{"id":238,"date":"2011-01-03T05:01:43","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T13:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=238"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:57","slug":"swedish-ivy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/swedish-ivy\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Ivy"},"content":{"rendered":"

SWEDISH IVY<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania is a living testament to Pierre S. du Pont’s love of gardens and gardening, not to mention his willingness to part with large sums of money to buy and maintain both plants and place.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The fabled Mr. du Pont has been gone since 1954, but his legacy has only grown.\u00a0 Longwood, now run by a foundation, is a national treasure and should be on the “must see”\u009d list for every lover of gardens and beauty. The legacy is especially apparent during the holidays, when the great conservatory is decked with an array of horticultural finery.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I visited Longwood the week before Christmas, I saw thousands of poinsettias, cyclamens, amaryllis, silver-leafed plants, lilies and other showy specimens.\u00a0 But the plant that triggered a personal revelation was something a bit more humble, Plectranthus thyrsoideus, a form of the common Swedish ivy.\u00a0 In some places, this plectranthus goes by the slightly easier “flowering bush plectranthus,”\u009d but its beauty makes it worth remembering the Latin name.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Picture a plant about the height of a delphinium–4 to 6 feet tall–with scores of small, sky-blue blooms clustered thickly around the top one-half to one-third of each stem.\u00a0 The stems rise like spires, with light green, opposed leaves clustered around the bottom third of each one.\u00a0 From a distance, I thought the plectranthus was a kind of delphinium or possibly annual larkspur, but the flowers were more delicate.\u00a0 I fell in love at first sight.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One of the inevitable consequences of love at first sight is a desire to possess the beloved object.\u00a0 I am especially susceptible to this urge when it comes to plants, so as soon as I arrived home, I searched the Internet and my gardening library for information about this heavenly specimen.\u00a0 I found that it is native to Angola and other central African countries and, like most plectranthus, is tender in cold winter climates.\u00a0 There are lots of beautiful pictures and many descriptions out in cyberspace, but not one retail source that I could find.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Frustration is not good for the soul, so I decided that I would e-mail the horticulturists at Longwood to see if they had a seed source or could spare me a few seeds.\u00a0 I figure that plectranthus species are mints and probably as prolific as the rest of their relatives.\u00a0 That being the case, a few seeds should be all that I need to start myself on the road to thyrsoideus heaven.\u00a0 I await Longwood’s reply, while speculating on how lovely the plants would look grouped in my garden with low-growing yellow roses, lavender and possibly some pale yellow coreopsis.\u00a0 Of course, should I have access to these plants, I will share my good fortune with others in the form of rooted cuttings and\/or seeds.\u00a0 A generous gardener is always rewarded in the end.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While I wait for word, I will content myself with tending the two plectranthus I have in the house at the moment.\u00a0 I have no idea of their varietal names, but they are both variegated types, with fat green, toothed leaves. One has white leaf margins and the other has pale yellow ones.\u00a0 I bought the yellow-margined one three years ago and my daughter bought the other last summer.\u00a0 Hers is basking in a large tub in the company of a few overwintering geraniums.\u00a0 Mine is in a pot by itself and greatly in need of pruning.\u00a0 Now that I have had a plectranthus epiphany, I will do the pruning and even keep several of the pruned pieces to increase my supply.\u00a0 I am betting that the cuttings will root in a glass of plain water and be ready for planting in a few weeks time. If I have enough of them, I may even use them instead of, or in addition to their relatives, coleus, in pots outdoors in the spring.\u00a0 This may save some money that I can use to purchase other objects of horticultural desire from the many garden catalogs currently flooding my mail box.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Late last summer, even the local big-box store got into the plectranthus act, offering hanging baskets of an attractive purple-flowered variety.\u00a0 I resisted my daughter’s entreaties to buy a couple of the big baskets because it was late in the season and I couldn’t imagine how we would find the room to overwinter even one of them.\u00a0 Now I am seized by regret, convinced that the overwintered one could have been squeezed in somewhere and would have at least served as a source for cuttings.\u00a0 Next year something else will be in fashion and it will undoubtedly be impossible to find the purple-flowered plectranthus.\u00a0 It is too bad, but I refuse to spend too much time bemoaning my lack of judgment.\u00a0 As my father used to say in these situations, “Sic transit Gloria mundi”\u009d–loosely translated as “So pass the joys of this world.”\u009d \u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In my search for Plectranthus thyrsoideus, I am slightly comforted by the fact that even the famous gardener Robin Lane Fox, Classics Master at New College, Oxford, and weekly garden writer for England ‘s Financial Times,<\/em> cannot lay hands on one of the plants.\u00a0 He too saw it at Longwood and was enchanted.\u00a0 He has probably already e-mailed the curators at Kew.\u00a0 If I find a specimen, I’ll send him some seeds as well.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I have said in the past, everyone needs a Holy Grail.\u00a0 Now I have mine for the New Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SWEDISH IVY \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania is a living testament to Pierre S. du Pont’s love of gardens and gardening, not to mention his willingness to part with large sums of money to buy and maintain both plants and place. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The fabled Mr. du Pont has been gone since 1954, but … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}