Being in Love With Stock And More…

Last year almost accidentally I stumbled over a few little containers of old fashioned matthiola, better known under the common name stock, at a big box store and brought them home with me. Somehow these plants weren’t on my radar before, but that really changed once they were planted in the garden. I fell in love not only with all the available colors and bloom forms (there are single ones and filled varieties available) but in addition to that with their fragrance which is absolutely divine.

This year I couldn’t wait for the stock to come back into the nurseries and as soon as they were available I secured my share. Contrary to last year this time I potted all my stock up in containers to be able to move them around in the garden and just plop a container down wherever I needed a little bit of spring color.

I placed one container close to our front door and sometimes when the conditions are right (means there is enough humidity in the air) and I pass by I get a wonderful whiff of the delicious perfume of these plants.

In general, I love pastel muted colors and this very pale apricot hue is one of my favorites colors that stock is available in.

But this post is not just about stock. I also would like to catch you up on the happenings in my garden over the last few weeks and show you some photos.

One cool morning in February I found the peppermint geranium leaves covered with natural dewdrops. Don’t they look like they have gotten a dusting of powder sugar? These leaves also release a wonderful and fairly strong peppermint scent when rubbed between fingers.

I use them often as a filler green for single roses in bud vases. The velvetiness of these leaves goes very well with the beauty of a single rose.

Talking about roses, mine certainly enjoyed all the winter rains that we were having and sometimes their leaves looked like clothed in diamonds after the rains had ceased and the sun came out.

Do you remember my excitement when I found the first self-seedling of one of my hardy geraniums (see the post here)? Well, my enthusiasm has gotten quite a damper. The plant grew like crazy, but only produced insignificant tiny flowers that you had to almost search for with a magnifying glass. Well, by now it is ripped out and found its way into the compost bin. I guess this is why we need professional plant breeders…

One storm tore so much at my Queen Palms that it ripped off a whole palm frond, which landed on the backyard lawn. These fronds are huge! I put a regular size garden chair at the end of the frond so that you get a better idea of its size.

Back to the front yard and the stock. This container is beautifying a column of our decorative wall, which is the very first thing that you see when you walk up to our front door. I really like the dark blue of the container together with the different colors of the stock.

This year I didn’t buy any pansies or violas because our last winters were so mild and then we had heat waves very early in the year, they did seem to last only for the blink of an eye. So this year as a substitute stock is bringing the first spring color into my garden.

Here is a photo of the walkway to our front door. In the very front is rosa ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’ which became less and less vigorous over the years. I pruned the rose hard to see if it would rejuvenate, but unfortunately, it didn’t and was not able to produce any basal shoots again.

I also pruned my Verbena Bonariensis back quite severely and with this plant, it worked. It came back nice and strong and I am so much looking forward to seeing it in bloom again. It is only its second year in my garden (I bought it in late summer last year) and therefore I don’t know when it will start to bloom.

Two commentators on my blog said that Verbena Bonariensis will reseed freely. Well, that is not the case in my garden (hardly anything reseeds here and I blame the strong root competition between the seedling roots and the always present palm roots, but, oh wonder, two little seedlings of Verbena Bonariensis made it.

At least that is what I think these little guys are. I will dig them up and see if I can grow them on to more vigorous plants in containers first and then transplant them back to other areas of the garden. I loved the two Verbena Bonariensis plants last year in my garden and would like to have more of them.

Another plant that is doing well this year is the daylily ‘Gentle Shepherd’. The fans have nicely multiplied in this plant but I have to say I have a second one which has only made it to grow from two fans up to three.

Walking towards our front door you can see that all roses are pruned and I am done with the spring clean-up waiting for the garden to explode into new growth.

I would love for this part around the cycad to be underplanted a bit more and hope that I will get to it this spring. I will move the small pelargonium located on the right side of the cycad, right in front of the blue container to another part of the front yard and I am contemplating to plant a blue flowering ajuga there instead, which has done very well in my backyard.

Some more shots of the stock. This pale lilac variety is also one of my favorite colors.

We really had torrential rains at times here in the last couple of weeks, but altogether the stock flowers held up to it surprisingly well. Only the white ones showed some browning of the flower petals. I find that white flowers, in general, react always the most sensitive to rain.

Here we are looking at my relatively newly planted bed to the right side of the house. The rose in the front is ‘Cymbaline’ an older rose bred by David Austin. It was planted in August of last year, meaning in the heat of summer and I am so happy that it survived. Especially since I lost the ‘Crocus Rose’ here that I planted prior to ‘Cymbaline’.

Rosa ‘Cymbaline’ is happily leaving out and the best is that it is even producing basal shoots from the base of the bush.

This is one of my two ‘Climbing Iceberg’ roses in the front yard by the garage. It is a joy for me to see how vigorous it is leaving out this year. 

I will end this post with three more photos of the stock. The magenta tone is also very nice.

Close-up of a newly developing flower spike of a soft apricot colored stock. 

Christina