In a Vase, on Monday – P and W

Chris Mousseau

I’ve written about my giant white Cleome before, and explained earlier this year. how they came to be growing on my small side patio. We had a heavy downpour late last week and one of the plants fell over and blocked the entrance – it had to come out. Coincidentally, I had been thinking about removing several large Echinacea purpurea because an Austrian pine was growing into it. Doesn’t bother me much to cut back or dig up the coneflowers – they self seed ridiculously easily here and I have hundreds blooming. What a perfect opportunity, I though yesterday, to fill a large glass bowl with these blooms and join Cathy and her group at Rambling in the Garden for IAVOM.

I added a few sprigs of bronze fennel and some half dried Allium seedheads, but it’s mainly a giant purple and white bowl of blooms. Have a great week everyone!

14 Comments

  3. I like that last picture too, Chris 👍 How lovely to be able to have a vaseful of echinacea, something that has never done well for me here so I don’t bother with it now, They work really well with the cleome

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  5. Austrian pine?! What?! I have not heard that name in a very long time. Is it popular there? I was told by another native here that they were initially planted on the banks of the 280 freeway through San Jose, but I do not remember them. They apparently died out within only a few years, and since the freeway and I are the same age, the trees would have died out when I was quite young. It seems like an odd choice for that application anyway, since they are not big trees, and even back then, people knew that pines did not perform well with smog. San Jose was quite smoggy back then. I grew one in my mother’s garden, but it was the only one that I ever met, and it was never happy. I grew a seedling from it, and planted it at the gravesite of Privet (a terrier), but a big coast live oak fell on it and killed it.

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    1. Austrian pine, aka Black pine, aka Pinus nigra…not sure how common since it’s introduced – much more common is the native white pine. But the farmer who had our field decades ago surrounded to sides of our property with them – they’re a pretty good size now.

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