I like hot things…. All kinds of hot things. I’m heading to Arizona right now, leaving my garden behind. BUT before I left I was thinking of hot things, hot days and nights ahead. I took a stroll around my garden and found some hot plant combinations. It is easy to come up with hot plant combinations in the summer when lots of oranges, reds, yellows, and bright colors are out. It is a little harder in May. In May everything seems to be soft and pinky, cloud like in its harmony with nature. The earth wakes up with a sleepy little roll over and dazed look at the sky, then sometimes goes back to sleep. If you are adventuresome and ready to push for a little pizazz you can make it happen.
This combination is under the deck and in front of my hot tub. The Fatshedera lizi ‘Annemieke’ is there all year with variegated leaves. The climbing hydrangea(Miranda climbing hydrangea) is there also but just the great vining peeling stems. Showy fragrant white lacecap blooms will bloom in late spring to early summer. The clematis alpina ‘slolwijk’ is fairly dormant until early spring when it blooms brilliant blue on the tendrils with just a few leaves showing. In May the leaves are all out , the blooms on the hydrangea are starting and the clematis leaves are growing strongly. At the bottom there is a fuchsia magellanica aurea with sharp bright yellow green leaves that will have pendulous red and purple blossoms.
Why you may ask? Why all that variegation together…. Well some like it hot.
Aggressive vines sometimes call for freedom do be what they are. The hop vine (humulus aurea) loves to intertwine with anything it comes close to. It is indiscrimitive in its partner. Sometimes sneaking up on it and wrapping itself around it before it has a chance to know what happened. This Tri-color birch (fagus sylvatica "Roseo-Marginata' is gentle and unassuming. Planted to screen an unpleasant view It happily does its job without complaint. Then. suddenly. The hop vine is there. twining and wrapping itself around the soft stems and creating a totally different structure than the birch had planned. I will admit sometimes I pull it out of the top and make it behave so it doesn't overwhelm it to the point of losing its identity and looking like a heap of hop vine and nothing else. Sometime the hop vine reaches all the way to the Kiwi vine and then the battle royal starts. It would be a hard match to decide a winner on. I do love the hot bright green against the purple with a little pink and white edge on the birch. Why all that crazy color and aggressiveness? Well some like it hot.
Plants can stand on their own sometimes. They can create an atomosphere of hotness just in their being. Hosta Red October is one of them. It has amazing bright yellow green leaves on red stems. It is hot when it come out and just keeps on getting hotter. I don’t know who decided that this was the bomb but I think that person likes it hot too.
