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I'm "booked"
By Victoria Torley
There are a lot of gardening books in my office, about two meters of them. Botany, edible and herbal plants, green medicine, cut flowers, even a book on English cottage gardening. And of course, there are orchid books, a lot of them, plus books specific to Costa Rica. There are, in fact, far too many books for me to have read them all. Truthfully, I haven’t even tried. After all, most of the plants in the cottage garden book take a completely different climate than we have here.
It’s a problem with a lot of things. Amount of sun, length of the day, rain…oh boy, have we got more rain than England. Still, I think there may be places in Costa Rica that could grow some of these things if there weren’t so many other things to grow.
Take Lily of the Valley for example. In the States, we got them once a year for a few weeks. Now we have butterfly white ginger that grows year-round and flowers more than once a year. Not a bad trade. Then there is jasmine. We grew jasmine in Georgia but not in upstate New York (too cold) but it was seasonal. Now it is also year-round.
Gardenias are another favorite of mine. We had a gardenia bush in Georgia that was three or four meters tall and almost three wide but it flowered in season. Costa Rican gardenias don’t seem to have a season. You really have to appreciate that (although I’d appreciate it more without the leaf-cutter ants).
Angel trumpets. I could grow them in Georgia but they had to be cut back to the ground before the first frost and covered so they would come back the following year. So much easier to just let them grow and grow until they are giant shrubs.
Palm trees. We had some in Georgia but never in New York. Now, in fact, I have an entire book titled, Genera Palmarum. It’s one of those giant hardcover books three centimeters thick, with small, find-me-my-reading-glasses print. I lose my reading glasses a lot…
With all these books, you’d think I would have an easy time finding the name of just about any type of plant but no. It seems as if the way to find something is to already have an idea of what it is or at least its genus. My favorite? The books that say, “Here are the shrubs that flower in ‘red, orange, yellow’ and ‘blue, purple.’ If you know the color, you have a chance of locating the plant.
Got a favorite book? Let me know if you have one with an easy ID page. I’m always looking.
Plant of the Week
Here’s a lovely small shrub, Orthosiphon aristatus, called Java tea or cat’s whiskers, that can brighten up any garden.
This lovely ornamental grows up to two meters tall and the leaves make a medicinal tea. Grow cat’s whiskers in full sun or light filtered shade in rich soil and good humidity. Not a good plant for the beach as it likes high humidity and dislikes salt.
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For more information on this article of request for
information about gardening, Ms. Victoria Torley,
gardener columnist, can be reached at victoriatorley1@gmail.com
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