POWER PLANT

Red hot pokers are not what they used to be.

I’ve been growing perennials for years, and I’ve learned a thing or two about what I like. Leaves matter. Texture and form are as important as flower color. I can live without plants that require feats of engineering to keep them upright, and I appreciate plants that flourish for several years without division, while keeping more or less to their allotted space. Attracting hummingbirds is a nice bonus. Kniphofias, or, as they are inelegantly called, red hot pokers, fill all or most of these requirements, and their distinctive flower spikes packed tight with tubular flowers contribute a special energy to perennial groupings. Foliage varies from stiff, arching sword shapes to narrow and grass like. The tidiest growers also look splendid growing among low shrubs and conifers.

Flowers go in and out of fashion. Kniphofias, like canna lilies, are enjoying a revival, and many varieties are available if you hunt for them. The blazing red and yellow bi-colors of classic red hot pokers - or torch lilies, if you prefer - are still around, but you can also find pure light yellow, cream, chartreuse and coral red ‘pokers’ ranging in height from 15 inches to 4 feet. Taller knifophia varieties combine well with dahlia, phygelius, rudbeckia and yarrow. Those that bloom in late summer are great with asters and ornamental grasses. I like to plant the smallest varieties near the edge of the border, among lower growing plants like heuchera and hardy geranium, where the whole plant can be admired.

Among my favorite kniphofias are: ‘Primrose Beauty’ (three-foot spikes in cool, light yellow, blooms mid to late summer); ‘Sunningdale Yellow’ (a little taller, blooms in early summer, in a color that leans slightly towards gold); and ‘Shining Scepter’(also early, a stunning, luminous light orange). All these look fabulous with blue or purple flowers. Try early bloomers with salvia ‘May Night’ or emerging from a froth of catmint.

‘Coral’ was the name attached to my earliest-blooming poker, but I have never been able to confirm a cultivar by this name, so perhaps it was merely a descriptive. This one grows about two feet tall, with narrow leaves and a prolific crop of spikes. It is typical of hybrids from Kniphofia triangularis, including many with flowers in soft shades of coral, apricot and cream. ‘Nancy's Red’ is a small, graceful poker with narrow foliage and flowers of deep coral red, blooming in late July. I like to see it in front of Aster x frikartii or the small shrub caryopteris (bluebeard).

A nameless favorite that blooms quite early in light coral was one of three pastel shades that that I selected from seed grown plants of the strain ‘Flamenco’. Advertisements for Flamenco always seem to stress their brilliant reds and yellows, but they seem to cover the entire range of kniphofia shades, including many pastels. If you have room to raise a number of them from seed you’ll find some lovely things.

All kniphofias bloom best in full sun, with four or five hours of sun being a reasonable minimum. Beyond that, I’ve seen a lot of contradictory information about what kniphofias need. Perhaps that means they are not very fussy. I’ve grown them for years in water-retentive soil that is often wet in winter, though never water-logged. Only ‘Little Maid’, an adorable ivory miniature named by the great British plantswoman Beth Chatto, flatly refused to grow for me. In retentive soil, established kniphofia plants are reasonably drought tolerant. In lighter soil, they’ll need ample water to bloom well. Feed plants each spring and protect them from snails, which can spoil developing flower spikes.

Winter makes a mess of kniphofia leaves. I once asked the O’Byrnes, whose wonderful borders at Northwest Garden Nursery are beautifully kept, when they cut back their kniphofias, Ernie said “We cut them down after a frost knocks them back, or anytime in a mild winter. It doesn’t seem to matter much when we do it.” With that in mind I usually leave mine until the first spring clean-up. Some people shorten the leaves by half in fall and bundle them together over the crown. Be sure to cut off the old leaves before new growth begins in spring.

If you are visiting gardens this summer, watch out for these fabulous South African natives. If you would like to see pictures of many kniphofia species and hybrids, visit http://www.theafricangarden.com/

WOODLAND, ENRICHED

Mother’s Day, 2009 saw Eugene’s first formal tour of local gardens that feature native plants. The tour was organized by the Native Gardening Awareness Program (NGAP), a committee of the Emerald Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon. It was very well attended. NGAP member and tour organizer Mieko Aoki estimated that many of the gardens received well over 500 visitors. On May 9 we will be treated to a second Mother’s Day Native Garden Tour covering nine gardens and featuring a variety of Willamette Valley habitat types. Two gardens, one public, one private, are making a return appearance. The other seven are new.

One of those new gardens sits on a steep, wooded hillside of native oaks and Douglas fir on Shasta View, in Eugene’s south hills. It belongs to Clay Gautier and Gail Baker, who have lived there since 1995. At first glance, the place looks like native woodland, until you realize that no natural woodland could be so rich in species in such a small area. Aside from a raised bed bordering the driveway, it is largely native. The owners have incorporated a number of non-native rhododendrons (which are on a drip irrigation system) and there are places where vigorous native geum is fighting it out with patches of non-native geranium. But as Clay like to say, “on the genus level we are very native!”

Although Gautier and Baker describe the yard as pretty much a weed patch when they acquired it, there were some natives present besides the trees, particularly herbaceous ones: camas, Oregon iris, fawn lily and spring beauty. There was little in the way of native shrubs, except for some baldhip rose, snowberry, madrone and honeysuckle (Lonicera hispida), which is trimmed close to the ground to prevent it climbing the trees. There was also poison oak, which the owners suppressed by repeated manual clipping. They’ve added quantities of evergreen huckleberry, salal, Oregon grape, and vine maple, as well as ocean spray, red flowering currant and two Pacific dogwoods.

There are also several shrubs you encounter less often, among them Viburnum edule; white flowered Ceonothus cuneatus, a species you can see growing on Mt Pisgah; and manzanita (Arctostaphylos columbiana), a little leggy from the shade. The owners have introduced many herbaceous plants, as well. Besides such stars as trillium (both species that are locally native) and houndstongue, there are less conspicuous things like star flower, miners lettuce and pathfinder, and two good groundcovers: strawberry (probably Fragaria vesca) and false lily of the valley (Maianthemum dilatatum).

Camas was blooming when I visited. Since the deer fence was built, it blooms well and has spread. Baker said Gautier (who does most of the gardening) helps it along by shaking the seed pods around. Gautier is no longer adding much, he says, and describes the gardening routine as “mostly a removal process.” Maintenance consists of trimming back plants that get out of scale, and lots of weeding, which he does mostly in early spring. A big component of that is keeping out woody invasives such as English laurel, English hawthorn and blackberry. When I asked if they did any leaf removal, Gautier said that on the contrary, he brings in more leaves! Nothing is fertilized except the rhododendrons.

Not surprisingly, the garden attracts wildlife: newts and frogs, garter snakes and alligator lizards, foxes, moles and squirrels. Gautier has even seen a bobcat. Bird visitors include: woodpeckers (downy and pileated,) juncos, nuthatches, grossbeaks, hummingbirds and the occasional tanager.

Not far from the garden on Shasta View, just off Spring Boulevard, is a novel addition for a garden tour: Crescent Ridge is a compact planned development of ten houses clustered near the top of a 2.27 acre site, 50 percent of which is left undisturbed in native vegetation and existing trees. Runoffs from storm drains are designed to flow through the common area in a way to prevent erosion and minimize impact on the city storm water system. Individual home sites are landscaped with native plants.