Up, Up, and Away, in My Beautiful Balloon Flower

Balloon flower, or platycodon grandiflorus, is an interesting summer-blooming flower that's always charming through even the hottest days.  The original balloon flower, also known as Chinese bellflower, grows to twenty-four inches tall and is good for the middle of most flower borders.  There are shorter varieties, such as 'Astra Blue', that I find I enjoy even more because they form nice bushy clumps that are perfect for the front of borders.

The plant gets its name from buds that look like hot-air balloons before opening into star-shaped single or double flowers ('Hakone Blue').  Most balloon flowers are a beautiful shade of violet-tinged blue, but there are also white and pink varieties available.

This is a shorter variety of balloon flower.

This is a lovely single flowered variety.

The balloon flower's unopened bud, a tight star-shaped "balloon," is where the plant derives its common name.

I think the lovely star-shaped flowers and their unopened "balloons" fit in perfectly with a cottage-style garden.  I've always wanted to combine the tall and short varieties in one bed to see how one solid mass of their pale blue flowers would look.

Balloon flowers love full sun and only begin blooming after the heat of summer has arrived.  They also emerge from the soil late in the season, so be careful to mark where they are planted so that they aren't accidentally dug into or planted on top of.  Otherwise, they are fairly tough plants that don't need much attention from the gardener which naturally endears them to me even more.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.

A Visitor in the Garden

Today we had a visitor in the garden.  Sunny, the poodle, discovered it in the sand next to my new raised beds.

Eastern box turtle, Terrapene carolina

The visitor was an Eastern box turtle, or Terrapene carolina.  The box turtle doesn't travel far in its lifetime (which is recorded to be up to 50 years or more), so we may see more of this one.  We know it's a female because of her eye color (amber or brown);  a male will have red irises instead.  The box turtle eats insects such as worms and slugs, and vegetable matter like berries and mushrooms.

You should never take a turtle from the wild and try to raise it as a pet.  The box turtle has very specific needs which, if not met, can cause the turtle to die within three days.  Box turtles also have a homing instinct so that when released, it will try to return to its birth area; this can be a dangerous journey for a turtle, who may try to cross busy streets to get back to its home.

I'm hoping she'll be a regular visitor to my garden, eating slugs and other icky things for me.  Sunny seemed to find her interesting too, although I doubt the turtle could say the same for the poodle.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.

Bloomin' Things: June 14, 2013

It's been incredibly hot these last few days.  Summer has come early this year, but so far the flowers in my yard seem to be enjoying the heat.  Blooming at the moment are hydrangeas, daylilies, roses, spirea, salvia, penstemon, gardenia, cleome, balloon flowers, and lilies.  The cherries are all gone; I ate quite a few of them myself, but the birds cleaned up all the ones I couldn't reach.  On the other hand, the strawberries and the blackberries are ripening, and the blueberries will ripen soon.

Hydrangeas have always been one of my favorite summer bloomers.

Tons of tiny "flowers" make up a hydrangea blossom.

A hydrangea of a slightly more purple color; the ph in the soil determines the exact hue of a hydrangea's flowers.

Cleome, or spider flower, volunteers itself in the garden year after year.

A large yellow daylily. I like its rumpled look; it reminds me of seersucker.

A gardenia blossom, as lovely to look at as it is to smell.

Penstemon, 'Husker Red'

A daylily with an interesting color combination.

A lovely stand of daisies at the Atlanta Botanical Garden

When the weather gets this hot, I tend to lose interest in the garden until things cool down a bit.  If I want to get anything done, I have to start very early in the morning.  Which probably isn't a bad philosophy at any time of year.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.