May 07th, 2022

May Musings

Would you like to feel like you have been on vacation without leaving Beaufort County?  Visit Wimbee Creek Flower Farm in Seabrook.  It is a morning out that will leave you with the sense that you have been at a truly magical place.  A group of us met in the flower barn for instruction on making arrangements by Maria Baldwin, the owner.   We toured the flower fields and then made our own special arrangements from a huge array of cut blossoms and foliage. After our artistic creations, we were treated to a lovely luncheon under a huge Live Oak tree.
This is a don’t miss experience:  www.wimbeecreekfarm.com
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My arrangement that I took home.

May is really the time when our gardens come alive in the heat and sunshine.   It would be nice if we would get a little more rain other than just threats.  I have really come to love Kniphofia or Red Hot Poker.  The tall spears of orange and yellow flowers really ping in my garden.  If you keep on deadheading the rather unimpressive seed heads, you will see more spikes coming up.

​One disappointment this year is that two plants failed to come up.  None of the “Wish” series of Salvias came back although a neighbor has it in her garden.  Both “Wendy’s Wish” and “Enber Wish” lasted three years and that was the end.  Also, I cannot seem to be able to grow Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium maculatum “Little Joe”)
I have seen in growing by the side of the roads in abundance up north, but mine did not come up in either my garden or the community garden I maintain.  I have heard other gardeners say that they do not have luck with it either.  I am trying a new cultivar so we will see if that works or not.  It is such a great pollinator plant that I would hate not to have it.
 
That last frost we had in March really nipped some things so that you might find things like Plumbago flowering late this year.  The shrub Duranta really had its top blackened.   It is just not frost hardy.  It doesn’t die, but it sure looks ugly until you prune the dead stuff off.

​I love Coneflowers and I have them everywhere this year.  They are a short lived perennial, but they reseed readily.  Do not remove the seed heads at the end of the season and you should get volunteers. 
 
I have noticed that things are coming in late at garden centers this year.  Perhaps they were hit by that late freeze as well.
 
I will be in England for the next few weeks visiting gardens in Sussex and Kent as well as attending the Chelsea Flower Show, finally!  Covid threw a wrench (or spanner) into travel plans for over two years.