him hitherand thither over the world in search of plants, reminded me that something mustbe done. As always, I vastly enjoyed his visit and that of his equally energeticwife, who was suffering from an acute attack of "floral indigestion."The older I become, the less faith do I have in my own knowledge, andmore and more critically do I question any horticultural dogma. It has so oftenbeen said that trees, shrubs and plants flower more freely after a hot, dry summerand autumn that it has come to be accepted as fact. It has been widely observedin Britain this summer, following the almost sunless summers of 1953 and 1954,that there has been an unsurpassed abundance of blossom, and this applied toVeronicas equally with many other plants. V. gibbsii, a neat little evergreen shrubfrom New Zealand, with small, waxy, grey leaves, has smothered its nine totwelve inch bushlets with clusters of small white flowers, although it is normallynot so prodigal.V. gigantea I have never grown. It comes from Chatham Island, and fewplants from there are hardy enough to endure a Sussex Winter, although someof them are successfully grown in the western counties and in one or two favoured,and usually frost-free, areas on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland. V. giganteais said to make a tree up to twenty or thirty feet tall, with long racemes ofwhite flowers, and would be a decorative subject for those fortunate enough tobe able to grow it.V. guthrieana is a supposed hybrid owning V. fruticans as one of its parents.I have known and grown it for many years as a dwarf shrub of the easiest culture,with rather nice clear blue flowers. V. fruticans itself, which I omitted from itsproper alphabetical position, is a rare native of Britain, and is a sub-shrub onlya few inches high, with bright blue flowers each of which has a small red eye.It is not widely cultivated, but deserves recognition as a neat and easy small shrubfor the rock garden. It is one of a number of good old plants whose undoubtedvirtues are in danger of being overlooked in the not altogether desirable obsessionwith novelties. I am all for progress, but not at the expense of old and faithfulfriends which are far from being superseded.V. hectori is a hebe from New Zealand with scale-like leaves closely adpressedto the stems. It varies in height from a dwarf of about six inches to anerect shrub of two feet or more and carries terminal heads of white or slightlypink flowers.I have grown several quite distinct plants under the name of V. hookeriana,varying from lycopodium-like members of the hebe group, to broad-leaved dwarfshrubs. The plant which I am inclined to look upon as the true species belongsin the latter category, and is a useful and hardy shrub of less than a foot in height,with rather broad, slightly leathery leaves, toothed at the margins, and racemesof white, red-veined flowers on erect stems carried just above the foliage.
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Bulletin - July 1956 - North American Rock Garden Society

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