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This map provides another way of visualizing population density, but this time with a layer of political consequence. Each of the states is centered around one of the 50 largest cities. Freeman’s algorithm then used proximity, urban area, and commuting patterns to further group counties around these cities. After this initial modeling was completed, he manually adjusted the map to account for a variety of other factors, such as compact shapes and equal populations.
Freeman notes that this map has the advantage of ending disproportionate representation in the House and Senate and suggests that states, much like House and Senate districts, could be redistricted after each census to reflect changing population patterns.
While Freeman is careful to note that this is “not a serious proposal,” I enjoyed this visualization because it challenges the idea of states as fixed geographical/political entities, while still providing meaningful groupings.
Among those of us who love old maps, the good people at the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries project have digitized and uploaded historical information on the shape of American counties. With this data one can animate how America’s political boundaries have changed since the founding of the Massachusetts Bay and Virginia Colonies. The above video shows [...]
Now that most states have finalized and submitted their official election results (yes, it does take that long), we can take a closer look into state and local turnout rates for the 2012 presidential election.But first, an overview of the results…As we all know, Barack Obama will be starting his second term after he is inaugurated in a [...]
Caleb Melchior has extensive experience with growing perennials after working at a specialty perennial nursery, Sugar Creek Gardens, in Kirkwood, Missouri. He is currently studying for a master’s degree in landscape architecture at Kansas State University.
My garden always starts to look tired in August. The roses have long since faded and given up. The daylilies are done screaming “orange!” in the corners. Even the annuals, the proud cheerleaders of color, have exhausted themselves in the heat.
But on those first August mornings, when the Caryopteris and Perovskia start to flower, everything changes. The dog days are over, washed away by floods of flowing, flowering blue.
Caryopteris x clandonensis ‘Worchester Gold’ looks fantastic throughout the growing season, with its beautiful chartreuse foliage.
Late summer begins for me when the first pale blue flowers start to trickle out on the caryopteris. The caryopteris, also known as blue mist shrub, is a shrublet, or woody perennial, which — depending on the selection — can grow anywhere from 3 to 6 feet high and wide. As much as I hate to bandy botanical names, the common names for these plants are highly confused and nowhere near standardized.
The most widely grown hybrids are in the group of hybrids under the name Caryopteris x clandonensis, bred from Caryopteris incana, which is native to Eastern Asia, and Caryopteris mongholica, which grows in Western China and parts of Mongolia. While neither of the parent forms are widely grown, the hybrids are beloved of discerning gardeners in the U.S. and Britain.
Among the Caryopteris x clandonensis hybrids, ‘Dark Knight’, ‘Heavenly Blue’ and ‘Longwood Blue’ (hardy from Zones 5 through 9) are three of the most common. ‘Dark Knight’ has strong deep-blue flowers, not quite navy, more a fuzzy cobalt. ‘Heavenly Blue’ and ‘Longwood Blue’ are lighter in hue, with frothy pale blue flowers. One of my garden favorites for several years, ‘Worchester Gold’, glows throughout the growing season with pale chartreuse leaves and powder blue flowers.
Over the past five years, several new forms with more compact habits have been released. ‘Petit Bleu’ is a dwarf variety with extra-large flower clusters in rich blue. ‘Gold Giant, Hint of Gold™ and Lil’ Miss Sunshine™ have gold foliage. Their texture is coarser than that of ‘Worchester Gold’, giving them a chunkier, bolder appearance. ‘Sterling Silver’ has shining silver foliage. There is also a clear white variegated form, ‘White Surprise’.
Given all these varieties, it is surprising that Caryopteris are not more widely used. They look fantastic throughout the growing season, with their colorful foliage, and erupt into masses of blue flowers in late summer. Perhaps their limited use occurs because they’re timid plants, waiting to leaf out until spring has definitely rounded the corner and there’s no risk of frost before leafing out. Anxious gardeners often pull them out, thinking they’re dead, when they’re actually just waiting for warmer weather. Come August, they’ll be glorious.
Caryopteris ‘Snow Fairy’ (middle, foreground) glows with cream-edged foliage within the rough and tumble of a perennial border.
Up close, the flowers of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) reveal their fuzzy texture, which helps them reflect heat rather than absorbing it.
When I think of plants to overwhelm the dog days of summer with refreshing blue, my brain turns to the iciest of them all. While we’re sticking with botanical Latin, Perovskia atriplicifolia has a genuinely chilling name that echoes back to its homes on the steppes of Russia and Afghanistan. Under the common name of Russian sage, it was the poster-child plant for late 1990s garden style. Anybody who gardened in those giddy days of early perennial infatuation did not dare to make a garden without it, most often combined with gold yarrow (Achillea x ‘Moonshine’) and huge clumps of maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis). Past overuse, however, is no reason to ignore a perfectly good plant. Today, we appreciate that Russian sage’s frosted foliage and silvery blue flowers that make a perfect foil for drifts of diffuse perennials — low-flying clouds of ‘Starry Night’ white shrub roses (Rosa x ‘Starry Night’) and huge mauve billows of Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum).
Forms of Russian sage are confused in the trade, with plants varying in their silveriness of foliage and overall plant and foliage texture. Plants sold as ‘Filigran’ tend to have more dissected leaves, while those sold as ‘Longin’ are supposed to be smaller with less finely cut foliage. ‘Little Spire’ is a compact cultivar, growing to only 2 feet high. ‘Lacy Blue’ is a new compact variety with exceptionally large flowers.
Your history with Russian sage may be limited to grocery store parking lots and seductive magazine dream gardens left over from the 1990s, but don’t hesitate to clear space in your border for a few of these brilliant “cooling” clouds of flower and foliage. All that Russian sage requires is a bit of breathing room. When crowded, it rots, goes leggy, and — eventually — dies.
The steamy nights of late summer still have a few weeks of fight in them before they give up and let the sweater evenings come crashing in. Given that most of the garden is probably looking worn, clear out some of the overgrowth to make way for the icy blues of Caryopteris and Perovskia. With their clouds of blue flowers and pale foliage, they’ll bring the temperature of the garden down to something bearable.
Plants in this category push the boundaries of what’s possible in the face of hard frosts. These plants thrive in cool temperatures and reward you for keeping them around, despite winter’s imminent arrival.
Most commonly used as an early spring bedding plant, pansies perform just as well (if not better) in autumn through the frosts and light snowfall of early winter. While not a guarantee, fall-planted pansies have a chance to overwinter and start blooming all the earlier the following spring.
Typically thought of as champions of the summer garden, snapdragons are a powerhouse when it comes to delivering color late into the season. The key to their continued flowering is constant deadheading. If the plants are allowed to set seed, they’ll cease flowering. However, this might be desirable in your garden, as snapdragons can reliably reseed for many years in the right space. At the Allen Centennial Garden, we have a red snapdragon that has come back reliably and repeatedly for many years in our rock garden.
A standby of traditional fall bedding plants, kale varieties give some of the best displays when temperatures begin to fall. Both ornamental and edible kales are durable through frost; however, the ornamental varieties tend to be the go-to choice as their purple, red, and white pigments intensify with each cool day. I’ve used ornamental kale in container arrangements through December. Combined with evergreens, Osage orange fruits, golden dogwood stems and a few twinkle lights, kale can make an amazing holiday display.
The blue forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) and most poppies (Papaver spp.), with the exception of Oriental poppies (Papaver orientalis), are cool-season annuals. Cool season annuals can be direct sown in fall for a jumpstart on an early spring display. These plants will form a tight rosette of growth in fall similar to a mini head of lettuce and then erupt into flower when the garden begins to come alive in mid-April and May. Any of these plants can be sown indoors in February and March and treated as true annuals; however, plants that are fall sown will produce a much more impressive display.
Plants in this list don’t waste any time in late winter and early spring – they can’t wait to get up and get growing. Some even create their own heat to melt the snow around them!
Without question, winter aconite is my favorite plant in this list. The charming Eranthis hyemalis is one of the earliest harbingers of spring, often pushing up through pockets of melting snow in mid- to late February. Growing only a few inches tall, on warm and sunny days the cheerful yellow buttercup flowers open up and exude a mild and charming honey-like aroma. Growing from small rhizomes that, when dormant, could easily be mistaken for a clod of soil, winter aconite easily naturalizes throughout a garden by reseeding. Seeds mature by mid-May to early June, and with a little help from a gardener, they fall and germinate at the soil surface. Within one to two seasons, these new plants will be blooming and producing seed of their own. After the plant sets seeds, the foliage withers away until the following spring. Winter aconite thrives in a woodland garden or mixed perennial border, and it doesn’t require many rhizomes to start your own colony. Before you know it, you could have a golden ground cover in February that honeybees and other pollinators adore.
Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is one plant that literally forces its way up through snow and ice. A native plant along swamps, streams and ponds, skunk cabbage is a fascinating plant with an ability to create and regulate its own internal heat, much like any mammal. Maintaining an average temperature of 36 F, it produces this warmth as it metabolizes oxygen and starches stored in its roots. True to its name, skunk cabbage produces a potent odor to attract pollinating flies that are normally attracted to decaying meat. The flowers resemble a sort of mottled purple, red and brown hooded cap. Big, tropical-like leaves emerge following the flower and remain through mid-summer when the plants go dormant until the following spring. While skunk cabbage requires specific growing conditions, its sheer intrigue and unique adaptations make it worth growing to beat the winter blues.
If skunk cabbage is the “stinker” of the spring garden, then witch hazel is its sweet, sultry and spicy counterpoint. A deciduous shrub native to North America, Hamamelis vernalis is a truly marvelous plant. Clusters of spider-like flowers cover the stems and bloom January to March. On warm days (30 to 40 F), witch hazel emits a powerful and intoxicating fragrance. The sweet, spicy and sometimes fruity aroma has been compared to baked goods and fruits like concord grapes. Flower color ranges from a strong and pure golden yellow to burnt orange and a deep pinkish red. These multi-stem shrubs appreciate regular moisture throughout the growing season and can tolerate full sun to part shade, making them a great choice for rain gardens and low-lying areas.
One of the classic early spring plants, hellebores come in a range of different colors and bloom types, with new varieties introduced each season. Hellebores straddle two categories on this list – those that push through snow and those that are evergreen. The deep green, palmate, serrated leaves of the hellebore retain their color through winter and into early spring. Each season, new flower buds and leaves emerge from the plant crown, making the old leaves redundant. It’s a personal preference whether or not to remove the old leaves in spring – it won’t do any significant harm or good to the plant beyond vanity. The only real challenge with hellebores is that, despite the incredible diversity and beauty of their flowers, the flowers face downward. If possible, planting them along a shaded wall or raised area will allow you to enjoy the flowers more fully. They also make tremendous cut flowers, allowing you to enjoy them right at eye level on the kitchen table.
When talking about winter interest and evergreen plants, most of us instinctively gravitate to conifers. Conifers certainly perform an important function in the winter landscape and have earned their rightful place in this category, but there are a number of evergreen plants that can add a new punch.
A colony-forming shrub, Oregon grape holly (Mahonia aquifolium) truly is a plant for all seasons. Big, bold, glossy, holly-like leaves are evergreen throughout winter and great for use in wreath making around the holidays. Best planted in part to full shade in organic, acidic soil, Oregon grape holly will deliver a show throughout the year. Huge panicles of showy yellow flowers dance on top the stately leaves in spring, followed by clusters of jewel-like, edible blue-black berries in late summer. Plant at least two to three plants in a small colony to encourage optimum fruit set. Single plants likely will not fruit well, if at all.
Sedges are a rich and diverse genus of plants, and C. ‘Ice Dance’ is a stand out performer for its wide bold leaves, up to 24 inches tall, outlined in white. When planted close together, several carex plants will quickly form a ground cover – a great alternative to traditional ground covers such as winter creeper (Euonymous fortunei). Leaves of this carex are evergreen throughout the winter, and in fact, the plant can suffer (or at least look pretty bad) if cut back in fall or spring. Adaptable to shade and part sun, ‘Ice Dance’ is a versatile and durable plant.
The common name of this plant really doesn’t do it justice, as the winter stems of this willow are anything but white. A range of cultivars of Salix alba are available; however Salix alba var. vitellina is a standout in the winter garden. Gradation of color from golden yellow to orange to deep red cascade from the base of each stem to the tip. I prefer them to shrub dogwood for this reason as most dogwoods are a single, solid color and lack such a striking color gradient. During the growing season, these plants are fairly unassuming with regular simple green leaves. Winter is when they really “come alive.” For the best display, cutting the stems back to the ground no later than early spring will force a flush of new growth. This not only helps keep the plant under control (willows are notorious for being aggressive); it also provides a great source of material for winter containers, wreath making and more.
Ben Futa is the Director of the Allen Centennial Gardens at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in interdisciplinary agriculture.
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