Andre the Aquilegia, Not!

At one point in the movie The Princess Bride, when the villain keeps saying that the unfolding events are inconceivable, one of the characters finally turns to him and says, "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

I'm beginning to share that sentiment when it comes to gardening catalogs and the word giant.

The one time when that adjective was justified was with Russian Giant sunflowers. Those really were gargantuan—they grew to be about 7-8 feet tall, with flower heads that were easily a foot wide. At the end of the year, I had to use a saw to cut them down.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that my Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant' weren't any larger than any other crocuses I've grown, and I now have to say the same for the Aquilegia x hybrida 'McKana Giants' that I started from seed two years ago and which just this spring flowered for the first time.

Don't get me wrong—I like the plant quite a bit, even if it did take a lot of coaxing to get a very small patch going. It's just that if you're going to call a columbine giant, it should at least be bigger than its cousin in the front yard, 'Danish Dwarf'!

Heavenly Hellebores

For years, we'd heard other people sing the praises of hellebores—how easy they are to grow, how deer-resistant they are, etc. etc. But we had never been able to get one to bloom—until this year!

Maybe we just didn't get big enough plants to start with. In 2009, we bought some small pots of Helleborus x hybridus 'London Fog', Helleborus x sternii 'Hot Flash', and Helleborus x hybridus 'Mellow Yellow Strain'. By the following year, none had bloomed, and all but Mellow Yellow had died. So when our fabulous garden designer, Monica Riordan of Garden Room Design, redid the shady corner bed and suggested some Helleborus o. 'Royal Heritage', I was skeptical. But we really, really did want these plants to work for us, so we gave it one last shot. And I'm so glad we did!

In late March, not only did all of the Royal Heritage plants bloom, but so did the Mellow Yellow! The latter was true to its name, producing flowers with a hint of yellow.

Some of the Royal Heritage flowers had lovely dark red edging, but most were cream-colored.

It was a modest display, but more than we'd ever had in the past.

Now the one thing I have to figure out is when they've actually stopped blooming. Almost two months later, the flowers are still tucked in among the foliage, although they've all turned green at this point. Will they eventually wither and drop? Or will they stay like this until the end of the season? For the first time in our gardening lives, we'll find out!