The Entranceway to my Home - Blooms in May

Hello friends!

I am glad to be back on the Peace Garden after a very long winter and a wet and chilly spring.

Today is reported to be the first day of uninterrupted sunshine in my town.

Yes, there has been so much rain that it has been difficult to work outside but most of us have been busy planning our window boxes and plant containers.

This window box is near my front door but also in my bedroom window. It is filled with pansies, impatiens, alyssum, petunias and vinca vines. It is the first thing that I see when I wake in the morning and I enjoy the view every day.

Here are some photos of my front porch as you enter my home.

All of the flowers here are annuals.

Nicotiana and petunias

Note the sweet potato vine in this planter - by the end of the season it will be trailing on the ground - It is a great accent to add to plant containers.

This hanging basket was a gift from my family on Mother's Day. :-)

I look forward to chatting with you over the next few months.

peacesojourner

Blooms in May - 2011

Some of the first perennials are coming to life.

They have been snuggled under the heavy snow drifts for several months.

Mother Nature is just so amazing

Always one of the first flowers to bloom - Purple Columbine (Aquilegia)

The street that I live on is lined with Chestnut trees.

This one is directly in front of my house.

Two squirrels live in the tree in a well placed hole in the tree trunk. In the warm weather they live in a nest in the higher branches but when they are gathering nuts for the winter months they spend a lot of time in the tree trunk.

I enjoy observing them - they are so busy, playful and amusing to watch.

Ajuga - a beautiful ground cover that is great for those hard

to care for places in the garden. Also known as Bugle Weed.

Hooray Spring is Here -

Hooray Spring is Here!

Happy Spring to You -

especially to my friends who live in the colder climates :-)

Can't wait to see the Spring flowers and to get my hands in the soil !

peacesojourner

A Winter Scene in the Peace Garden

This is my favorite seat in the Peace Garden during the summer months.

Photos were taken a few days ago - I am constantly dreaming

of Spring flowers which I know are hiding under the beds of snow.

View of the back garden through the bedroom window.

Just 8 days and a wake up until the first day of Spring.

The Peace Garden on a Snowy Day In Buffalo

St. Francis of Assisi who now lives in my Buffalo garden

My window box

Bird feeder near my front door

Snow capped Sedum

Entrance to my home

Japanese Iris during the Winter season

Snow lands on a bush making it resemble a cotton plant

Winter view of the side garden

The snow brings it's own beauty and a sense of wonder and spirituality

to the Peace Garden in the Winter months

peacesojourner

Nipponanthemum nipponicum (Montauk Daisy)

Nipponanthemum nipponicum

(Montauk Daisy)

This Daisy is a strong, hardy plant that can survive adverse conditions, including drought. It requires little in the way of care, making it a popular plant even with beginner gardeners. There are a few variations on how it got it's name of Montauk Daisy.

After researching it's history I came across this story and it is my favorite:

Posted by Donn of Seaside, New York on Friday, September 24, 2004

'Several years ago, before I moved to Long Island, I used to work in the City, and lived in Queens. I spent untold hours driving to and from Montauk, to surfcast The End.

One night, I was fishing beside an older gentleman who lived in one of the little known small towns, inland (if that's possible) from the coastal towns out there, a town called Springs. He was a retired commercial fisherman, and the fishing was poor, so we chatted through the night, mostly about his fishing career and surfcasting. After sunrise, we were packing up to leave, and he invited me to his house for breakfast, which invitation I gladly accepted.

I followed him west in my van, and we pulled into an oyster shell paved driveway that wound back into a gorgeous landscape of flowers, shrubs and grasses. It seems surfcasting was not his only hobby. He fed me a fish and eggs breakfast, and, with a mug of hot coffee in my hand, he fed me a tour of his gardens.

I won't get into the rest of his landscape, but one bed, snuggled in next to a tiny grove of Beach Plums, jumped out at me. It was approximately 12' in diameter, crudely oval in shape, and both lined and interspersed with beautiful medium sized stones. The only other occupants of the bed were a gorgeous cluster of Montauk Daisies.

I'd seen wild clusters of them along the shoreline from the point back to the village, but I'd never seen them in a garden, and I asked him what they were. He said "They're Montauk Daisies now," with a sneer and a salty look to punctuate his answer.

He went on to tell me that he started the plants that filled the bed with seed gathered from the cliffs along the surfcaster's path. He stuck an envelope into his waders, and slogged up to the plants at the end of their blooming season (which is the height of the fall fishing run), and taught himself how to find and harvest the seeds. The rest is evident in his gorgeous little bed.

This all happened in the 50's, when the villages on the South Fork were not as developed as they are now. In the course of the gentrification of the area, nurseries and landscape professionals moved in, and decided that the ubiquitous Nippon Daisy was an important facet of any locally correct landscape design, but the name was all wrong. They changed it to Montauk Daisy.

I have never researched this subject, so I have no idea if it's really what happened, or the caffeine-augmented sleepy rambling of a fisherman/gardener. It's true enough for me.'

*****

So there you have it - the story of the Montauk Daisy.

I am a fan of this plant and I can't wait to try some of the hints that I have been reading about. If you are looking for an easy care plant that blooms well into the cold weather and also looks glorious - the Nopponanthemum nipponicum is for you - all the way from Japan and now well established in Montauk, Long Island!

Montauk Daisies - October 2010

Montauk Daisy - Chrysanthemum Nipponicum

Two years ago in October I was taking a drive in the countryside in Western New York when I passed a farm that had an enormous display of white flowers for sale. I made a U-turn and stopped. I had never seen these flowers before – they were not exactly chrysanthemums and not exactly daisies. Thus I was introduced to the Montauk Daisy, named after Montauk, New York, which is a city on Long Island.

They were beautiful, looked very sturdy and best of all they were $3 for a gallon size pot. I purchased 5 of them and placed them in various parts of my garden not really knowing what to expect.

Well, the outcome has been amazing. They have grown about 3 feet high and maybe 4-5 wide
As its current Latin name suggests, this daisy originated in Japan (Nippon). This plant is native to the island's coastal area. Montauk daisies like well-drained sites with full sun. They are rated for growing in zones 6 to 10, which means that most temperate zone gardeners can enjoy this flower.

During spring and summer the he Montauk daisy will spend most of the growing season as a pleasant leafy filler in your flowerbeds. Foliage is deep green, with a slightly leathery texture, the stems grow from hardy roots into a tall, bushy "sub shrub."
The three-inch leaves are toothed and oblong, similar to the Shasta daisy and chrysanthemum cousins. In early October, dozens of classic white, yellow-centered blooms open and adorn the plant until hard frost (28 degrees F).
They are deer-resisting, butterfly attracting.

I have learned that because the Montauk daisies begins to green in the flower bed a month or two before the time to plant summer annuals, croci, pansies, daffodils or early tulips can be planted around the plant to take advantage of space later to be shaded by the growing stems.

They do need pruning and pinching off new stem growth in the spring and early summer should control their growth. The rule of thumb for the Montauk daisy is 'cut it in half on the first of June and again on the first of December.

The origin of this daisy: It was named Nipponanthemum, which roughly translated means Japanese flower. In the 1860s, a Russian botanist, Carl Maximowicz, brought the Nippon Daisy to his botanical garden in St. Petersburg. He distributed many of these plants around the world so that more people could study them and appreciate their beauty. The Nippon Daisy flourished well on Long Island and is now known in the United States as the Montauk Daisy.

The blooms of the Montauk Daisy last for a long time. They are also great as cut flowers because they have tall stems that are quite strong.

More on this flower in my next posting.