{"id":3146,"date":"2020-08-17T09:29:33","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T17:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3146"},"modified":"2020-08-17T09:29:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T17:29:33","slug":"meadowsweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/meadowsweet\/","title":{"rendered":"Meadowsweet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Filipendula\"<\/a>Someday I will write a garden book and the title will be My Garden in Twenty-Five Mistakes.\u00a0 <\/em>Each chapter will detail one of my particularly egregious garden mistakes and the steps I took to rectify it.\u00a0 My book will be the perfect antidote to all those garden books that detail how the garden owner inherited or bought a neglected trash pit and turned it into a garden worthy of a coffee table volume.\u00a0 I love garden pornography as much as the next person, but I think regular dirt gardeners will identify more readily with a catalog of mistakes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>My most recent garden error involved perennial meadowsweet–Filipendula vulgaris–a tough plant with a lovely name.\u00a0 Last year about this time, I saw a nice one in a garden center and snapped it up.\u00a0 I picked out a location and had every intention of planting it long before the first frost.\u00a0 Then other preoccupations intervened. The meadowsweet somehow got to the back of my holding area, where it received water, but scant attention.\u00a0 Frost came before I could plant it, so I put the pot in a protected spot in the hopes of the meadowsweet surviving the winter.\u00a0 It not only survived, but thrived, and when the weather warmed up in spring, it sprouted a gorgeous crop of young leaves.\u00a0 I put it in a semi-shaded area on my back porch and indulged in the annual spring plant buying frenzy.\u00a0 My daughter went about her usual business of filling the edges of the back porch with an ever-expanding collection of potted tropical plants.\u00a0 The cannas, ginger lily and elephant ears slowly but surely edged out the meadowsweet.\u00a0 Somewhere along the way the pot tipped over and the plant was unable to absorb water.\u00a0 When I finally discovered the tipped-over meadowsweet it looked dead.<\/p>\n

I decided that I needed to believe in miracles, so I righted the pot and watered it copiously.\u00a0 After about a week, as I was ready to throw the whole thing out, I noticed that some of the seemingly dead stems were sprouting new green leaves.\u00a0 Resurrection was at hand.\u00a0 I will keep the meadowsweet in intensive care for a few more days, with plenty of water, but when it is out of danger and a bit leafier, it will finally go out in the garden.<\/p>\n

What kind of plant is so tenacious that it provides second chances to neglectful gardeners?\u00a0 A truly admirable one.\u00a0 One of the common names for the North American native rubra species is \u201cQueen of the Prairie\u201d, and it is not the only filipendula with decidedly regal properties. Those properties start with the branched, upright habit, which makes for a lush appearance when the plants are in bloom.\u00a0 The range of flower colors is not enormous, running from white through a range of pinks to near-purple.\u00a0 The rubra species, which generally boasts pink or pink-purple flowers, can rise to eight feet tall and four feet wide, with plume-like flowerheads composed of hundreds of tiny blooms.\u00a0 Though filipendula is a member of the rose family, the flowerheads will remind you a little of astilbes, with the same loose, fluffy quality.<\/p>\n

Filipendula vulgaris, a native of Europe, north and central Asia, is sometimes known by the decidedly more prosaic name, \u201cdropwort\u201d is not nearly as tall, coming in at three feet tall and half as wide, with opulent white flowerheads.\u00a0 Likewise, Filipendula purpurea, from Japan and sometimes known as \u201cJapanese meadowsweet\u201d, grows two feet tall and wide.<\/p>\n

Clearly, there are filipendulas that are at home in the very back of a large border, as well as those better suited to the middle of more moderate size beds.\u00a0 Some of the smaller meadowsweets can also thrive in well-watered containers.<\/p>\n

In general, filipendula foliage is deeply dissected.\u00a0 Purpurea and rubra leaves are palmate and somewhat maple-like.\u00a0 Vulgaris leaves are slender and reminiscent of ferns.<\/p>\n

My garden could use some plumes, which is why I bought the tenacious filipendula in the first place.\u00a0 It is a specimen of \u2018Flore Plena\u2019, sometimes known as \u2018Multiplex\u2019, which boasts double white flowers touched with pale pink.\u00a0 The double blossoms make the plumes even more lush than those of other meadowsweets.<\/p>\n

If you like tall plumes, try Filipendula rubra \u2018Venusta\u2019, with salmon-pink flowers, or \u2018Venusta Alba\u2019, with white blooms.\u00a0 Both grow four to five feet tall and two feet wide, with dramatic dark stems.<\/p>\n

Meadowsweeets contribute handsomely to informal gardens, especially those influenced by the \u201cNew American Perennial\u201d movement, replete with grasses and other prairie plants like echinacea.\u00a0 They also make great cut flowers and bouquet fillers.<\/p>\n

The vulgaris varieties thrive on abundant moisture and will even succeed well in rain gardens.\u00a0 Other meadow sweets can take drier conditions.\u00a0 All flourish in full sun to light shade, requiring little else to succeed and increase.<\/p>\n

Fall is a great time to plant perennials and filipendula is no exception.\u00a0 For a good selection, go to Digging Dog Nursery, 31101 Middle Ridge Road, Albion, CA 95410; (707) 937-1235; free print catalog.<\/p>\n

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Someday I will write a garden book and the title will be My Garden in Twenty-Five Mistakes.\u00a0 Each chapter will detail one of my particularly egregious garden mistakes and the steps I took to rectify it.\u00a0 My book will be the perfect antidote to all those garden books that detail how the garden owner inherited … 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":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[2174,2353,448,945,2354,1222],"class_list":["post-3146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-filipendula","tag-meadowsweet","tag-native-plants","tag-prairie-plants","tag-queen-of-the-prairie","tag-summer-flowering-perennials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146","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=3146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3148,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146\/revisions\/3148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}