‘You have the most amazing flowers’

“Do you think we could grow these back home?” It’s disheartening to have to disappoint so many tourists from hardiness zones most Alaskans dream about while shoveling yard after yard of snow in January. While many zone 3 gardeners go crazy trying to grow exotic equatorial specimens, coaxing along a gardenia or orchids, our visitors from zones 8 through 10 are tying themselves in knots trying to figure out how to grow our glorious cool-weather perennials.

Many of these wonderful monster plants are outstanding due to our cooler temperatures and long daylight hours. Gardens south of the Mason-Dixon Line are too humid, hot and tend to turn our perennials to mildewed mush.

There’s probably no way Aunt Hattie can grow one of our tarp blue Meconopsis or blue poppies in Georgia, but she might be able to grow delphiniums as a winter annual.

The New Zealand New Millennium hybrids will tolerate warmer temperatures if you give them protection from the mid-afternoon sun, keep their feet cool with mulch and water frequently. Dowdeswell’s Delphiniums, their New Zealand breeder, recommends no more than 45 days at temperatures above 80 degrees and plenty of dappled shade.

Southern gardeners will never be able to replicate these garden divas as lush as the ones gracing the flower trials at the state fair this year.

Local gardener Pat Tremaine’s grand champion winner was a double mulberry pink monster that could dwarf a traffic cone! The flower stalk itself had to be at least 36 inches long with the flowers producing a base of 7-8 inches in diameter. While many area gardeners can boast giant delphiniums, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a specimen of that size before. Not bad for a cool, cloudy, blasé summer.

Those state fair gardeners managed to thumb their collective noses at the weather and have given us beautiful annual beds and planters once again; head gardener Becky Myrvold and her staff plant up about 35,000 plants into some 200 hanging baskets, 100 whiskey barrels and numerous beds each year to put on a magnificent display. But, the perennials are award-winning as well. A meander through the perennial garden had me jotting down several interesting plants new to the garden.

Blue lyme grass, Leymus arenarius, has lovely blue strappy leaves that would really set off the deep wine leaves of my Berberis vulgaris “Royal Cloak” and add a nice spiked punch to the beds.

Geranium sanguineum “Vision Violet” is real cutie with green deeply cut leaves and bright violet flowers that hugs the ground and forms a nice mat for the front of the bed. “New Hampshire Purple” is a good substitute and “Tiny Monster” is a larger twin to these.

I know we have tall invasive clovers taking over the Parks Highway interchange, but Becky Myrvold has a couple of intriguing beauties in the garden this year. Trifolium rubens has a duck egg-sized head of blush red fragrant clover with large leaves and a tall demeanor planted among the perennials. A few feet away is another variety, Trifolium ochroleucon, Sulfur clover, with a similar size flower head in cream that smells like a sweet meadow. While the British consider it an invasive pest to be banished to the roadsides, it could be a nice specimen plant if you don’t let it go to seed.

Wouldn’t you know that the showiest flowers were the annuals?Scabiosa ‘Fire King’ is a tall punch of deep wine red that looked good planted behind the red plantains, but, unlike its blue cousin, is an annual.

Mask flower, Alonsoa warscewiczii, is a delicate coral pink flower floating above nice bushy foliage with reddish-brown stems. A native of Chile, this tender plant might do well in pots on a protected deck.

The state fair’s perennial garden is sandwiched between two buildings and has both front and back walls, providing ample protection from our local winds and probably bumps up the hardiness zone a notch or two.

If your visitors are still hankering to grow something from the frozen north you can find wildflower seeds at the tourist cabins in Palmer and downtown Anchorage, and from Wasilla’s own Wildflowers of Alaska, 376-7339, lilsu@alaska.net. Or you could always collect some seeds from your own garden and package them in a nice decorative envelope for a gift this winter.

Grab your umbrella and try to enjoy your garden while you can. At least the tourists thought our gardens looked great this summer!

Brooke Heppinstall, artist and gardener, is the owner of Wool Wood Studio & Gardens, an art studio and nursery specializing in Alaska-grown perennials and shrubs. Visit online at Woolwood.blogspot.com.