Guest bombast from Kansas master copy gardener , blogger , and veterinary surgeonJames Roush .
One of my many , many pet horticulture peeves ( which should be differentiated from the many pets that peeve me in my garden ) , is the way in which the infernal ghouls who create industrial plant catalog lucubrate and raise an otherwise insignificant prime until the catalogue reviewer ( i.e. the gardener ) is compelled to grok frantically for the phone and acknowledgment card and buy a dozen for their garden . Every Midwestern gardener who has ever drivel over a plant catalog in the depths of a cold , snowy winter could name at least one , if not several , horticultural mail - club business firm that are notorious for the practice . Close - up , sybaritic film of hybrid teatime rosebush are moderately tolerable , but the act of magnifying tiny asters or Australian honeysuckle until the gardener feels that he or she could utilize the flower as a scented and comfortable spare bedroom just is n’t fair . Heck , even the control surface of male bovine manure looks interesting when viewed at a microscopic level , but it is still male bovid manure when viewed in normal size .
I give you , as evidence of my dissatisfaction , the witch hazel . Witch hazel are hailed as the first blooms of saltation in many areas , flowering boldly on leafless stems in late wintertime . Each blossom has four slender strap - like petal that are always project everywhere as the most glorious , showy flower in all of instauration . Every nurseryman just has to grow one — especially those gardeners who have n’t get word anything but mist and snow and methamphetamine for the preceding three calendar month . For years , I indulged in the fantasy of tote up one of these scented beauties to my garden so that I could revel the simple beauty of innate flowers without recur to artificially forcing bulb or flowering shrubs . Pictures such as this ( at top ) puff me in : enormous , frilly , impossibly delicate , bright blooms that look as if they would cover your deal . I was told clock time and again that witch hazels were hard to grow in Kansas , and in support of that wiseness , I admit that I have yet to find a live on specimen in a public garden in this area . But I could n’t call myself a nurseryman if I did n’t at least try . In fact , I failed the first time I attempted to overwinter an expensive specimen , but I ’m now into my fourth year of selection of a ‘ Jelena ’ ( Hamamelis x intermedia ‘ Jelena ’ ) , and I could n’t be more disappointed at the reality of the bush .
Garden writer are no better than garden lensman in describing that reality for us . The tardy Henry Mitchell , in One Man ’s Garden , express “ Nothing equals the intercrossed Asiatic witch hazels for delectation in tardy January - February - former March , look on the weather … .Usually , as in the variety call ‘ Jelena ’ , they are orange - bronze in impression and surprisingly showy . ” Showy ? I , for one , jazz Henry Mitchell ’s writing and utilisation of linguistic communication , but he die me this fourth dimension . If you , the lector , will think back really hard , you ’ll make that you have never figure an entire witch hazel bush pictured in bloom in a book . They are pictured in toto only as an instance of overnice fall leaf color . The real reason the blooms are always pictured in close - up is that in world they are only 1 - 2 cm long and are practically inconspicuous from 3 foot away regardless of the bright colour — as represented by the icon above , a deplorable and out of the question criterion to revere , even for a wintertime - starved nurseryman . If one has to use a blow up Methedrine to watch a flower in the garden , the overall landscape painting benefits of the plant life are dubious .
I do n’t fuck how many of you acquire hag hazel and would gibe with me , or how many have swallowed the Kool - assistance whole and feel that I ’m just a cantankerous old gardener who have a bun in the oven too much and gripes too clamorously . But I submit to you that if we are all being truthful with one another , we would admit that witch hazel would n’t be worth growing if it bloomed in June alternatively of February . And in full disclosure , I am leery that my witch Pomaderris apetala is not actually ‘ Jelena ’ . The blooms of my bush are more yellow than other picture I ’ve seen of the variety , and up till now the capitulation leaf has been uninspiring . The most probable explanation is that I was sold a mislabeled plant and did n’t obtain the variety I try . Which land up another favorite peeve …
