It’s no secret to even casual nature observers that we are having a butterfly free-for-all this year.  Red admirals, those fast flyers with the distinctive orange wing bands, are everywhere.  Experts differ on the reasons for the unusual numbers.  The most common explanation is that the Red Admirals are tourists, lured up from the South by the unseasonable weather north of their usual range. Swarms of them have been reported as far north as Watertown, New York, a place generally known only for enormous snow accumulation. They are also surging in Chicago. Whatever the motivation, the Red Admirals are covering territory like barnstorming politicians.  I find it hard to imagine that butterflies would trade bucolic Virginia for congested New Jersey, but curiosity can do strange things.

            I woke up to the butterfly invasion the other day when I was on my knees weeding one of my front beds.  A Red Admiral landed on my shirt and stayed there for about ten seconds.  I hope that I didn’t smell like any of the species’ favorite foods—tree sap, bird droppings or fermenting fruit—but you never know.  In any event, I looked up and noticed ten more Red Admirals on a small bed of Centaurea montana or perennial cornflower.  I was surprised by the number of butterflies and even more surprised that I had more than ten centaurea.  It seems to me that last year I had only a few.  Clearly the centaurea have been busy while my back was turned.

            Centaurea is also sometimes known as mountain bluet.  Native to central Europe, it is a member of the vast Compositae or daisy family.  The flowers, which appear at the top of one foot-tall stalks, look like the result of a mash-up between a daisy and a thistle.  Thistle-like buds open into flowers with frayed, tubular petals in shades of purple, blue and white.  The blues are especially clear and beautiful.  The elongated, medium green Centaurea leaves are nothing to write home about, but they are not ugly. If you have space to fill in a sunny or lightly shaded bed, centaurea will do the job very efficiently, as the plants spread by underground stolons or roots.  My patch started two years ago with a freebie—a little pot of a relatively new cultivar, ‘Amethyst In Snow’, which has a purple center, surrounded by white petals.  My one ‘Amethyst In Snow’ plant is now ten or twelve plants, which contrast nicely with nearby blue-flowered centaureas. If anything, the bi-colored variety spreads faster than its solid-colored relative.  I don’t mind this, as the centaurea have colonized what was formerly a horticultural dead zone and need almost no care.  If they overrun the confines of their space, I will transplant the extras to other difficult places.

            Another benefit to centaurea is that it can be cut back hard after flowering and, with sufficient water, will rebloom later in the summer.  I whack mine off, which they take as a sign of affection.  Both the blue and bi-colored varieties have rebloomed nicely. 

            My mythology-loving daughter has always been fond of centaurea, because the name conjures up the image of a herd of small centaurs cantering through the garden.  The species name honors Chiron, foremost among the half man/half horse centaurs of Greek mythology.  According to legend, Chiron was skilled in the art of herbal medicine and discovered the medicinal use of centaurea. The plant has traditionally been used for conditions including conjunctivitis. The species name, “montana,” commemorates its mountainous native habitat.

            There are a number of cultivars in commerce.  One of the most common is the striking ‘Gold Bullion,’ with black-centered blue flowers and golden green leaves.  This is especially good for lighting up slightly shaded areas.  The Dutch-bred ‘Amethyst Dream’ has large, purple blooms that also make excellent cut flowers.  Those with fashionable black and white garden color schemes will appreciate ‘Black Sprite,’ a compact variety with gray foliage and black petals.

            For gardeners like me, who tend to be lazy or neglectful, centaurea is the perfect plant.  It is unfussy as to soil conditions and once established, is relatively drought tolerant.  Some sophisticated gardeners overlook them, probably because of their galloping habit.  However, once you have seen the vivid blue of a traditional centaurea, you will want it in your garden.  I aim to acquire more varieties.  There are those who covet flocks of pink flamingos in the garden.  I am more partial to herds of colorful centaurs.

            Many large garden centers carry centaurea and ‘Amethyst In Snow’ seems especially prevalent commercially.  If you can’t find the plants at a nearby merchandiser, order them from Bluestone Perennials, 7211 Middle Ridge Road, Madison, OH, 44057, (800) 852-5243; www.bluestoneperennials.com.  Catalog free.

            The ajuga that infests large parts of my back garden is blooming and its blue spires light up the entire planting scheme.  The plants also attract a lot of attention.  Bees of all kinds are rampant, as are butterflies.  Earlier in the week I saw five red admiral butterflies, distinguished by the broad orange stripes on their wings, working their way through the ajuga.  Pollination was in full swing.

            We all need pollinators—as many as possible.  Those of us who grow fruits and vegetables would have nothing to harvest without them.  Even die-hard ornamental gardeners need them.  Without pollination plants do not set seed and there is no next generation.  This may not bother you—especially if you are tired of voracious self seeders—but it is bad for the ecosystem as a whole.

            Some of the best pollinators around belong to the Labiatae or mint family.  The ajuga that turns my yard into Pollination Central is a one of them.  You can tell by the shape of its tiny blossoms, which are characteristically minty-looking.  If you examine them closely, you will see that there are five petals on each flower, joined at the base to form a tube.  The flowers, which appear in groups of two to twelve individual blossoms, occur in the leaf axils, where the leaf stalks meet the stems.  They are clustered at the tops of the stalks, another typical mint trait. 

            Most people know the value of culinary mints, like spearmint, peppermint, basil, thyme and sage.  Their flowers attract scores of pollinators, but with culinary specimens the interests of the cook or herbalist are best served by thwarting the intentions of the plant.  Young leaves have the best flavor and should be harvested regularly to prevent flowering.  If you let nature take its course and the plants flower, the leaves often have a bitter taste.

            Those considerations should not stop anyone from planting culinary mints, which can be left to flower at the end of each growing season.  Pollinators will also flock to the wide variety of ornamental mint plants.  If you have a vegetable garden, edge it with decorative mint relations and you will assure yourself of plenty of tomatoes, zucchini and peppers.

            I love my ajuga because it is a triple threat—weed stomping groundcover, decorative ornamental and effective pollinator attractant.  One of my other favorite mints is agastache, which has grown increasingly fashionable in the last ten years.  Sometimes called anise hyssop or hummingbird mint, agastache has an array of virtues.  It grows in just about any spot, is drought tolerant, reblooms regularly throughout the season and overwinters without a problem.  It dies back to the ground when frost hits, but rises like the Phoenix every spring.  Agastache flower colors range from darkest blue purple to shades of orange, pink and white.  I grow the dark purple ‘Black Adder’ in the back garden and ‘Acapulco Salmon and Pink’ in the front.  The latter smells like lemon and blooms almost perpetually.  I will probably invest in more agastache this year, because they multi-task so effectively and attractively.

            Another popular mint is nepeta or catmint.  As the name suggests, it attracts cats as well as pollinators, but the cat-luring properties are not as strong as those of its relative, catnip or Nepeta cataria.  The most common catmints sport blue flowers, though there are varieties like ‘Sweet Dreams’ and ‘Snowflake’ that produce pink or white flowers.  Catmint grows between eight and twelve inches tall and flowers repeatedly, especially if it is sheared back after each flowering.  The shearing process is not rocket science; you can even do it with your string trimmer if you are careful and leave at least six inches of the plant behind.

            There are those who also have great affection for monarda, though I am not one of them.  It is a favorite of butterflies, hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators and is also known as Oswego tea or wild bergamot.  It smells a bit like Earl Grey tea, though the tea is flavored with a citrus oil obtained from Citrus bergamia or bergamot orange.       Monarda’s fluffy-looking flowerheads are composed of whorls of long, spiky tubes and come in shades of white, yellow, rose, red and purple.  Like other mints, monarda thrives in just about any sunny situation.  However, many older varieties have gangly growth habits and are extremely susceptible to mildew, which disfigures the leaves.  If you like monarda, try buying newer, mildew-resistant cultivars.  Compact varieties are more graceful, but you can also mitigate gangliness by installing shorter plants in front of your monarda clumps.

            Mint’s big drawback is invasiveness.  Left to its own devices spearmint would take over the world, with ajuga hot on its heels.  Control these wayward but very useful plants by growing them in pots that can either stand alone on a terrace or deck, or be sunk directly into the garden so the plants are indistinguishable from their neighbors.  Barring pot culture, keep an eye on your mints and grub out any unwanted travelers.  This will not hurt the mints in the least and will keep the garden—and everything else within a fifty mile radius–safe for better bred specimens.

 TWENTY-TWO DAYS

            The four garden chores I dislike the most are pruning, hedging, edging and mulching.  For the next twenty-two days until the Garden Tour, I will be spending hours on all three.  Other gardeners might add weeding to that list, but I find it relaxing to pull weeds.  We have lots of weeds, so under any other circumstances I would be very relaxed by Tour Day.

            Our mature holly trees are a major challenge.  I have always loved all the symbolism associated with holly.  Sacred to ancient Druids, Romans, and Christians, it has all kinds of mystical meanings—good luck, fertility, evil spirit deterrence and symbol of Christ’s suffering.  This does not make the trees easier to prune and shape.  In fact, considering the elbow grease that I will expend on the hollies over the next few weeks, it seems to me that our three large trees should bring better and more consistent luck.  To be fair, if the hollies could speak they would probably describe the multitude of evils forestalled since we moved into this house thirteen years ago. 

            What the hollies do bring is birds—lots of them.  Each tree is a veritable bird condo, with several species in residence at any one time.  Cardinals nest in them.  Sparrows use them as hiding places during storms and blue jays perch on the top branches and pontificate raucously to the world.   We have both male and female trees, and their bee-assisted hanky-panky results in lots of berried branches for holiday decorations.

            Hollies tend to root wherever the branches touch down, so I try to keep mine limbed up.  “Try” is the operative word.  A few drooping branches have evaded my efforts, so now I will have to crawl through an accumulation of dried, but still prickly leaves to get to those wayward limbs.  Since I will already be in considerable pain, I will also eliminate the thorny wild blackberry canes that have already begun to wend their way up through the holly branches.  I tolerate a few each year for the sake of the tasty berries, but this year there are way too many of them.  If I can straighten up after trimming and discarding the branches and canes beneath the hollies, I will also shape them, with special emphasis on branches that droop over pathways and shade planting areas.  There are plenty of those.  Garden visitors tend to get testy when they are smacked in the face by rebellious holly branches.

            Once the holly is respectable and all prickle-related injuries have been treated, I will bring in the heavy artillery—the electric hedge clipper–to take care of the privet, which bounds the front of the property on three sides.  The big problem with our privet—aside from its tendency to grow at an excessive rate—is access.  On the south side of the property, the hedge abuts the neighbors’ driveway.  Clipping the driveway side means doing it from the driveway, preferably at a time when it is empty.   Unfortunately, whenever I am ready to do the job, the neighbors are ready to settle in at home, with all three of their vehicles parked near the hedge.   I don’t want flying privet clippings to scratch their cars, so I bide my time.  However, the day is coming when I will simply have to ask them to park in the street for an hour or so.  That piece of hedging is the hardest to clip because it is the tallest.  It will be a great relief to get it done.  

            You may wonder why I just don’t hire someone to do the pruning and trimming; a question that I ask myself often, especially when I am on my knees under the holly trees.  The answer is simple—economics.  My garden budget is finite and tour preparation is expensive.  Gardens get hungry before garden tours and they eat mulch at an astonishing rate.  Slaking that hunger costs lots of money.  Inevitably there will be gaps in the established plantings that will require filling with specimens purchased at the last minute from various vendors.  If I spend money on professional pruners and trimmers now, my garden, starved for lack of mulch, will retaliate by sprouting enormous weeds with six foot-long roots.  If I ask my husband to do the trimming, he may well respond by pulling up his roots and moving out.  Taking all these outcomes into consideration, I have decided that the most cost effective way to get the garden ready is to do these hateful jobs myself.  In the evenings I take Tylenol with a hot tea chaser and read self help books to elevate my attitude about the whole thing.

            I imagine the day—just three weeks away now—when it will all look wonderful.  The days in between will require a leap of faith, but as long as I have pain meds, power tools and a knee brace, I should be able to make it comfortably.

            Southerners have their little secrets, some of which they have kept for decades, if not centuries.  One of those secrets is the crinum, also known as “angel lily,” “apostle lily,” “candystick lily,” Confederate lily,” “deep sea lily,” “milk-and-wine lily,” “peppermint lily” and “southern lily.”  You can be sure that anything that has acquired a nickname containing the word “Confederate,” is dear to the hearts of traditionalists south of the Mason Dixon line.

            That being said, crinums are egalitarian southerners, thriving with little attention in the gardens of flower lovers of all races, income levels and degrees of social pretension.

            If you have never seen a crinum, start by imagining an amaryllis, with its tall stems and long, strap-like leaves.  Add clusters of up to twenty trumpet-shaped flowers blooming at the tops of each stalk.  The difference starts there.  Amaryllis flowers face outward, while the elongated blossoms of the most popular heirloom crinums droop down gracefully.  Amaryllis have little fragrance, whereas crinums are renowned for their scent.  Crinum flowers are slightly more limited in color range, blooming in either white, shades of pink or red.  The classic Crinum x herbertii, or milk-and-wine lily, is white with dark pink stripes.

            The resemblance between crinums and amaryllis, known botanically as Hippeastrum, is only natural—the two genera are kissing cousins.  Both are members of the large Amaryllidaceae family, a relationship that is evident when you compare the bulbs.  A crinum bulb is large and round just like an amaryllis bulb.  Amaryllis bulbs have short necks; crinums have longer ones.  You plant them the same way, with the necks close to the surface.  Both like sunny exposures and favor somewhat crowded conditions.

            I have lusted over crinums for years, but decided that my love of the big, showy plants would just have to remain unrequited.  I assumed because they have always been a southern staple, they would not be hardy in my northern New Jersey garden.  Growing them in a large pot would mean another pot to lug inside in the winter, and I already have so many of those that my back seizes up automatically on October first.  I had the same problem with beautiful blue agapanthus, but long ago I reconciled myself to the idea that life is not fair and there is a price to pay for the privilege of living in a kudzu-free climate.            

            But time marches on and things change.  The new USDA zone hardiness map has put my garden right on the boundary between my old hardiness zone, 6b, and the warmer 7a.  Steve Bender, author of the crinum chapter in the wonderful book Passalong Plants, lists the hardiness range for crinum as Zones 7-10.  I am betting that if I plant crinums in a protected spot on my property, they can make it here, especially if I mulch them well in the winter. 

            Six weeks ago, I took the plunge and ordered a crinum bulb.  The romance of southern plants has overtaken me this year for some reason and before the crinum even arrived, I went out and purchased a pink-flowered Camellia japonica.  If someone puts an agapanthus in my path, I will probably buy that as well.  Sometimes there is no stopping these cravings.

            I ordered the classic Crinum x herbertii, with its red and white striped flowers.  It is a hybrid, named after Dean Herbert, a prolific crinum hybridizer of the early nineteenth century.  According to Steve Bender, hundreds of hybrids were bred in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the vast majority have been lost to commerce.  The good news for modern gardeners is that crinums have undergone something of resurgence and breeders are producing new varieties and hybrids with great vigor, upward facing flowers and other desirable attributes.

            The wonderful crinum website operated by Marcelle Shepherd and Margie Brown, www.marcellescrinums.com, notes that the word “crinum” is derived from the classical Greek word “krinin,” which means “lily.  They are not true lilies, but they fulfill the same garden function—providing summer color and scent.

            If you want to take the crinum plunge try Plant Delights Nursery, 9241 Sauls Road, Raleigh, NC 27603, (919)772-4794; www.plantdelights.com.  Print catalog—10 first class stamps or 1 box of chocolates.  Another good source is Marcelle’s Crinums,  440 Oak Lane,Vidor, Texas 77662; (409)769-3585; www.marcellescrinums.com.