GREEN AND GROW #6

July 22, 2006

No Guest Host

Sandra Jonas called in. She heard earlier in the show that my buddy Ben fromThe General
Hardware Store on Peachtree Industrial called to say he sold that _Daffo-drill’ and
that he was giving me one to give away on the show!
We had a conversation about Penny Mchenry who had recently passed away.
Sandra had designed her garden and if it wasn’t for Sandra there would be nothing
but hydrangeas in it. Not that that’s a bad thing.

Special Guest: Fern Guru George Sanko Director of Georgia Perimeter College
and CEO of the Native Plant Garden on the campus.
George Sanko is a fern nut! He loves all ferns but his new passion are the sun
loving ferns. Yes there are ferns that don’t grow in the shade but take full sun and
dry conditions. They’re called Zeryx ferns. George also gave us his top ferns for the south.  For  more information on ferns please pay George a visit  at the Native Plant Garden on
the campus of Georgia Perimeter College. You will absolutely be amazed at how many ferns George grows. He has the largest temperate trial garden in the world!
They have sales twice a year one in the spring and another in the fall.
Another resource for information on ferns is www.americanfernsociety.org

Heavy Petal: Late summer and fall blooming bulbs.
I know that spring flowering bulbs, like tulips and daffodils, are familiar to almost
everyone. But  there are bulbs out there that bloom well into the fall. Those
include crocus and the magic rain lily or naked ladies. We discussed how the
foliage of Colchicum appear in early spring and die back by early summer. Then
magically, after you forgot all about them the flowers appear without foliage in late
summer or fall. They are also known as autumn crocus.
One of my favorite fall bloomers is the Lycoris squamigera or _naked lady’. Like the colchicum their strap like foliage appears in spring but  by early summer
it goes dormant.  Then magically their flowers appear, without foliage, on tall stalks in
the fall. The foliage of both colchicum and lycoris, when going dormant ,can be unattractive
or may not do anything for you because of the lack of bloom. So I mix mine in with something that hides the foliage as it goes dormant. You don’t want to cut the leaves
back until they turn yellow. The corms are gathering strength for that show in the fall.