The print and online worlds are awash in a sea of discussion about impatiens.\u00a0 For those of you who have been out in the garden or otherwise not paying attention, Impatiens walleriana, the bright, shade-loving bedding annuals, are suffering from an epidemic of downy mildew.\u00a0 This blight, which shows up as a gray coating on the undersides of leaves, invariably kills the plants.\u00a0 It spreads quickly and spores can live on in the soil through the winter, infecting \u201cclean\u201d plants the following year.\u00a0 Hot humid weather provides ideal conditions for downy mildew, which has afflicted impatiens both here and in England.\u00a0 As the result, many retailers, especially those in areas with sticky summer conditions, are not carrying bedding impatiens this year.<\/p>\n
The news about the blight has revealed a few opinions that are as mildewed as the leaves of afflicted plants.\u00a0 Some garden writers have used the plague as a springboard to sound off about the merits of impatiens, either damning them with faint praise or praising them with faint damns.\u00a0 The little plants have been thoroughly slammed for their carefree cheerfulness and condemned for being ubiquitous.\u00a0 Impatiens have become the Stephen King or Andrew Lloyd Webber of the flower world\u2014well loved by tens of thousands of people, but condemned as plebian by those making claim to horticultural sophistication.\u00a0 Critics of the plant have burdened it with an awful lot of emotional and cultural baggage.\u00a0 It has become a de facto symbol for all things flashy, cheap, easy and\u2014above all\u2014suburban.<\/p>\n
First described by Linnaeus in 1753, garden impatiens are part of a large genus of about 850 species, mostly native to Africa and Asia.\u00a0 They are also members of the larger balsam or Balsaminaceae family.\u00a0 The stems are generally succulent, and each flower has five petals, which may or may not be equal in size and configuration.\u00a0 The walleriana species, parent of the modern hybrid bedding plants, arrived in the United States sometime in the late nineteenth century and has never looked back.\u00a0 One of the chief reasons that it became popular and stayed that way is that it blooms in shade, providing color where it is most needed and not making a nuisance of itself with incessant demands for cosseting.\u00a0 It seems to me that, absent all other considerations, substantial credit should be given to the impatien for the selfless act of lighting up so many dark spaces.<\/p>\n
Good gardeners generally suit themselves and don\u2019t worry about what others think.\u00a0 As with all plants, inpatiens can be used brilliantly and keep good company with all kinds of interesting plants.\u00a0 I have seen wonderful combinations of white-flowered impatiens and August lilies\u2014Hosta plantaginea.\u00a0 The hostas\u2019 waxy white trumpets are intensely fragrant and stand tall behind the shorter impatiens.\u00a0 Purple-flowered impatiens look wonderful under silvery birch trees in a planting scheme that also includes purple and chartreuse-leafed varieties of heuchera and green and white variegated coleus.\u00a0 In long beds that contain both sunny and shady areas, bright colored impatien varieties can bring unity by carrying a \u201chot\u201d color scheme into the shade.<\/p>\n
In an era when small space gardening is the only option for many and every plant must do yeoman-like work, impatiens shine.\u00a0 They can serve as fillers in containers planted with mixes of annuals and perennials.\u00a0 In small gardens they make useful edgers as well.\u00a0 A garden artist painting with a plant palette that includes impatiens can create a masterpiece.<\/p>\n
Of course all the inspiring rhetoric is useless right now, because impatiens are few and far between.\u00a0 You can do the same jobs in shady spots with large-flowered New Guinea impatiens, which are not afflicted with downy mildew.\u00a0 You may have to use them sparingly, however, because they are more expensive.\u00a0 Intersperse clumps of impatiens with coleus, which are seemingly disease proof\u2014at least for now\u2014and dirt cheap.\u00a0 A few small-flowered tuberous begonias will do wonders for hanging baskets, as will old-fashioned fuchsias.<\/p>\n
Eventually either downy mildew will subside or breeders will come up with mildew-resistant strains of impatiens.\u00a0 The plants will probably be stronger and healthier because of stronger genetic material.\u00a0 Until then, we will all have to look at our shady spots and think creatively.<\/p>\n
Lovers of impatiens should not despair, either because of the blight or the plant critics.\u00a0 At this very moment garden pundits are falling over themselves extolling the virtues of dahlias, which were considered dull, hackneyed and terribly suburban only fifteen years ago.\u00a0 Everything comes back into fashion if you wait long enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The print and online worlds are awash in a sea of discussion about impatiens.\u00a0 For those of you who have been out in the garden or otherwise not paying attention, Impatiens walleriana, the bright, shade-loving bedding annuals, are suffering from an epidemic of downy mildew.\u00a0 This blight, which shows up as a gray coating on … 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":[6,2,3],"tags":[568,565,567,345,566],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-downy-mildew","tag-impatiens","tag-impatiens-alternatives","tag-shade-gardening","tag-walleriana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","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=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}