Celebrating Chartreuse

Chartreuse colored foliage and flowers help to sustain the beauty of the garden. Chartreuse is the refreshing color of new life in the garden, the color of Spring and emerging new leaves. Plants that carry this fresh color throughout the summer and into the fall are invaluable to the garden designer.

The late-blooming purple flowers of Aster novae-angliae ‘Purple Dome’ are enhanced when paired with the chartreuse foliage of Spiraea japonica ‘Gold Mound. Tradescantia ‘Sweet Kate’ sports this same color combination with plum-purple flowers and chartreuse leaves.

One of my favorite shrubs in this chartreuse-leaf palette is an enchanting form of bridle-wreath spiraea, Spiraea thunbergii ‘Ogon.’ Ogon’s white flowers appear in April amongst vibrant yellow-green, fine-textured leaves. This attractive chartreuse foliage holds through the season turning orange in late October. It is a great complement to the blues and purples of Blue Oat Grass (Helictotrichon), Salvia ‘Blue Queen’ and the Siberian Irises ‘Pirate Prince’ and ‘Tealwood’. Red daylilies, such as Hemerocallis ‘Red Cossack’s, scarlet-flowered scapes are an exhilarating combination dancing through the chartreuse foliage of Spiraea ‘Ogon’.

Chartreuse is a terrific color-bridge for contrasting primary colors such as red and yellow or purple and orange. The chartreuse foliage of potato vine (Ipomoea batatas ‘Margarita’) knits together the maroon foliage of Coleus and Fuchsia ‘Gartenmeister’ which sport contrasting orange flowers.

Chartreuse leaves are found in a diverse variety of plants including: Hosta ‘Sum & Substance’, Calluna ‘Wickwar Flame’, Geranium ‘Ann Folkard’, Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’, Weigela ‘Rubidor’, Thuja ‘Rheingold’ and Lamium maculatum ‘Beedham’s White.’

Chartreuse colored flowers are as seductive as chartreuse foliage, though not as common. The foamy flower heads of Alchemilla mollis (Lady’s Mantle) is the first to come to mind. The genus Euphorbia contains many species with chartreuse flowers or ‘bracts’ and are among the first to bloom in the spring. The chartreuse bracts of Euphorbia myrsinites and Euphorbia amygdaloides ‘Purpurea’ can last from April to June.

Iris sibirica ‘Isabelle’ and ‘Lime-heart’ have chartreuse infused flowers. Combine these beauties with Lady’s Mantle, the chartreuse foliage of Veronica prostrata ‘Aztec Gold’ and the dark foliage of Cimicifuga ramosa ‘Brunette’ and Weigela ‘Wine and Roses’ with a dash of Blue Oat Grass for a spectacular June border. Daylilies also offer some stunning green-tinged tepels. The small perky flowers of Hemerocallis ‘Green Flutter’ is one of my favorites. Plant it with other chartreuse daylilies, ‘Green Iceberg’ and ‘Meadowbrook Green’ for vibrant and refreshing July color.

Warren Leach

Fragrant Gardens

"To make a great garden, one must have a great idea or a great opportunity; ... But it is possible to introduce a touch of imaginative beauty into almost any garden by finding the most perfect form for one of its features, or by giving expression to the soul of some particular flower ."

Sir George Sitwell examines the emotions of beauty in his book On the Making of Gardens, recently reprinted by Godine Press. This compilation of reflective wisdom, composed while exploring gardens in Italy nearly one hundred years ago, is still quire applicable to garden making today.

What quality expresses the "soul of a flower" more than its sweet scent? This ethereal quality of fragrance is an extra dimension beyond the tangible spatial constants within which we define our garden beds and borders. "Sweet scents are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts, And nurse and mellow the dull memory, That would let drop without them her best stores." (Savage Landor)

The strongest stimulus to trigger a memory in a stream-of-consciousness style, is most likely that of a familiar scent. My own memories are indeed roused by smells. The scent of lilac (Syringa vulgaris), mock orange (Philadelphus coronarius), lemon lily (Hemerocallis lilio-asphodelus (H. flava)), lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) and rugosa roses recall my most distant childhood memories of my mother’s garden. The lilacs were the common ones, familiar throughout rural Maine - often found memorialized an ancient foundation hole where a house once stood. I remember making a cave-like hideaway in the center of the lilac thicket of suckering stems and trunks. The sweetness of the lilac flowers are so intoxicating that they still induce me to spontaneously bury my nose in their flower heads and inhale deeply.

The mock orange bloomed after the lilacs, and the semi-double white flowers were even more fragrant than the lilac. I now recognize this exotic scent to be orange blossoms (Citrus). The neighbor’s had a fully double variety that wasn’t nearly as sweet.

The lemon lily (Hemerocallis lilio-asphodelus) was my first encounter with the daylily. The lemon lily’s tall scapes of yellow flowers also smelled like orange blossoms. Lily-of- the-valley created a carpet at the north end of the house where asparagus also grew. The tall ferny asparagus foliage was ornamental and a nice addition to bouquets. Although, we cultivated extensive vegetable gardens, we didn’t eat asparagus. I discovered the taste of asparagus as an adult.

Fragrant and thorny roses grew as large spreading masses. A semi-double magenta-rose variety bloomed intermittently throughout the summer. The fragrance of rugosa roses transports me to the town of Castine on Penobscot Bay, where perfumed white rugosa roses grew.

Making a garden is a very personal expression. Select plants for your garden that have both fragrant flowers and fragrant foliage to enhance the experiences of everyone who comes near. Entry gardens are a logical location for fragrant plantings, whether sweet flowers or aromatic herbal foliage. Lilacs have been relegated by some horticultural authors to the second rate list, citing only one short season of attraction and foliage prone to mildew disfigurement. However, you don’t have to look long for confirmation of their popularity in New England gardens. This attests to the emotional pleasure that fragrant lilacs give us. We have to have lilacs, so select cultivars that have attractive mildew resistant foliage, like ‘Beauty of Moscow’ with huge fragrant white trusses with a hint of pink.

Syringa meyeri ‘Palibin’ and Syringa patula ‘Miss Kim’ are dwarf varieties that can be kept in the four to six foot height range, bloom slightly later than common lilac and have attractive fall foliage color.

The Korean Spice Viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) welcomes Spring with early fragrant flowers and bids Autumn adieu with claret- red foliage. September blooming Heptacodium miconioides offers a precious fall flourish of fragrance.

If a rose isn’t fragrant, why bother. The sweet scented and single flowered native Rosa virginiana is not a perpetual bloomer, but has attractive hips and lustrous red fall foliage.

There are volumes of botanical references listing many sweet scented perennials, annuals, trees and shrubs. Part of the pleasure found in fragrance is its personal association. For instance, to me Astilbe ‘Peach Blossom’ smells like childhood memories of opening packets of grape Kool-aid!

Two disparate fragrant foliage plants, the tropical, citrus-scented lemon verbena (Aloysia triphylla) and the hardy, native, pungently aromatic sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) are both scents reminiscent to me of the coast of Maine. Sweet fern and bayberry grow in poor dry cracks in rocks. Their scent, combined with the salt air, the fir and spruce forests are the essence of Mt. Desert Island. I remember a large, venerable lemon verbena growing in an stately Italian terra cotta pot at Thuja Gardens in Northeast Harbor. The lemon scent of the leaves was so intoxicating that you compulsively rubbed the leaves and smelled your fingers.

We can learn from George Sitwell’s account of absorbing the essence of gardens, discerning their design components and savoring the emotional experience to be translated in ones own garden. To make a great garden, one must have a great idea, a great opportunity, a measure of imagination and a keen nose.

Warren Leach

Fragrant Foliage and Flowers

 Fragrant Foliage