From “Felicitous Flowers for Early Fall” in One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell:
“One of the most obliging of all garden plants, and maybe the best perennial for the early fall garden, is the Japanese anemone. Once you have it, you have it. There is no question of replacing it every few years. It spreads moderately but is not invasive, and so far as I have seen it is not bothered by mildew, viruses, or bugs.
“From a tuft of basal leaves it sends up flower stalks three or four feet high, with many buds that open over a period of several weeks. The individual flowers are about the size of silver dollars, either white or rose pink, with conspicuous yellow stamens at the center. There are also semidouble forms. I like the plain single white ones best….
“In the bishop’s garden of Washington Cathedral… I have often admired the white anemone blooming amid fat old clumps of box, one of the happiest associations imaginable. The anemone also looks good in back of late-flowering hostas. But the hostas are too dense for the anemones to compete with, so they should be separated by three feet or so. When they bloom together (their bloom overlaps, though the hostas finish before the anemones), the two kinds of flowers almost touch.”
From “Windflower Leaf” by Carl Sandburg in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg:
This flower is repeated
out of old winds, out of
old times.
The wind repeats these, it
must have these, over and
over again.
New windflowers so fresh,
oh beautiful leaves, here
now again….
The wind keeps, the windflowers
keep, the leaves last,
The wind young and strong lets
these last longer than stones.
Hello!
This is the second of two posts with photographs of anemone flowers from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. The first post is Anemone, the Winde-Floure (1 of 2), where I describe what I learned about the early English term “winde-floure” from John Gerard’s 16th-century book The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes.
Thanks for taking a look!
