In the last two weeks I have gotten used to seeing tall garden phlox in the summer gardens in my neighborhood. \u00a0This morning I walked farther afield and saw masses of another tall, old-fashioned favorite\u2014cleome or spider flower. \u00a0The cleome were part of a cottage garden planting scheme and when I saw it from a distance, it looked like an Impressionist painting.<\/p>\n
All of the flowers were shades of pink, so I suspect that they were Cleome \u2018Rose Queen\u2019, a variety listed in catalogs at least as far back as 1836. \u00a0Poet and garden diarist Celia Thaxter had them in her celebrated garden on Appledore Island, off the New Hampshire coast, at the end of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
The plants\u2019 spidery appearance comes from the very long stamens that protrude out from the flowerheads. \u00a0Unlike some other arachnoid creatures, these plants inspire more compliments than shudders.<\/p>\n
The best thing about cleome, from my perspective is that they bloom now, when color is needed, along with the late zinnias and phlox.\u00a0 They are like harbingers of the next wave of color, which will come from the asters and chrysanthemums.\u00a0 Cleome also self-seeds freely, which is always a plus in my book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the last two weeks I have gotten used to seeing tall garden phlox in the summer gardens in my neighborhood. \u00a0This morning I walked farther afield and saw masses of another tall, old-fashioned favorite\u2014cleome or spider flower. \u00a0The cleome were part of a cottage garden planting scheme and when I saw it from a … 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":[4,3,1],"tags":[116,186,296,161,297],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-summer","category-uncategorized","tag-flowering-annuals","tag-heirloom-plants","tag-how-to-grow-cleomes","tag-late-summer-flowers","tag-tall-annuals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","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=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}