The Quartet of Conduit Pots

The shock of Fall, when the garden that looks like this in July....



...looks like this in mid-December.



Instead of billowing voluptuousness—crowded foliage and flowers, fleets of containers—there are now mostly sticks, how-much-mess to be raked up—and what are those black spiral things?  (Which were right there in the high Summer picture, but barely visible amid all the surf of foliage and the distraction of flowers.  Go ahead: take another look in the Summer picture above.  I'll wait.)

The black spiral things are the black "conduit" pots.  And yes, they're on stands.  They get emptied, dismantled, and brought under cover for the Winter; the front-left one is already half-way in transit.

The structural stuff first, then the "Why-the-hell-would-anyone-want-that?" stuff.

The spiral part is a section of big galvanized-steel culvert, power-coated black.



It's two feet in diameter—big enough to hold a 25-gallon black nursery pot.



Take out the nursery pot, and you can see that the spiral conduit just fits onto a round black-steel stand.



The stand, in turn...



...is poked down into and atop a yew.



That yew is the end of a hedge of yews (in this case heading out to the left).  The hedge itself will be ten feet tall (someday); right now it's small and gappy and barely three feet tall.
PICTURE When the hedge IS ten feet tall, and full and happy, the end yew under the black-steel stand will have filled out as well, completely hiding the stand.  The section of spiral conduit will look like a crazy (in a good way) pot sitting on a low yew at the end of the hedge.  A garden version of a newel post at the end of a balastrade.

With all four of the conduit pots in the carriage house for the Winter, the long axis of the garden is more quiet.  And with the brush raked—tomorrow I promise—the gentle Winter collapse of the beds on either side is, actually, a nice contrast.  Order and geometry flanked by Winter-induced chaos.



But look again at the garden with the four (well three) conduits in place.



Those four pots make a rectangle; right now there're piles of brush at the center of it.  But in the Summer, lots of pots are grouped around a big tender tree.



The center group and the four conduit pots set up an energy field, so to speak:  They section-out some of the long axis, so it isn't just a long axis.  It's a series of more human-scaled set-pieces.

If I stand at about the center of the conduit-pot rectangle—where the tropical tree and the pots are grouped in the Summer—and at look East, I'm facing back to the house.


Between me and the house is a rose pergola spanning the axis like a huppah.  And forty feet in back of that, the French doors into room at the heart of the house: the center hall with the huge fireplace.  It all lines up, from the chimney right on out into the garden.

Facing West, back the other way, there's some year-round shrubbery topped in the Summer that incredible white-agave thing called a furcraea.



With the furcraea in the greenhouse for the Winter, you can see that the grass beyond it widens way out to make room for the reflecting pool.  Seventy feet long, but only as wide as the grass of the axis.







In the snowy part of Winter, the young sequoia at the end is at its strongest reveal. (When the sequoia is seventy feet tall, we won't have to worry that it will show up year-round.)

With the center chimney to start, the rose pergola "huppah" as the first pause, and the furcraea the last pause before the big Reflecting Pool garden and the climactic sequoia beyond it, the quartet of conduit pots is the mid-point of the garden's biggest journey.  So it's the center everything.  And as such, that center needed some serious demarcation.

It wasn't enough that there's also a cross-pathway through the conduit-rectangle's center point, leading to the North, to the carriage house...



...and to the south, to a free-standing wisteria that will, in time, be backed by a ten-foot hedge of American holly.



But with the bulk and billow of the gardens themselves in warm weather, you don't notice this crosswalk until you're right at its crossing.  (Which is great: it's a discovery, a surprise.)  But in itself it can't help "center" the axis as you look down it.

I needed some other kind of marker for that center, that says, without a doubt: You Are Here.  And so, the quartet of huge, black, spiral-steel pots, looking like they're perched on yews.

And in the Summer, their shocking prehistoric-looking plants.



Pretty good, eh?  It's starting to look like the pot is, indeed, perching atop the yew.  And how about those annuals?  Solanum quitoense with variegated ivy.  Yum.

And early one particularly misty morning, the furry leaves catch all the dew and turn into spiny silver velvet.



Incredible!  But this is, after all, the center.  Respect must be paid, and why waste the opportunity?  Part of the thrill of a garden is creating the intense need to Do Something Right Here—and then going right ahead and Doing it.

But this being New England, not California, the shocking prehistoric-looking plants are only annuals, and the pots themselves will last the longest when they enjoy five months—mid-December through mid-May—out of the cold weather.

Through the long Winter and even into early Spring, then, the conduit pots are gone.  The long axis is "just" a long axis, with only length to recommend it.



But at almost 500 feet, house-to-sequoia, length is its own thrill.

The Quartet of Conduit Pots

The shock of Fall, when the garden that looks like this in July....



...looks like this in mid-December.



Instead of billowing voluptuousness—crowded foliage and flowers, fleets of containers—there are now mostly sticks, how-much-mess to be raked up—and what are those black spiral things?  (Which were right there in the high Summer picture, but barely visible amid all the surf of foliage and the distraction of flowers.  Go ahead: take another look in the Summer picture above.  I'll wait.)

The black spiral things are the black "conduit" pots.  And yes, they're on stands.  They get emptied, dismantled, and brought under cover for the Winter; the front-left one is already half-way in transit.

The structural stuff first, then the "Why-the-hell-would-anyone-want-that?" stuff.

The spiral part is a section of big galvanized-steel culvert, power-coated black.



It's two feet in diameter—big enough to hold a 25-gallon black nursery pot.



Take out the nursery pot, and you can see that the spiral conduit just fits onto a round black-steel stand.



The stand, in turn...



...is poked down into and atop a yew.



That yew is the end of a hedge of yews (in this case heading out to the left).  The hedge itself will be ten feet tall (someday); right now it's small and gappy and barely three feet tall.
PICTURE When the hedge IS ten feet tall, and full and happy, the end yew under the black-steel stand will have filled out as well, completely hiding the stand.  The section of spiral conduit will look like a crazy (in a good way) pot sitting on a low yew at the end of the hedge.  A garden version of a newel post at the end of a balastrade.

With all four of the conduit pots in the carriage house for the Winter, the long axis of the garden is more quiet.  And with the brush raked—tomorrow I promise—the gentle Winter collapse of the beds on either side is, actually, a nice contrast.  Order and geometry flanked by Winter-induced chaos.



But look again at the garden with the four (well three) conduits in place.



Those four pots make a rectangle; right now there're piles of brush at the center of it.  But in the Summer, lots of pots are grouped around a big tender tree.



The center group and the four conduit pots set up an energy field, so to speak:  They section-out some of the long axis, so it isn't just a long axis.  It's a series of more human-scaled set-pieces.

If I stand at about the center of the conduit-pot rectangle—where the tropical tree and the pots are grouped in the Summer—and at look East, I'm facing back to the house.


Between me and the house is a rose pergola spanning the axis like a huppah.  And forty feet in back of that, the French doors into room at the heart of the house: the center hall with the huge fireplace.  It all lines up, from the chimney right on out into the garden.

Facing West, back the other way, there's some year-round shrubbery topped in the Summer that incredible white-agave thing called a furcraea.



With the furcraea in the greenhouse for the Winter, you can see that the grass beyond it widens way out to make room for the reflecting pool.  Seventy feet long, but only as wide as the grass of the axis.







In the snowy part of Winter, the young sequoia at the end is at its strongest reveal. (When the sequoia is seventy feet tall, we won't have to worry that it will show up year-round.)

With the center chimney to start, the rose pergola "huppah" as the first pause, and the furcraea the last pause before the big Reflecting Pool garden and the climactic sequoia beyond it, the quartet of conduit pots is the mid-point of the garden's biggest journey.  So it's the center everything.  And as such, that center needed some serious demarcation.

It wasn't enough that there's also a cross-pathway through the conduit-rectangle's center point, leading to the North, to the carriage house...



...and to the south, to a free-standing wisteria that will, in time, be backed by a ten-foot hedge of American holly.



But with the bulk and billow of the gardens themselves in warm weather, you don't notice this crosswalk until you're right at its crossing.  (Which is great: it's a discovery, a surprise.)  But in itself it can't help "center" the axis as you look down it.

I needed some other kind of marker for that center, that says, without a doubt: You Are Here.  And so, the quartet of huge, black, spiral-steel pots, looking like they're perched on yews.

And in the Summer, their shocking prehistoric-looking plants.



Pretty good, eh?  It's starting to look like the pot is, indeed, perching atop the yew.  And how about those annuals?  Solanum quitoense with variegated ivy.  Yum.

And early one particularly misty morning, the furry leaves catch all the dew and turn into spiny silver velvet.



Incredible!  But this is, after all, the center.  Respect must be paid, and why waste the opportunity?  Part of the thrill of a garden is creating the intense need to Do Something Right Here—and then going right ahead and Doing it.

But this being New England, not California, the shocking prehistoric-looking plants are only annuals, and the pots themselves will last the longest when they enjoy five months—mid-December through mid-May—out of the cold weather.

Through the long Winter and even into early Spring, then, the conduit pots are gone.  The long axis is "just" a long axis, with only length to recommend it.



But at almost 500 feet, house-to-sequoia, length is its own thrill.

The Quartet of Conduit Pots

The shock of Fall, when the garden that looks like this in July....



...looks like this in mid-December.



Instead of billowing voluptuousness—crowded foliage and flowers, fleets of containers—there are now mostly sticks, how-much-mess to be raked up—and what are those black spiral things?  (Which were right there in the high Summer picture, but barely visible amid all the surf of foliage and the distraction of flowers.  Go ahead: take another look in the Summer picture above.  I'll wait.)

The black spiral things are the black "conduit" pots.  And yes, they're on stands.  They get emptied, dismantled, and brought under cover for the Winter; the front-left one is already half-way in transit.

The structural stuff first, then the "Why-the-hell-would-anyone-want-that?" stuff.

The spiral part is a section of big galvanized-steel culvert, power-coated black.



It's two feet in diameter—big enough to hold a 25-gallon black nursery pot.



Take out the nursery pot, and you can see that the spiral conduit just fits onto a round black-steel stand.



The stand, in turn...



...is poked down into and atop a yew.



That yew is the end of a hedge of yews (in this case heading out to the left).  The hedge itself will be ten feet tall (someday); right now it's small and gappy and barely three feet tall.
PICTURE When the hedge IS ten feet tall, and full and happy, the end yew under the black-steel stand will have filled out as well, completely hiding the stand.  The section of spiral conduit will look like a crazy (in a good way) pot sitting on a low yew at the end of the hedge.  A garden version of a newel post at the end of a balastrade.

With all four of the conduit pots in the carriage house for the Winter, the long axis of the garden is more quiet.  And with the brush raked—tomorrow I promise—the gentle Winter collapse of the beds on either side is, actually, a nice contrast.  Order and geometry flanked by Winter-induced chaos.



But look again at the garden with the four (well three) conduits in place.



Those four pots make a rectangle; right now there're piles of brush at the center of it.  But in the Summer, lots of pots are grouped around a big tender tree.



The center group and the four conduit pots set up an energy field, so to speak:  They section-out some of the long axis, so it isn't just a long axis.  It's a series of more human-scaled set-pieces.

If I stand at about the center of the conduit-pot rectangle—where the tropical tree and the pots are grouped in the Summer—and at look East, I'm facing back to the house.


Between me and the house is a rose pergola spanning the axis like a huppah.  And forty feet in back of that, the French doors into room at the heart of the house: the center hall with the huge fireplace.  It all lines up, from the chimney right on out into the garden.

Facing West, back the other way, there's some year-round shrubbery topped in the Summer that incredible white-agave thing called a furcraea.



With the furcraea in the greenhouse for the Winter, you can see that the grass beyond it widens way out to make room for the reflecting pool.  Seventy feet long, but only as wide as the grass of the axis.







In the snowy part of Winter, the young sequoia at the end is at its strongest reveal. (When the sequoia is seventy feet tall, we won't have to worry that it will show up year-round.)

With the center chimney to start, the rose pergola "huppah" as the first pause, and the furcraea the last pause before the big Reflecting Pool garden and the climactic sequoia beyond it, the quartet of conduit pots is the mid-point of the garden's biggest journey.  So it's the center everything.  And as such, that center needed some serious demarcation.

It wasn't enough that there's also a cross-pathway through the conduit-rectangle's center point, leading to the North, to the carriage house...



...and to the south, to a free-standing wisteria that will, in time, be backed by a ten-foot hedge of American holly.



But with the bulk and billow of the gardens themselves in warm weather, you don't notice this crosswalk until you're right at its crossing.  (Which is great: it's a discovery, a surprise.)  But in itself it can't help "center" the axis as you look down it.

I needed some other kind of marker for that center, that says, without a doubt: You Are Here.  And so, the quartet of huge, black, spiral-steel pots, looking like they're perched on yews.

And in the Summer, their shocking prehistoric-looking plants.



Pretty good, eh?  It's starting to look like the pot is, indeed, perching atop the yew.  And how about those annuals?  Solanum quitoense with variegated ivy.  Yum.

And early one particularly misty morning, the furry leaves catch all the dew and turn into spiny silver velvet.



Incredible!  But this is, after all, the center.  Respect must be paid, and why waste the opportunity?  Part of the thrill of a garden is creating the intense need to Do Something Right Here—and then going right ahead and Doing it.

But this being New England, not California, the shocking prehistoric-looking plants are only annuals, and the pots themselves will last the longest when they enjoy five months—mid-December through mid-May—out of the cold weather.

Through the long Winter and even into early Spring, then, the conduit pots are gone.  The long axis is "just" a long axis, with only length to recommend it.



But at almost 500 feet, house-to-sequoia, length is its own thrill.

The Quartet of Conduit Pots

The shock of Fall, when the garden that looks like this in July....



...looks like this in mid-December.



Instead of billowing voluptuousness—crowded foliage and flowers, fleets of containers—there are now mostly sticks, how-much-mess to be raked up—and what are those black spiral things?  (Which were right there in the high Summer picture, but barely visible amid all the surf of foliage and the distraction of flowers.  Go ahead: take another look in the Summer picture above.  I'll wait.)

The black spiral things are the black "conduit" pots.  And yes, they're on stands.  They get emptied, dismantled, and brought under cover for the Winter; the front-left one is already half-way in transit.

The structural stuff first, then the "Why-the-hell-would-anyone-want-that?" stuff.

The spiral part is a section of big galvanized-steel culvert, power-coated black.



It's two feet in diameter—big enough to hold a 25-gallon black nursery pot.



Take out the nursery pot, and you can see that the spiral conduit just fits onto a round black-steel stand.



The stand, in turn...



...is poked down into and atop a yew.



That yew is the end of a hedge of yews (in this case heading out to the left).  The hedge itself will be ten feet tall (someday); right now it's small and gappy and barely three feet tall.
PICTURE When the hedge IS ten feet tall, and full and happy, the end yew under the black-steel stand will have filled out as well, completely hiding the stand.  The section of spiral conduit will look like a crazy (in a good way) pot sitting on a low yew at the end of the hedge.  A garden version of a newel post at the end of a balastrade.

With all four of the conduit pots in the carriage house for the Winter, the long axis of the garden is more quiet.  And with the brush raked—tomorrow I promise—the gentle Winter collapse of the beds on either side is, actually, a nice contrast.  Order and geometry flanked by Winter-induced chaos.



But look again at the garden with the four (well three) conduits in place.



Those four pots make a rectangle; right now there're piles of brush at the center of it.  But in the Summer, lots of pots are grouped around a big tender tree.



The center group and the four conduit pots set up an energy field, so to speak:  They section-out some of the long axis, so it isn't just a long axis.  It's a series of more human-scaled set-pieces.

If I stand at about the center of the conduit-pot rectangle—where the tropical tree and the pots are grouped in the Summer—and at look East, I'm facing back to the house.


Between me and the house is a rose pergola spanning the axis like a huppah.  And forty feet in back of that, the French doors into room at the heart of the house: the center hall with the huge fireplace.  It all lines up, from the chimney right on out into the garden.

Facing West, back the other way, there's some year-round shrubbery topped in the Summer that incredible white-agave thing called a furcraea.



With the furcraea in the greenhouse for the Winter, you can see that the grass beyond it widens way out to make room for the reflecting pool.  Seventy feet long, but only as wide as the grass of the axis.







In the snowy part of Winter, the young sequoia at the end is at its strongest reveal. (When the sequoia is seventy feet tall, we won't have to worry that it will show up year-round.)

With the center chimney to start, the rose pergola "huppah" as the first pause, and the furcraea the last pause before the big Reflecting Pool garden and the climactic sequoia beyond it, the quartet of conduit pots is the mid-point of the garden's biggest journey.  So it's the center everything.  And as such, that center needed some serious demarcation.

It wasn't enough that there's also a cross-pathway through the conduit-rectangle's center point, leading to the North, to the carriage house...



...and to the south, to a free-standing wisteria that will, in time, be backed by a ten-foot hedge of American holly.



But with the bulk and billow of the gardens themselves in warm weather, you don't notice this crosswalk until you're right at its crossing.  (Which is great: it's a discovery, a surprise.)  But in itself it can't help "center" the axis as you look down it.

I needed some other kind of marker for that center, that says, without a doubt: You Are Here.  And so, the quartet of huge, black, spiral-steel pots, looking like they're perched on yews.

And in the Summer, their shocking prehistoric-looking plants.



Pretty good, eh?  It's starting to look like the pot is, indeed, perching atop the yew.  And how about those annuals?  Solanum quitoense with variegated ivy.  Yum.

And early one particularly misty morning, the furry leaves catch all the dew and turn into spiny silver velvet.



Incredible!  But this is, after all, the center.  Respect must be paid, and why waste the opportunity?  Part of the thrill of a garden is creating the intense need to Do Something Right Here—and then going right ahead and Doing it.

But this being New England, not California, the shocking prehistoric-looking plants are only annuals, and the pots themselves will last the longest when they enjoy five months—mid-December through mid-May—out of the cold weather.

Through the long Winter and even into early Spring, then, the conduit pots are gone.  The long axis is "just" a long axis, with only length to recommend it.



But at almost 500 feet, house-to-sequoia, length is its own thrill.

Wooly Mullein

With temps in the low Twenties even during the day, the puzzle is why any plant that isn't obviously a deep-woods-Winter-loving holly or pine tree would stick around.  Like this patch of young mullein rosettes.



Leaves a foot long, velvet-fuzzy and as juicy as lettuce.  Why bother keeping them green and healthy now, taking it on the chin day by day, month by month, from December to the return of sane weather in April?  Why not just pack it in, drop your leaves, and call in sick until Spring?
How can this be a fight that's worth fighting?


And indeed, here in a Northern garden, the mullein's stalwart and even, well, stupid persistence doesn't make sense.  Instead of dropping the leaves when frost comes, like something sensible and decisive like a maple, the mullein leaves are out there all Winter long, getting beaten up, beaten down, and beaten back until by early Spring only the tiniest ones at the very center are still green, still viable.

Remarkably, despite the carnage, the plant itself lives over the Winter just fine—mulleins are generally quite hardy.  This one is Verbascum thapsiforme, and it's fine down to Twenty Below.  But because it will, literally, live to see another day, it seems particularly pointless to keeping the increasingly-bedraggled and destroyed leaves day by day through the Winter.  Just drop these, and grow fresh ones when the livin' is easy.

One key to the puzzle is that, with days only into the 20's (and who can imagine the nights), the leaves aren't just persisting with dread and with increasing injury.  To the contrary, they look proud and even happy.  So far at least, Winter hasn't yet sullied them a bit.  They're completely able to handle deep freezes and even snow.

And that newest foliage?



It's the hardiest of all, lasting almost untouched right through to Spring.  And the second the weather is the least bit permitting—warmth per se isn't needed just reliably above freezing is all—the entire rosette mushrooms into action.  With that new foliage leading the charge, the leaves become gigantic, smothering any potential surrounding competitors before they've even germinated.

So:  This plant is completely hardy through a "real" Winter, and it's quite unfazed by mild ones, and would seemingly grow right through them if given the chance.  And while it tolerates the Summer heat as well as drought, it seems to truly thrive in cooler weather.

"Mild" Winter is the answer:  Verbascums are usually from climates where Winters are (by New England standards) just wet and raw, not deep-frozen.  Occasional frost, a few days of snow now and then?  No problem.  They've soon given way to cool weather and plenty of moisture.  And that's fine growing weather, especially considering the real yearly torture to come: Summer.  Drier and drier, hotter and hotter.  Thank goodnesss the verbascum's titanic flower spike is basically erected in the still-tolerable Spring.  In Summer all that has to happen is the flowering and the setting of the seeds.

Of course, home base for a verbascum would be anywhere at all around the Mediterranean.  And once they had this wet-Winter growing season / dry-Summer dormancy cycle perfected, the verbascums would inevitably spread farther and farther away from the comparative moderation right around the sea.  Mile by mile away, up in the mountains where it was colder because of the altitude, or farther and farther inland where it was cold because the warm Mediterranean water wasn't at hand, or just plain farther and farther North, where even the water was colder too.

In all cases, the verbascum was spreading where its preferred mild-and-wet Winter growing season got icier and icier and therefore dicier and dicier.  But on three crucial accounts, that wasn't a problem:  First, even if Winter is solid ice, Fall is still the wet-and-mild weather the verbascums make the best use of.  And so is Spring.

Second, in harder and harder climates, the longer and longer Winter didn't mean shorter Falls or Springs, it means a shorter Summer.  Which is the verbascum's heading-into-dormancy season anyway.

And third, even if just by fluke, the verbascum was hardy enough to survive the deep-freeze Winters.  (Thapsiforme, as I say, will take down to Minus Twenty.  That's Montreal folks.)  So that a real Winter would interrupt its preferred mild-Winter growing season?  Tedious but not serious.

And so not-serious that the verbascum has never needed to do anything different to cope with a Winter that's tediously harsh, but ultimately not serious.  Why make a big change in lifestyle—by dropping your leaves soon into hard frost—if you don't have to?

And indeed, the verbascum doesn't have to at all.  In it's own plant-brain way, it just doesn't care, doesn't need to care.  And it would be a fool if it is.  Right now, whatever happens to the Fall leaves happens; Spring will be here soon enough, and by staying at least moderately alert and at the ready, the verbascum beats any of the neighbors when the weather breaks and even the wusses like, oh, hostas, would think about poking a nose above ground.  If you're near a verbascum and you think like a hosta, you're screwed even though it's only April.

So my verbascum patch, which at first seemed like Winter had caught it with its pants down?  Don't worry at all.  Pants down or not, the verbascums will do just fine.  They aren't disadvantaged by their lack of interest in going dormant for the Winter.   (Or by having their pants down either.)  Their dis-ability to drop their leaves isn't a disability at all.  They're like Arnold:  They're so tough they don't need to be concerned about Winter.  Dropping leaves just because it's a little cold out?  That's for wusses.  For perennials that are wusses, for perennials that are, perennially, wusses.  For perennials that are—what did Arnold call them?—girlie men.

Verbascums:  Arnold all the way.

Wooly Mullein

With temps in the low Twenties even during the day, the puzzle is why any plant that isn't obviously a deep-woods-Winter-loving holly or pine tree would stick around.  Like this patch of young mullein rosettes.



Leaves a foot long, velvet-fuzzy and as juicy as lettuce.  Why bother keeping them green and healthy now, taking it on the chin day by day, month by month, from December to the return of sane weather in April?  Why not just pack it in, drop your leaves, and call in sick until Spring?
How can this be a fight that's worth fighting?


And indeed, here in a Northern garden, the mullein's stalwart and even, well, stupid persistence doesn't make sense.  Instead of dropping the leaves when frost comes, like something sensible and decisive like a maple, the mullein leaves are out there all Winter long, getting beaten up, beaten down, and beaten back until by early Spring only the tiniest ones at the very center are still green, still viable.

Remarkably, despite the carnage, the plant itself lives over the Winter just fine—mulleins are generally quite hardy.  This one is Verbascum thapsiforme, and it's fine down to Twenty Below.  But because it will, literally, live to see another day, it seems particularly pointless to keeping the increasingly-bedraggled and destroyed leaves day by day through the Winter.  Just drop these, and grow fresh ones when the livin' is easy.

One key to the puzzle is that, with days only into the 20's (and who can imagine the nights), the leaves aren't just persisting with dread and with increasing injury.  To the contrary, they look proud and even happy.  So far at least, Winter hasn't yet sullied them a bit.  They're completely able to handle deep freezes and even snow.

And that newest foliage?



It's the hardiest of all, lasting almost untouched right through to Spring.  And the second the weather is the least bit permitting—warmth per se isn't needed just reliably above freezing is all—the entire rosette mushrooms into action.  With that new foliage leading the charge, the leaves become gigantic, smothering any potential surrounding competitors before they've even germinated.

So:  This plant is completely hardy through a "real" Winter, and it's quite unfazed by mild ones, and would seemingly grow right through them if given the chance.  And while it tolerates the Summer heat as well as drought, it seems to truly thrive in cooler weather.

"Mild" Winter is the answer:  Verbascums are usually from climates where Winters are (by New England standards) just wet and raw, not deep-frozen.  Occasional frost, a few days of snow now and then?  No problem.  They've soon given way to cool weather and plenty of moisture.  And that's fine growing weather, especially considering the real yearly torture to come: Summer.  Drier and drier, hotter and hotter.  Thank goodnesss the verbascum's titanic flower spike is basically erected in the still-tolerable Spring.  In Summer all that has to happen is the flowering and the setting of the seeds.

Of course, home base for a verbascum would be anywhere at all around the Mediterranean.  And once they had this wet-Winter growing season / dry-Summer dormancy cycle perfected, the verbascums would inevitably spread farther and farther away from the comparative moderation right around the sea.  Mile by mile away, up in the mountains where it was colder because of the altitude, or farther and farther inland where it was cold because the warm Mediterranean water wasn't at hand, or just plain farther and farther North, where even the water was colder too.

In all cases, the verbascum was spreading where its preferred mild-and-wet Winter growing season got icier and icier and therefore dicier and dicier.  But on three crucial accounts, that wasn't a problem:  First, even if Winter is solid ice, Fall is still the wet-and-mild weather the verbascums make the best use of.  And so is Spring.

Second, in harder and harder climates, the longer and longer Winter didn't mean shorter Falls or Springs, it means a shorter Summer.  Which is the verbascum's heading-into-dormancy season anyway.

And third, even if just by fluke, the verbascum was hardy enough to survive the deep-freeze Winters.  (Thapsiforme, as I say, will take down to Minus Twenty.  That's Montreal folks.)  So that a real Winter would interrupt its preferred mild-Winter growing season?  Tedious but not serious.

And so not-serious that the verbascum has never needed to do anything different to cope with a Winter that's tediously harsh, but ultimately not serious.  Why make a big change in lifestyle—by dropping your leaves soon into hard frost—if you don't have to?

And indeed, the verbascum doesn't have to at all.  In it's own plant-brain way, it just doesn't care, doesn't need to care.  And it would be a fool if it is.  Right now, whatever happens to the Fall leaves happens; Spring will be here soon enough, and by staying at least moderately alert and at the ready, the verbascum beats any of the neighbors when the weather breaks and even the wusses like, oh, hostas, would think about poking a nose above ground.  If you're near a verbascum and you think like a hosta, you're screwed even though it's only April.

So my verbascum patch, which at first seemed like Winter had caught it with its pants down?  Don't worry at all.  Pants down or not, the verbascums will do just fine.  They aren't disadvantaged by their lack of interest in going dormant for the Winter.   (Or by having their pants down either.)  Their dis-ability to drop their leaves isn't a disability at all.  They're like Arnold:  They're so tough they don't need to be concerned about Winter.  Dropping leaves just because it's a little cold out?  That's for wusses.  For perennials that are wusses, for perennials that are, perennially, wusses.  For perennials that are—what did Arnold call them?—girlie men.

Verbascums:  Arnold all the way.

Prostrate Plum Yew

At the base of my contorted beech—held aloft into a canopy only because of lally columns—is a single, prostrate "plum" yew, sprawling outward with great enthusiasm in any direction as long as it isn't up.  "Plum" yew?  Oh yes, it's a cousin of the yew cousin, plummy indeed, and so definitely from the quirk-laden branch of the tree.  Its marvelous sprawl—lower and wider and more flexibly flouncy than any true yew would admit without serious blush—is actually the least of it.



Look, first, at how lovely the green needles are against (and beneath) the beech's leaves.  Beautiful.  A garden without quirks would just be boring, but a garden without beauty would be pointless.  Thankfully, the plum yew brings beauty and quirks in equal measure.



That said, beauty is more of an "is" than quirks.  It demands and deserves acknowledgement, recognition, and appreciation.  But often there isn't really that more to say or to write.  Beauty, then, is like a happy ending: It's the end of the story and, in a way, somewhat of a damper on further thinking let alone conversation let alone writing.  With beauty, it's enough (or maybe it's all that's possible, alas) just to sigh, to gaze, and to be grateful.

But quirks?  If not the beginning of the story, quirks are the spice that spurs it onward, that opens up a new chapter and some you-never-saw-them-coming twists in the plot.  Quirks both elicit and reward discussion and detail.  Poor Beauty: it's only beautiful.  Quirks are interesting.

And no surprise, plum yews are quirkful creatures indeed.  (I promise I'll get to the obvious one, the "plum" thing.  Thank you for your patience.)

First, the needles.  The ones on this year's new growth to the main branch—the forward and downward thrust of it in this picture—are three or four times the length of regular yew needles.  Whereas the ones in the short side branches are only as long as yew needles.

Quirk:  The needles of plum yews are often longer on the outward-bound (in this case, downward) tips of branches.  Side-branch needles, not so much.



And the short-needled side branches are all a-dangle with some sort of flower things.  Plum yews, being conifers, don't "flower" in the daffodil sense of the word, although there are male pollen-producing things and female pollen-receiving things.  Both of them are called "inflorescences", as if to keep them at arms-length, verbally, from true "florescences", the flowers.

Plum yew plants are always dioecious ("die-oh-EE-shuss"), so you need a male plant as well as a female to get the "plums".  The inflorescences on mine are male, which are supposed to develop, mostly, just as pictured (and what a relief it is to have an obedient bush in this regard): on side branches that formed (or started to) the previous season.  (Think about it: The long-needled front tip is what's been growing this very year.  The side branches sprouted from what was the tip of it at the end of last year.)

That said, delicately lifting up this branch (on a day far colder than before), you can see that even this-year's growing tip, with it's characteristic ultra-lash needles, has sprouted a few inflorescences too.



This must have been an especially pleasant growing season.

I only have this one prostrate plum yew, and given that it's determined to get ten feet wide and wider, I don't need another, male or female.  So this plum yew will never, itself, bear plums.  Sigh.  But it does "floresce" with gusto, so its is a happy, albeit solo, life.

Quirk: To my knowledge, despite being named for plum-like seeds that are unique in conifers and so showy that they're the obvious "handle" for the common name, plum yews aren't sold by sex.  So there's no easy way to get a male-female pair needed to produce the name-sake "fruits". 

Plum yews are only a few in species, a few more in cultivar, and only modestly diverse in habit anyway.  There are dozens of kinds of yew that, conceivably at least, you might want to grow.  And there are hundreds of junipers out there (only a few of which you should want to grow.)  But you could have the entirety of the distinctive cephalotaxus collective and not have them over-run your garden.

Some further quirks of this prostrate variety, Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Prostrata' are only striking in relation to those of the next post's variety, Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Fastigiata'.  (Work with me here.  I promise I'll get to the plums too.)

Prostrate Plum Yew

At the base of my contorted beech—held aloft into a canopy only because of lally columns—is a single, prostrate "plum" yew, sprawling outward with great enthusiasm in any direction as long as it isn't up.  "Plum" yew?  Oh yes, it's a cousin of the yew cousin, plummy indeed, and so definitely from the quirk-laden branch of the tree.  Its marvelous sprawl—lower and wider and more flexibly flouncy than any true yew would admit without serious blush—is actually the least of it.



Look, first, at how lovely the green needles are against (and beneath) the beech's leaves.  Beautiful.  A garden without quirks would just be boring, but a garden without beauty would be pointless.  Thankfully, the plum yew brings beauty and quirks in equal measure.



That said, beauty is more of an "is" than quirks.  It demands and deserves acknowledgement, recognition, and appreciation.  But often there isn't really that more to say or to write.  Beauty, then, is like a happy ending: It's the end of the story and, in a way, somewhat of a damper on further thinking let alone conversation let alone writing.  With beauty, it's enough (or maybe it's all that's possible, alas) just to sigh, to gaze, and to be grateful.

But quirks?  If not the beginning of the story, quirks are the spice that spurs it onward, that opens up a new chapter and some you-never-saw-them-coming twists in the plot.  Quirks both elicit and reward discussion and detail.  Poor Beauty: it's only beautiful.  Quirks are interesting.

And no surprise, plum yews are quirkful creatures indeed.  (I promise I'll get to the obvious one, the "plum" thing.  Thank you for your patience.)

First, the needles.  The ones on this year's new growth to the main branch—the forward and downward thrust of it in this picture—are three or four times the length of regular yew needles.  Whereas the ones in the short side branches are only as long as yew needles.

Quirk:  The needles of plum yews are often longer on the outward-bound (in this case, downward) tips of branches.  Side-branch needles, not so much.



And the short-needled side branches are all a-dangle with some sort of flower things.  Plum yews, being conifers, don't "flower" in the daffodil sense of the word, although there are male pollen-producing things and female pollen-receiving things.  Both of them are called "inflorescences", as if to keep them at arms-length, verbally, from true "florescences", the flowers.

Plum yew plants are always dioecious ("die-oh-EE-shuss"), so you need a male plant as well as a female to get the "plums".  The inflorescences on mine are male, which are supposed to develop, mostly, just as pictured (and what a relief it is to have an obedient bush in this regard): on side branches that formed (or started to) the previous season.  (Think about it: The long-needled front tip is what's been growing this very year.  The side branches sprouted from what was the tip of it at the end of last year.)

That said, delicately lifting up this branch (on a day far colder than before), you can see that even this-year's growing tip, with it's characteristic ultra-lash needles, has sprouted a few inflorescences too.



This must have been an especially pleasant growing season.

I only have this one prostrate plum yew, and given that it's determined to get ten feet wide and wider, I don't need another, male or female.  So this plum yew will never, itself, bear plums.  Sigh.  But it does "floresce" with gusto, so its is a happy, albeit solo, life.

Quirk: To my knowledge, despite being named for plum-like seeds that are unique in conifers and so showy that they're the obvious "handle" for the common name, plum yews aren't sold by sex.  So there's no easy way to get a male-female pair needed to produce the name-sake "fruits". 

Plum yews are only a few in species, a few more in cultivar, and only modestly diverse in habit anyway.  There are dozens of kinds of yew that, conceivably at least, you might want to grow.  And there are hundreds of junipers out there (only a few of which you should want to grow.)  But you could have the entirety of the distinctive cephalotaxus collective and not have them over-run your garden.

Some further quirks of this prostrate variety, Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Prostrata' are only striking in relation to those of the next post's variety, Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Fastigiata'.  (Work with me here.  I promise I'll get to the plums too.)

Vertical Plum Yew

If the ever-widening prostrate plum yew is Mrs. Sprat, the vertical plum yew would want to be Jack himself, only interested in the tall and narrow.




But despite itself, the bush gets this cone-on-point look because the vertical branches can't resist branching out.



No matter that all the side branches grow straight up too, there's inevitably some crowding as more and more (vertical) side branches develop as the plant gets older and older.  Given its singular upward-only growth habit, older and older means higher and higher—which, in turn, means wider and wider as it gets higher and higher, because each new vertical side branch will, eventually, next year, when it's grown another six inches higher, put out vertical side branches of its own.  And again and again, higher and higher, wider and wider.

Quirk: In direct result of its monomania to grow only upward, "vertical" plum yews inadvertently get wider and wider as they get taller and taller, screwing up the very verticality they are so committed to.

Sterner pruning maniacs than I could, I suppose, keep their vertical plum yews truly vertical by regularly thinning out the crowding vertical side branches.  Wow, that would be intense.  Given my inability to resist espaliers, a Belgian fences of beeches, giant roses trained two stories tall, a dozen and more pollards, and a few arches, this seems like such a wimp-out to let my vertical plum yew widen so helplessly.  OK: I'll consider this additional plant partnership.

On the other hand, very old vertical plum yews that are allowed to look after their ever-widening selves themselves look like an ever-increasing bundle of vertical pipe-cleaners.  Or, from a more ecclesiastic vantage, like a pipe organ.



This congeries-of-cylinders effect is enhanced by the long needles, which grow from all sides of a stem (in, I'm told, a spiral).



All the other plum yews—prostrate included—grow their needles in two straight ranks, one on each side of the stem.



The biggest quirk for the vertical, though, is the total absence of those small round details of the prostrate: the inflorescences.



Not a one on this entire bush, which is every bit the age of the prostrate.  I don't know if verticals just need to be much older than the prostrates to start blooming, or if they are abstainers their whole lifetime.  My sense is that it's the latter, and that abstention is actual inability, yet another consequence of their obsessive verticality:  Just as fruit trees don't flower or fruit at all well on a branch that is vertical—and conversely, do both with heavy fervor the more toward the horizontal that branch is trained—vertical plum yews seem destined to be flower-free as long as their verticality isn't thwarted.

But given the true bounty of inflorescence on the prostrate plum yew (and the admitted modest charm of the inflorescences in the first place), no one would need to wrestle a vertical plum yew to the ground just to get plum yew inflorescences.  And of course, the real charm of the vertical plum yew is the verticality—coupled with the unique spirally-arrayed needles.

So vertical plum yews are always (far as I know) plum-less.  But a plum-free vertical plum yew is still a vertical plum yew.  If I decide to reach for the pruners and narrow mine from a cone to a column, it will finally achieve the uncompromisingly upright posture its Up-Only growth habit is striving for.

Vertical Plum Yew

If the ever-widening prostrate plum yew is Mrs. Sprat, the vertical plum yew would want to be Jack himself, only interested in the tall and narrow.




But despite itself, the bush gets this cone-on-point look because the vertical branches can't resist branching out.



No matter that all the side branches grow straight up too, there's inevitably some crowding as more and more (vertical) side branches develop as the plant gets older and older.  Given its singular upward-only growth habit, older and older means higher and higher—which, in turn, means wider and wider as it gets higher and higher, because each new vertical side branch will, eventually, next year, when it's grown another six inches higher, put out vertical side branches of its own.  And again and again, higher and higher, wider and wider.

Quirk: In direct result of its monomania to grow only upward, "vertical" plum yews inadvertently get wider and wider as they get taller and taller, screwing up the very verticality they are so committed to.

Sterner pruning maniacs than I could, I suppose, keep their vertical plum yews truly vertical by regularly thinning out the crowding vertical side branches.  Wow, that would be intense.  Given my inability to resist espaliers, a Belgian fences of beeches, giant roses trained two stories tall, a dozen and more pollards, and a few arches, this seems like such a wimp-out to let my vertical plum yew widen so helplessly.  OK: I'll consider this additional plant partnership.

On the other hand, very old vertical plum yews that are allowed to look after their ever-widening selves themselves look like an ever-increasing bundle of vertical pipe-cleaners.  Or, from a more ecclesiastic vantage, like a pipe organ.



This congeries-of-cylinders effect is enhanced by the long needles, which grow from all sides of a stem (in, I'm told, a spiral).



All the other plum yews—prostrate included—grow their needles in two straight ranks, one on each side of the stem.



The biggest quirk for the vertical, though, is the total absence of those small round details of the prostrate: the inflorescences.



Not a one on this entire bush, which is every bit the age of the prostrate.  I don't know if verticals just need to be much older than the prostrates to start blooming, or if they are abstainers their whole lifetime.  My sense is that it's the latter, and that abstention is actual inability, yet another consequence of their obsessive verticality:  Just as fruit trees don't flower or fruit at all well on a branch that is vertical—and conversely, do both with heavy fervor the more toward the horizontal that branch is trained—vertical plum yews seem destined to be flower-free as long as their verticality isn't thwarted.

But given the true bounty of inflorescence on the prostrate plum yew (and the admitted modest charm of the inflorescences in the first place), no one would need to wrestle a vertical plum yew to the ground just to get plum yew inflorescences.  And of course, the real charm of the vertical plum yew is the verticality—coupled with the unique spirally-arrayed needles.

So vertical plum yews are always (far as I know) plum-less.  But a plum-free vertical plum yew is still a vertical plum yew.  If I decide to reach for the pruners and narrow mine from a cone to a column, it will finally achieve the uncompromisingly upright posture its Up-Only growth habit is striving for.