Down to Earth

Anemone, by any name, a worthy addition to the garden

By Kristin Green
Posted 9/29/16

When I was a kid I knew a girl named Anemone. No matter how carefully I concentrated, placing my tongue against the roof of my mouth just so and squinting to see the spelling against my eyelids, I …

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Down to Earth

Anemone, by any name, a worthy addition to the garden

Posted

When I was a kid I knew a girl named Anemone. No matter how carefully I concentrated, placing my tongue against the roof of my mouth just so and squinting to see the spelling against my eyelids, I couldn’t pronounce her name. AhmenONy? MenOMonee? Ah-NEh-money! Got it. If only her parents had called her Buttercup, we might have been friends.

I think about that girl every year when my Japanese anemone (I can say it now like a pro) blooms, and I understand why her parents made that particular choice. Anemone are the epitome (say that five times fast) of elegance and grace as long as a big wind doesn’t throw their slender stems to the ground. An irony given their common name. Windflower are so called because a light breeze sends their flower clusters to the dance. This year mine has stayed upright through howling gales, held in an embrace by a tendril from a melon vine, my one and only food crop. Plant relationships are endlessly entertaining.

Years ago, when I asked my carpenter-chef for a raised bed for veggies we sited it over an existing plot and previous tenants were evicted to make way. Or so I thought. The windflower popped back up like a bad penny — I mean a happy surprise — in the southwest corner of the box and I haven’t bothered relocating it. I thought it was A. tomentosa ‘Robustissima’ but this plant, grace itself, with ruffled single bubblegum-pink flowers, hasn’t spread at all from its corner despite having access to a bed now only planted annually with citron melon, self-sown borage, teasel, and crabgrass. Maybe it’s disinclined to spread east and northward or perhaps the crowd keeps Baby in a corner.

Anemone are members of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), a huge clan that includes delphinium, clematis, hellebore, actaea, columbine, and thalictrum among others and is so grouped mainly because its members’ flower parts are attached individually instead of fused together. Get out your loupe. Not all species have the exponential rhizomatous spread weedy buttercups are known for, but Miss ‘Robustissima’ usually does.

So does spring-flowering snowdrop windflower (A. sylvestris). That one forms a weed-busting groundcover in the same sun to partial shade conditions enjoyed by Japanese anemones but its bright white flowers dance only a foot or so off the ground. Cotton ball seedheads follow along with intermittent re-bloom. A must have.

If you haven’t placed your bulb order yet, why not add Grecian windflower (A. blanda) tubers to your list? These naturalizers are almost too low to the ground to wiggle in a windstorm but are available in a shade of blue that doesn’t seem natural at all. Don’t count on them for being a decent weed barrier though: their foliage goes dormant after flowering.

Perhaps, like me, you want to buy local. Meadow windflower (A. canadensis) is a delicate North American native spring-blooming groundcover for sun to partial shade and moist soil — it’s happiest along rivers, drainage ditches, and in low lying meadows. If your garden doesn’t have such a spot, location near the rain barrel might do. Same goes for the even more diminutive wood anemone (A. quinquefolia). That one’s tiny white to pinkish flowers hover on stems knee-high to a grasshopper in the earliest part of spring and disappear without a trace not too long after. I’d almost be more excited to spot either of these species in neighborhood meadows and woods than in my own garden.

Given the season, I’m inclined to add more Japanese anemone. Maybe the bright white and sturdy ‘Honorine Jobert’ or better yet, the eminently covetable and hard to find ‘Wild Swan’, which has storm cloud-white petals backed in dusky blue. I feel pretty confident about my pronunciation these days but I wouldn’t mind a garden full of reasons to keep practicing.

Kristin Green is the horticulturist at Mount Hope Farm and author of 'Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter'. Follow her blog at trenchmanicure.com.

Kristin Green

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