Making It Grow Minutes

The glorious deep purple Judge Solomon Southern Indica hybrid azalea graces many Southern gardens and the drive into our prized national treasure Brookgreen Gardens.

A move to Florida for his health lead to the creation of a real beauty.

Brookgreen Gardens is a national treasure with stunning, sometimes whimsical sculptures set in acres of horticulture splendor. Not long ago, I was visiting, and although beautiful at any time of the year, the long drive in was breathtaking as the Formosa and Judge Solomon, both purple pink but with a subtle difference, were in full flower.

I went to Brookgreen Gardens recently where the drive in was at peak beauty with the Indica azaleas in full bloom. Some of the old Indica azaleas are named for people with curious histories.

When I was young, Momma would sometimes ride us around to look at the beauty of springtime in Columbia. People tended to have the same plants in their yards – backbones of spring beauty were the Southern Indica azaleas, with the scientific name Rhododendrum indicum.

Swamp jessamine doesn’t have the sweet fragrance of yellow jessamine, but it blooms in the spring and the fall.

Our state flower is actually a vine. Yellow Jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens.

Common seedling redbuds can grow to twenty feet pretty quickly and that makes it hard for me to reach the flowers which are at the ends of the branches.

Redbuds make our woodlands beautiful with their early purple/pink flowers. Breeders have gone to town with this native and all sorts of cultivars are available.

Cercis canadensis, our native eastern redbud, is an early bloomer. With protein rich pollen and sweet nectar, it’s an important food source for many native bees, including the blueberry bumble bee.

When people from the the Mediterranean areas of Europe came to North America and saw native redbuds, they called them by the familiar name of Judas tree.

Well, as soon as you think you’re giving the right information, you find something that makes you back track. Our native redbuds prefer partial shade but driving down Devine Street in Columbia recently, I marveled at the beauty of the redbuds growing in absolute full sun.

Cercis canadenis, redbuds are in bloom in South Carolina and what a distinctive and lovely understory tree they are.

Like many birds, they also enjoy fruits and berries, in season, which are a consistent part of their diet.

Male sapsuckers spend several weeks drilling out a nesting cavity, preferring trees with heart-rot fungus if possible as they are softer to drill into.

If you are worried about a tree used by sapsuckers, you can wrap small gauge chicken wire or such around the trunk.

Amazingly migratory, this bird nests in our part of the country as well as in Alaska and Canada and drills sap wells into trees, over years they are lined up perfectly above the depressions of earlier drilling.

This is the only woodpecker that doesn’t actively drill in tree trunks looking for insects to eat

Well, the poor yellow-bellied sapsucker gets a bad rap, as it sounds like these are cowardly birds when really their name comes from their attractive, light yellow breast.

It is a day of joy when my puppy Blue and I walk with my friend Ann Nolte. She and her husband Hank Stallworth live on a portion of what was his family farm.