On my radar this week

Osmanthus fragrans thunbergii

Despite the second really dry summer in a row, we are having a beautiful autumn in Atlanta this year. Temperatures have mostly been mild, and the leaves are starting to turn.

Unfortunately, due to two summers of drought and severe watering restrictions, I've lost several well-loved plants in the yard, so I'm feeling even more appreciative of the tough guys that are still hanging around in my Zone 7 yard. I thought I'd share with you a couple of the bright spots in the garden this month. The definite rock stars this week are the Osmanthus plants, commonly known as Fragrant Tea Olives. The standard Tea Olives are evergreen, and have small, not very showy, but very fragrant flowers that typically bloom in the fall. The bonus: they will often rebloom throughout the year.

About 4 years ago now, I planted a pair of hard-to-find cultivars that have orange flowers instead of the typical white ones. Osmanthus fragrans aurantiacus is every bit as fragrant as the species, but have slightly larger, peachy-orange flowers. It took them a few years to actually bloom, but they are wonderful! The shrubs are typically denser and (probably) bloom more in full sun than in the partial shade of my yard. Here's an example:


There' s a Tea Olive that I may like even better though. This one is Osmanthus fragrans fudingzhu, or Nanjing's Beauty. The flowers on thisdifficult-to-pronounce plant are bigger and showier than the species, cover much more of the plant stems, and the plant starts blooming at a much younger age. Two or three years ago, I planted a small, one gallon plant in my sunny side yard. This week, after two extremely dry summers in a yard with no irrigation system and no babying, the Fudingzhu plant is nearly four feet tall and loaded with sweet smelling flowers.

There's even a pale yellow flowering Tea Olive, Osmanthus fragrans thunbergii, shown in the image at the top of the post.

I highly recommend any of the plants; they're durable, fast growing, can take sun to shade, and have a fantastic fragrance! Photos shown here from the Nurseries Caroliniana mail order website, a fantastic resource for unusual plants. Gardening geeks like me will love the catalog.

In the moment

This is where I've been spending a lot of time lately....

'The Fairy' Rose

Robin Hood and The Fairy Roses

just hanging out with whatever book I'm pouring through at the moment. Enjoying the beasts, and the sunshine, and the amazing spring showing of roses and other perennials.

Mutabilis Rose

Mystery Rose

Spiderwort

We should have a couple kinds of Irises coming up next....



For a small yard with three big dogs, we're not doing too badly.

Plant Quest

Ever hear the saying 'the cobbler's children have no shoes'?

Well...this little landscape architect has some garden problems at Chez Dame.

You know, little problems, like say... evolving in a quirky way, instead of actually starting with a unified design and following through. It's not a horrible thing, since this is a modest little cottage-style house. It embraces quirky, and so do Smithy and I.

On the other hand, my own garden isn't exactly portfolio material. So, to that end, as spring is fast approaching my Southern city, I'm thinking organizational thoughts about the garden. I'm attempting to prioritize.

The first thing on the new list of garden improvements is to work on the front garden. We started out doing one thing, then one day I came home to find that Smithy built some walls somewhere else, and now...well.... The cobbler's children have no shoes. Or maybe it should be that the cobbler's children have some really crazy looking shoes.

In different colors.

And possibly in mismatched sizes.

So, you know, I ought to be figuring out how to make the bed lines match from one side of the front walk to the other. And give Smithy some idea of what to do with the second-hand granite we want to use for a new front walk. And be thinking about how to screen the petroleum warehouse downhill from my house. (charming, no?) And pulling together a more soothing color palette for the plants in the front - probably more white and green. And I need to do something with the spirea that is approximately the size of my car right now. And on and on. Practical things like that.

But you know what I want to do? I really really want to track down more of this lovely, fragrant Camellia I spotted at a (pricey) local nursery last weekend. This is the best pic I could find online of Camellia Cinnamon Cindy:

(obviously, photo courtesy of www.nzplantpics.com)

Do I need it? Not really.
Will it work in the front garden? Not necessarily.
Is it hard to find, and likely to be expensive? Probably!
But, but, it's a fragrant Camellia!

And then there's the purply foliaged rose, Rosa Glauca, I saw in England two summers ago.

It's different, it's got ornamental foliage, and I haven't really seen it in my area. (Perhaps that should tell me somthing?) It can even tolerate some shade. In fact, here in the 'Humidity Belt' in the south, it just may need a touch of shade. Even NPR's Ketzel Levine raves about this one. Surely, it's a must-have?

Sigh. This is exactly the reason the garden is the way it is.