Even though the foxgloves have been outstanding in the Rose Garden and the roses and delphinium have begun to show off, I am still being distracted by allium. But then class clowns are usually pretty distracting. — In the best way. Last year we ordered more ornamental onions than we ever had before and planted most of them in the Rose Garden in an effort to close the May Gap. Success! And now that an abundant June is well under way, we’re still thoroughly enjoying their company.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the firecracker, Allium schubertii (left) was everyone’s favorite. It only stands a foot or so tall but its sparkling personality totally lights up the garden.

Allium ‘Ambassador’, on the other end of the height spectrum with deep purple globes standing nearly 5′ tall, commandeers attention – but does it diplomatically and with great good humor. — They’re like giant grape lollipops. So are ‘Pinball Wizard’ in the North Garden. Those are a little shorter, standing maybe 3′ tall and even with larger pops on top they carry themselves with an elegance that suits that garden perfectly.

Back in the Rose Garden we also planted A. amplectens ‘Graceful Beauty’, a cultivar of North American native narrowleaf onion. It was almost unbearably cute in bud but now that it’s open it’s a little more grown-up looking and perfectly lovely. My other new/old favorite that you’ll see in that garden is A. caeruleum. Its dainty flowertops are the kind of color that painters covet. It’s been a while since I got out my oils but my guess would be a mix of cerulean blue with maybe a smidge of phthalo blue and a tiny dop of titanium white…

We also threw in a handsome couple — deep burgundy purple A. atropurpureum and shimmering A. ‘Silver Spring’ that has a dome of burgundy centered white flowers. A stunning combo (their portrait is in last week’s post about galore-iousness.)

As far as I know there is only one real trick to growing ornamental onions. Like many plants that grow from bulbs, they tend to eventually bear hideous foliage. (A. karataviense is an exceptional exception.) So I believe they’re best tucked into an intensively planted garden where they can grow up through other plants (peonies, lady’s mantle, nepeta…) that will hide their scraggly yellow ground-level leaves. They can be deadheaded when they’re done blooming but we usually leave the big ones standing because they form seedheads every bit as ornamental as the flowers. And even if we take them down after they’ve dried we think they’re too pretty, too weird, too cool to throw away. That’s when we get out the spray paint…

Do you plant ornamental onions? Which are your favorites? I’m early for the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day celebration – head over to May Dreams Gardens tomorrow to see what else is in bloom in June. (Maybe others won’t be as distracted by allium as I have been!)

I know I say this every year – and then say it again every week for the rest of the season – but the gardens are prettier than ever. I’m not sure if it’s just that we have been so lucky weather-wise that everything is blooming more exuberantly than ever before or if it’s that the gardens really are growing more beautiful all the time. I suspect it’s a bit of both. I realize now since the trees have been so extra-pretty – not just the dove tree – that I should have been featuring a superstar every week. So without further ado, I give you the  fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus). Honestly, I’m not sure why this gorgeous little tree isn’t as ubiquitous as the Bradford pear. It offers so much more. For one thing it’s native to eastern US and perfectly happy to grow in full sun to partial shade (my own blooms away in too much shade.) and stays small enough (12-20′) to fit even in tiny gardens like mine. And right now, just in time for June parties, it has the most graceful dangles of fragrant white Great Gatsby-style feathers. Given where Blithewold’s fringe tree is, tucked against the wall along Ferry Road between the entrance gate and the garage, I wouldn’t be surprised if visitors missed it. But I am sorry about that. I can only hope that walkers-by have noticed and applauded its display. And now that you know where it is, maybe you’ll make the detour to pay it a visit and compliment too.

I’m more certain that everyone who has visited Blithewold this week noticed the Rose Garden. It stopped me in my tracks and I wish I could have spent every moment in it. (I did find excuses for daily visits…) The chestnut rose (Rosa roxburghii) has been blooming its branches off and the foxgloves alone demand hours of rapt attention. Not to do anything – they don’t seem to need staking (knock wood) and they certainly don’t need deadheading yet – but just to stare. Truly, we have never had such a stupendous display. The white ones (Digitalis purpurea f. albiflora a.k.a Digitalis purpurea ‘Alba’) are a biennial grown from seed by Julie Morris, our director of horticulture, emerita. While Gail and I both remember watering the flat of seedlings in the greenhouse, neither of us can remember when last year (was it June or September?) we actually planted them in the garden. Let this be a lesson to me that no detail is too small to record. With any luck (and if we leave some deadheads standing), these will seed themselves back in the garden for next year, but we’ll start another batch in the greenhouse for insurance too. Now that we know we can’t live without them.

Can’t live without the ornamental onions either. Last october we planted a fresh batch of the firecracker Allium schubertii - they do seem to diminish over time. My other favorites include the tall white and purple dotted (what’s up with me lately? I thought I didn’t like white flowers…) A. ‘Silver Spring’, tiny A. caeruleum and another dainty white one, A. amplectens ‘Graceful Beauty’. They and the giant purple lollipops of ‘Ambassador’ are so outstanding that I don’t even mind that some of the roses haven’t broken bud yet. Next week, when all of the roses are blooming along with the delphinium that are just about to pop, the garden might just knock my socks totally off. And yours too if you visit. (You should.)

Is your garden more beautiful than ever too? Do you have new (or old) favorites for June? –Do you have a fringe tree?

If it wasn’t for Gail’s lists and ability to prioritize, I’d probably have lost my tiny mind by now. There is so much to do that seems to need doing right-this-minute that without the lists, I’d feel pulled in a gajillion different directions at once. Like I am at home. (Let this be a lesson to me.)

Our priority for this week was to plant annuals and tender perennials — to get them out of their confining nursery pots and into the ground, now that the nights are suddenly and consistently warm. But first, before we could do that, we had to take the tulips out of the gardens. (We plant annuals in the tulips’ place, which is great because it keeps the soil we plant in fluffy and easy to dig.) The timing worked out perfectly: most of the tulip flowers that held on into this week were shattered by rain so we had no remorse digging them up for summer storage down cellar. (We’ll let the foliage die back for a week or two before detaching it from the bulbs. Then we’ll keep the bulbs dry and dark in labeled paper bags until we’re ready to plant them again in the fall.)

But first, to make room downstairs for the tulips, we had to bring up the dahlias. Again the timing was just right because they’re beginning to grow. We potted some up and will plant the rest directly in the ground in the next week or two.

But first, to make room in the greenhouse for the dahlias — and to harden off the plants that needed planting this week — we had to move them outside. And then we had to place them where we wanted to plant them in the gardens. I wish I had gotten pictures of everyone working so hard to accomplish all of this but I had plants or a spade in my hand the whole time too. (I wish I was better at multitasking…) Instead here are the Rose and North Garden after tulips-out and planting.

If planting (with its attendant to-dos) was all we had to keep track of I could probably keep my head and post a blog or two. But we were also pulled towards the plants already in the gardens, which have responded to the change from spring to summer with a burst of growth. Keeping up with the weeds is one thing but it’s also time to do the Chelsea Chop (so named because the timing coincides with the world famous Chelsea Flower Show in London). Mid-to late-summer bloomers can use a trim by a third to a half now (and even again a time or two before the end of June) to keep them from becoming leggy or top heavy and splaying open as they bloom. It takes hard-core optimism to whack back beautiful new growth but after forgetting to do it, I can say it’s well worth it. Especially for plants like agastache, beebalm, rudbeckia, coreopsis, asters, boltonia, helianthus, kalimeris, Sedums like ‘Autumn Joy’, … Their flowers might come out a little later and they might be smaller but there will be more of them and the plant will look lush. And if we don’t have to run around staking things later, it’s time well spent.

And to top off “planting week”, Betsy and Gail added container design to yesterday’s list so that we could plant them today while a little more rain waters the gardens in.

What’s on your to-do list right now? (Do you write one or do you go a little nuts like me?) Do you remember to stop and enjoy it?

I think we outdid ourselves. In the last couple of weeks Gail, Betsy, the volunteers, and I planted about 700 perennials and a handful of shrubs. Going into our planning season this past winter, Gail and I both thought that we wouldn’t place big perennial orders this year. Then the catalogs arrived and we couldn’t help ourselves. Our excuse is that we want these gardens to be wow-full and inspire visitors. We want to stay au courant, plant what the kids are planting now, try new things to see if they really are as great as their write-ups, and retry old favorites that might deserve a comeback. So we didn’t hold back when we went to nurseries and plant sales either.

I’m pretty excited to finally try bowman’s root (Gillenia trifoliata a.k.a Porteranthus), a native described as “tough” with delicate gaura-like flowers and red fall foliage. We placed it both in the pollinator garden and the Rock Garden where seriously tough conditions will give it the true test. I can’t wait to see if the ‘Blonde Ambition’ blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis) is the stunner I think it might be, and I have wanted blackberry lily (Belamcanda chinensis) for ages but had trouble finding it. Here’s hoping it takes off like this regular old passalong plant is supposed to.

Our new “foliage bed” was too much fun to shop for. Of course we have to try new heucheras and were assured that ‘Citronelle’ (both Gail and I are suckers for chartreuse foliage), ‘Encore’, and ‘Dark Secret’ are as awesome as they come. We finally have the perfect spot to try shredded umbrella plant (Syneilesis aconitifolia) but we still haven’t found the exactly right place for sycamore-leaf false nettle (Boehmeria platanifolia), which by all accounts is one of the coolest, hippest foliage plants for partial shade. (Why didn’t we have that yet? It doesn’t matter. We have it now. ) Catchfly (Silene latifolia ‘Rollie’s Favorite’) is already earning its keep in the Rock Garden. Even if it doesn’t survive (and why wouldn’t it? — drought maybe?) I’d use it like an annual especially if it continues to bloom all season like the description says it will (after a shearing).

Even though it seemed last year like our gardens were getting saturated perennial-wise, somehow, miraculously, there’s always room for newbies in May. (It’s not so miraculous actually. Removing giant patches of place-holding rudbeckia and Shasta daisy is my favorite way to open up new plant slots, especially at home.)

Have you been planting perennials too? Any you’re especially excited about?

Just because Daffodil Days are over doesn’t mean the daffodils are done (especially this year). But we’re onto the next thing. Even though there aren’t anywhere near 50,000 tulips, they are doing their best to steal the show from the daffodils. Clumps of 10 or 20 here and there is all it takes, plus a warm sunny day like we’ve had for the last week or so, for them to open wide. It’s almost as if they’re demanding their own celebratory event. (Why not?) And every visitor is drawn like a magnet. Especially to the rows of cutting garden tulips. Some of the colors are so super-saturated that they’re nearly impossible to photograph but even I had to try yesterday around midday because that’s exactly when they’re lit like light bulbs and knocking everyone’s socks off.

Every year we trial new-to-us tulips in the Cutting Garden and use them to plan next year’s spring designs in the Rose and North Gardens but I don’t ever remember having as many fast favorites as I do this year. Baby-girl pink is usually too sweet for my taste but ‘Pink Star’ has attitude and the prettiest wavy, baby-blue leaves. There’s no way I wouldn’t fall head over heels for ‘Apricot Parrot’ and it’s even prettier than I imagined.

I thought ‘André Rieu’ was a little bit blah until I looked into its cobalt blue eyes and then I realized that I love its blue-purple color (its picture doesn’t do it justice) and racing stripes. I’m not sure what to think of ‘Red Shine’, which is actually more of a blow-your-eyes out pink but I think I love it.

And it will be really hard not to use the fringed blaze of ‘Miami Sunset’ in every garden next year. They’re extra cool because every bloom came with its own mini-me right alongside.

Gail and I keep sending volunteers up to see the tulips in the Rose Garden as if it’s part of their job. (And so it is!) Along with fat fluffy over-saturated ‘Miranda’ that no one believes is really a tulip, and the tall and lovely ‘Silverstream’ that opened in a multi-colored range of yellows and reds and are fading now to red-edged creams, we have a few extra special species tulips tucked in and around the roses. ‘Lady Jane’ has been a favorite for a few years now and my new all-time, number-one favorite might be Tulipa orphanidea ‘Flava’, shown below right, still closed up on a chilly morning and complemented perfectly by cerulean blue forget-me-nots.

Last year we lost a lot of tulips to the squirrels (there were no acorns). This year we also lost a few in every garden mostly to deer grazing instead even though we dutifully sprayed stinky stuff and even spread a little Milorganite around (they hate that smell too). –And just yesterday the volunteers removed whole patches of bud-nipped tulips from the Idea Garden. But I can’t say I miss them. The ones that are left are showy enough to celebrate spring in style.

Do you have a favorite tulip this year — or ten? Do you do anything special to keep them from being eaten or do you just make sure to plant enough to go around?