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April 8, 2005

Spring - An experience in immortality. - Henry D. Thoreau

It’s Peak Shipping Season!
We’re still well stocked but don’t wait too long to order that cool new addition to your garden.
149 new plants just added to the site last week alone!

Hi, I have been ordering plants from nurseries for many years and I have to tell you that in all that time
I have never received such big a healthy plants as I have from you.
I about hit the floor!!!
I was thinking I would just get this small root that I would be lucky to find once it was planted
and I thought the price was a little high, That is until I opened the box.
Now I want to know why you ask so little for such great plants?
I am a customer for life.
Thank You, Linda V. -Richland, Georgia

Wild and Wonderful Wisteria
Nothing else lends that elegant and magical ‘Alice in Wonderland’ quality to the garden. Long, dripping clusters of pea-like blossoms, fill the early Spring air with an incredible perfume. These fast growing vines need good placing and management. Here in Washington, they’ve been spotted blooming in the tops of 60 foot Douglas Firs! A long fence line or arbor are perfect but must be strong. They can girdle and kill trees and if grown on or near a structure, they must be pruned regularly. But for dramatic, large-scale impact, and longevity this plant is hard to beat.

Wisteria plants like full sun and a slightly acidic, rich, well-drained soil.

Some annual pruning will promote flowering. It will also keep it from eating your house.
In Sierra Madre, California at the annual "Wistaria Festival" (That’s how they spell it), visitors can view a vine that is 111 years old, weighs approximately 250 tons and bears over 1.5 million lavender blossoms. According to Guinness, this is the World's Largest Blossoming Plant. The original house that it was planted on completely collapsed and was rebuilt 200 feet away. So take that pruning advice seriously or better yet, grow it on it’s own structure and a beefy one at that.

Why won’t my Wisteria bloom? A common problem with new plantings. Here are the reasons and solutions:

1. Start with plants from cuttings or grafts, not seed grown. (ours are all graft or cutting grown)
2. Plant in full sunlight.
3. Do Not prune heavily in winter and spring. This encourages vegetative growth not flowers.
4. Do Not fertilize with nitrogen fertilizer for vegetative growth.
5. Do give a heavy application of superphosphate (0-20-0) in early spring.
6. Do your heavy pruning of new growth in late spring or early summer.
7. Do try root pruning in late Fall. Use a spade to cut straight down in a four-foot circle around the trunk. Especially useful for restoring older vines.
   (Currently, the Wisteria are available through website orders only)

Wisteria macrostachya 'Clara Mack'
Rare, pure white-flowering form of the native American Wisteria. Striking and prolific blooms. It has large, bright green leaves with smooth, broad leaflets. Occasional rebloom all summer long. Because the blooms occur on current season's growth, spring pruning is acceptable. Tolerant of wet, swampy soil.

Wisteria floribunda 'Black Dragon'
AKA: 'Kokuryu' This is the darkest purple flower available. Blooms fairly young and early in the season. Beautiful, foot-long, double blooms on this New Zealand cultivar. The flowers are speckled mauve / purple and sweetly scented. This prolific grower cannot be over pruned. It is suggested to cut off at least 90% of new growth each fall. Can grow 12 feet per season. Occasionally reblooms again in autumn followed by velvety seed pods.

Wisteria floribunda 'Honbeni'
AKA: Pick Ice - A very fine form with very long racemes of delicate, magenta pink flowers. One of the very best and probably the variety with the most elegant of flowers. Full, gorgeous flowers are later than most and slightly scented. It begins blossoming after the 3rd or 4th year.

Wisteria floribunda 'Macrobotrys'
Trans: Purple snake wisteria - This clone has very long trusses of fragrant, mauve flowers up to 3½ feet long! Better length developing as the plants get established. Rated as one of the world's great garden plants.

Wisteria frutescens 'Amethyst Falls'
South Carolina native selection that flowers on new growth each spring and summer. Large fragrant, lavender flowers hang down from new growth in the spring through mid summer. Twining climber with elegant, feathery, pinnate foliage. Will quickly cover a large wall, pergola or outbuilding.

Wisteria sinensis 'Prolific'
An improved variety which flowers readily with larger light violet-blue fragrant flowers in late April. An abundant producer, it begins blooming during the 1st or 2nd year. A fast grower as well and often bloom sporadically through the summer. Twining climber with elegant, feathery, pinnate foliage. Will quickly cover a large wall, pergola or outbuilding. See all Wisterias

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
-Frank Lloyd Wright

Event Reminders, April:
Apr 9th and Every Saturday through Spring from 10am - 2pm
Master Gardener's Clinic!

Big Dipper is pleased to once again welcome the Master Gardener's program as they set-up shop on the farm. What a pleasure it is to have these plant lovers on-site. These volunteer gardening experts are available to answer questions, diagnose pests and diseases and recommend treatments. Numerous handouts and lots of problem-solving literature. The clinic will be at the farm every Saturday from 10 to 2 all the way through June! Bring your samples and questions. Free

Hey kids, let’s play…… “Stump the Master Gardener!”

This Saturday and next, Apr 9th & 16th, bring your plant ID questions, your plant disease questions, your pest questions and if you can successfully ‘Stump the Master Gardener’ you’ll get $5 off any purchase on the farm of $20 or more! Bring reasonably sized samples, (bugs and/or disease samples in ziplocks please) and make these guys earn their pay… oh wait…. well at least make -em sweat !
………Better bring ALL the books this week Carol. ;-)

Apr 23rd – Saturday 1pm Big Dipper Welcomes Cass Turnbull, founder of Plant Amnesty!
‘How to Prune & Renovate the Older Garden’
Founded in 1987 with the mission to end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs, the folks at Plant Amnesty promote awareness and respect for plants, encourage proper pruning techniques, educate the public, improve landscape management practices and provide a free referral/reference service. Join us to learn some correct pruning techniques and see some examples on how to properly restore a neglected landscape. Free

Apr 23rd The Green River Horticultural Society Meeting has been moved to this Saturday to enjoy Cass Turnbull’s visit.

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
-Michel de Montaigne

Trout Lily - Erythronium americanum
Known by many cultures and communities in America by many names: Adder's Tongue, Serpent's Tongue, Yellow Snowdrop, Dog-toothed Violet, Diente De Perro and Trout Lily. Well… a charmer by any other name is still a charmer.

This is one of our more exotic American natives. Trout Lily is native to much of the eastern United States. The beautiful foliage is a mottled mint green, chocolate and silver (like a trout). One of our earliest and loveliest spring wildflowers with delicate golden-yellow edible lilies, sometimes occurring in large colonies. The typical flower color of this species is yellow but brown, white, and pink forms also exist. Makes an elegant and delightful ground cover in dappled shade. Goes dormant in summer.
Extensive historical medicinal uses and the entire plant was eaten by early Americans. The bulb is said to have a crisp and very pleasant cucumber-like taste.

The plant prefers light soils and requires a well-drained location. Grows best in moist semi-shade.
Our entire crop is in bloom right now and is a sight to behold. See photo - Another photo by John Glasser

Dear Sir & Ms: I received my order today and I am very satisfied with your
plants, and very excellent packaging for shipping. It well shows, that
Big Dipper Farm is a very high quality Nursery, and I Thank You very much..
-Leonard K. - Young, Arizona

The Hardy Palms -
Want to add some Jungle / Tropical flavor to your garden? Hardy down to at least zone 7 (and some say more with protection), these palms can offer that Jurassic feel to the landscape and are also popular container specimens.

Mediterranean Fan Palm - Chamaerops humilis
This lovely palm is grown widely throughout the Mediterranean. A hardy, clumping palm tree, growing slowly to 20 feet high. Multiple trunks 4 to 5 inches in diameter with triangular, fan-shaped blue-grey to green leaves, 1 to 2 feet long and wide. Very attractive and exotic looking. They frequently produce several trunks which may be short and straight, long and thin or hidden altogether by the leaves.

Chinese Windmill Palm - Trachycarpus fortunei
This small, attractive fan palm is often seen growing in cooler climates. It's very cold-hardy and can grow to over 40 feet over many years. The palmate leaves can get up to 4 feet across, are deeply divided and the tips are often drooping. Drought tolerant, and a must for the hot new tropical trend in gardening.
See both Hardy Palms

"Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it.
When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden,
you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because
of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed."
-Lewis Gannit

A Gardener’s Prayer
If it were any use, every day the gardener would fall on his knees and pray somehow like this:
“O Lord, grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o’clock in the morning, but, you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, helianthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought-loving plants – I will write their names down on a bit of paper if you like – and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not, for instance, on spiraea, or on gentian, plantain lily and rhododendron), and not too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew, and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven. Amen.”
-Karel Capek, The Gardener’s Year (1931)

Variegated Climbing Hydrangea - Hydrangea anomala petiolaris 'Mirranda'
Stunning! A beautiful variegated form of the popular climbing hydrangea. The dark green leaves have striking irregular wide yellow margins. Beautiful 6'' flattened heads of white flowers.
All climbing hydrangeas can be slow to get started but once they get going they are very impressive vines. They live for decades completely covering buildings with a reach of 40 to even 80 feet! This cultivar ‘Mirranda’ is new on the market and reports are that it is a more restrained plant, smaller and slower. Time will tell.
A Rippingale Nursery introduction and named after their oldest daughter, Guy & Jeanie recommend careful site choice. For best foliage color and flowering, plant with morning sun and afternoon shade.
Too much afternoon sun and she will not look her best. Too much shade and she will hide some of her lovely variegation.
A truly wonderful climbing deciduous vine with rich, thick, cinnamon-brown to orange peeling bark, which makes for great winter interest. Prune after flowering if desired.
See 'Mirranda'

The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.
-Emogirl Therese of Lisieux

Big Dipper Farm 
360-886-8133
www.BigDipperFarm.com