Henny Penny Farmette

Surprise isn’t the right word for what I felt rounding the corner today. I looked over into our rose garden and the bulbs we planted four years ago finally bloomed, sans the foliage which dried in the California heat a month or two ago.

Vibrant pink lilies on 3-foot stalks emit a sweet, seductive scent

These beautiful lilies were such a surprise. We saw the long stalks shooting upward with unopened buds on the end and wondered what they were. Then they opened to reveal these dazzling lilies.

They were likely planted in the 1950s or a decade later on the property adjacent to ours. The old man who owned the property behind ours passed away a year or so before we arrived. His daughter gave us the lily bulbs.  Alas, she doesn’t seem to remember the flowers (except that there were bulbs) and we don’t know what kind they are either. They look like star lilies, and are born on 3 foot-stalks. There is a very sweet scent emitted from the center of the flower.

Long stems characterize these lovely pink lilies

I’m having a devil of a time identifying them. There are so many types of lilies, including calla lilies, trumpet lilies, oriental lilies, and day lilies, to name a few. So if you know which cultivar they belong to, please email me at Meeralester1@Gmail.com.

Climbing Sally Holmes’s showy blooms are beautiful in the moonlight

Some years ago while researching a book about decorating with flowers and floral motifs, I learned about the white garden of English writer Vita Sackville-West. The garden was part of her Sissinghurst estate in Kent, England. I seized upon the idea of someday having my own white garden.

Sackville-West’s garden, planted roughly from 1949 to 1950 featured various plants with white flowers and others with gray-green foliage. The combination of white and gray-green colors is stunning when viewed by moonlight. The author sought not only ravishing florals such as Regale lilies and trumpet lilies, dianthus, and white peonies but also made certain that her chosen flowers would perfume the garden.

On my Henny Penny farmette, I’ve created a fairy ring in a white garden that I’ve started. The center of the fairy ring is an Iceberg hybrid tea rose. I used artemisia (Dusty Miller) with silvery gray-green leaves planted in a circle around the rose. I frequently have to aggressively clip the artemisia as its feathery leaves grow fairly fast.

In another area, I have also planted a group of floribunda white roses and plan to put in white mugwort. Other plants with white blooms will be added and then the whole area encircled in yarrow. A piece of statuary, perhaps a four or five foot angel, will be installed to finish the project.

Other white flowering plants I could tuck into a white garden could include tuberose, phlox, Madonna lily, evening stock, cleome, and various white roses. Those plants are also highly fragrant.

A perfect place to position a white perfumed garden might be beyond a bedroom window. You could see it in the moonlight and breathe in the heady perfume as you are falling asleep.