YORKTON - You’re invited! The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be holding their annual Fruit, Flower and Vegetable Show on Wednesday, August 7 from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM at the Parkland Mall in Yorkton. Everyone is invited to come and see interesting displays of vegetables, fruits, flowers, houseplants, and flower arrangements. Our feature flower this year is the long-time gardening favourite, the beloved and beautiful geranium, so there will be a special section dedicated to this wonderful plant. Everyone is welcome! Join us and bring a friend, there is no admission.
The Hort society is always doing something interesting, and that includes sharing garden visits among our members. It’s a great opportunity for visiting, learning new things, and getting inspired by seeing the creativity and hard work of fellow-gardeners! We recently visited two stunning gardens, and one of them had a plant that I’d like to tell you about. It’s a beautiful plant called the fleece flower. Do you know it?
The giant fleece flower, persicaria ploymorpha, is a breathtaking plant. When we saw this particular specimen, it was in full bloom, with lovely, frothy, creamy-white plumes of blooms on a robust plant, several feet tall. What an eye-catcher!
So I did some homework, and discovered that this perennial dies back in the fall, but grows to exciting heights of five or six feet each year. It will start blooming in late spring, and will keep blooming all summer. Deadheading will help once the flowers begin to fade in mid-to-late July.
It sounds like an easy-going addition to our gardens. It would like a sunny spot where it can get at least half a day of sunshine. I learned that it likes average-moist soil, but is drought-tolerant once it is established. When I read about this plant, information said that it grows about three feet high, but there are different varieties, so I think we were looking at the giant fleece flower. The lovely specimens we saw were taller, about five feet high, and likely doing so well because they were very happy in the growing conditions they had!
But this is a sturdy and happy plant that will also grow about five feet across, so we gardeners should plan our space accordingly! I think it would make a beautiful back-drop to other perennials. This tall beauty needs space to shine, so it wouldn’t go at the front of a perennial border but at the back or middle as a focal point. I read that if the time comes when the plant needs to be divided, gardeners can do this in the spring by digging out the clump and portioning it into smaller clumps.
(FYI, this helps many perennials do better over time. If you have a clump of irises, daylilies or other perennials that are well established but are looking as though they are dying out in the middle, this is the time to divide them. The smaller plants will grow with renewed vigor. Another sign that it is time to divide a perennial is when the plant seems to be coming out of the ground, looking as though it is growing in an anthill. When this happens, the plant will definitely benefit from division.)
From what I learned, fleece flower doesn’t seem to have any major pest-problems, and I read that it is “deer resistant”. That term usually brings some lively conversation among country gardeners! So that’s our plant for the week: the giant fleece flower!
Thank you to our friends at YTW for their great work every week, in all kinds of weather! Gardeners, visit the hort society at www.yorktonhort.ca and have a pleasant week in the garden!
