DOUBLE OR NOTHING
My trade association, the Garden Writers of America, refers to its members as “Garden Communicators”. As a veteran “garden communicator” I receive a boatload of mail order plant, seed and garden equipment catalogs every year. The flow started before Christmas, and now every day I can expect to find a catalog or two in my mailbox. As I leaf through them in these days of variable temperatures and changeable skies, I feel the need for abundance. Lately I have had an incredible urge to order every double-flowered variety that I see, from little double hardy geraniums to the puffy Chater’s Double hollyhocks that look just like the Kleenex flowers that we used to make to decorate the high school gymnasium before a school dance. I am even thinking about one of those double coneflower varieties whose flowers have a rather silly looking second set of petals springing from the central cone. Clearly my inner voice is sounding a lot like Oscar Wilde and saying, “Nothing succeeds like excess.”
Double forms of common flower varieties have had moments of popularity many times in history. In the sixteenth century the Elizabethans were found of “hose in hose” blossoms, which featured a full set of petals inside another full set of petals. You can still find hose in hose primroses and Canterbury bells. Queen Elizabeth I would probably have kicked up her heels over the modern Campanula trachelium Bernice, which has blue, bell-shaped “hose in hose” flowers.
Victorians, those lovers of ruffles and furbelows, craved the abundance of double-flowered cultivars and grew double hyacinth varieties like the soft pink Chestnut Flower and the lovely deep purple Dreadnought. One of their favorite tulips, the pink and white double, Peach Blossom, introduced in 1890, is still widely grown today. A popular double form of the common cosmos featured the usual daisy-like array of petals, plus a central “crest” or circle of smaller petals in the middle of each flower.
And now, because everything old is eventually new again, the catalogs have a good selection of doubles in many flower categories. For shady spots, try the beautiful, intensely fragrant Hosta plantaginea Aphrodite. The flowers appear atop tall stems in August and are fully double. Unlike many hostas, Aphrodite’s flowers are well worth picking for the house. For even more petals, try Venus, a sport of Aphrodite that has “twice double” flowers. Venus flourishes in my garden, and has grown so large that it threatens to engulf the poor harmless pulmonaria around it. In a similar shady vein is the new Helleborus x hybridus Kingston Cardinal, whose dusty raspberry-colored flowers have a full compliment of extra petals.
The number of daylily cultivars on the market boggles the mind, as does the number of flower forms. Siloam Peony Display is a lovely shell pink daylily, tending towards apricot at the throat. Its doubled petals make it look like a peony, hence the name bestowed on it by hybridizer, Pauline Henry. It is on my acquisitions list for spring. Peony Display’s sibling, Siloam Glory Be, is another double, this time with apricot petals.
Hydrangea are in vogue right now, and there is a new pink, double flowered variety marketed by Zelenka Nursery, a plant wholesaler. Forever & Ever® Double Pink is a Japanese bred hybrid that features double pink star-shaped flowers. It’s certainly possible to have too much pink in the garden, and in my acid soil Double Pink might actually be Double Blue, but I am still strongly tempted by this hydrangea.
For something a little smaller and a lot less pink, there is Campanula persicifolia Powder Puff. Perhaps more familiar as peachleaf bellflower, this medium size plant has fluffy-looking double white bells adorning its twelve inch tall stalks.
I wish that I had the space to be in the market for a small tree, but until I appropriate additional acreage, the idea seems to be out of the question. If I did have the room, I would buy the lovely Magnolia loebneri White Rose, which only grows to be about ten feet tall and sports fragrant, double white flowers in the spring. The blossoms look just like roses, which makes them even better.
I am sure that if you tried hard enough you could find double flowered forms of almost every garden plant. Blooming en masse in the average suburban garden hundreds of double-flowered plants would probably make you feel as if you were lost at a cheerleaders’ convention circa 1958. However, there is no need for such extremes. A few carefully chosen doubles are enough to put the romance back in your garden life.
Find a good selection of doubles at Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery, 13101 East Rye Road, Avalon, WI 53505, (800) 553-3715 or www.songsparrow.com. Another good source is Wayside Gardens, 1 Garden Lane | Hodges, SC 29695, (800) 213-0379 or www.waysidegardens.com.