Another Anemone Attempt
I adore Japanese Anemones and when I first started digging in the dirt at our new house last year they were high on my list of plants to get up and running. My grandma has a veritable explosion of them in her yard (which is across the pond from me in Victoria) and I had always planned to get some plants from her, but what with taking the bus and ferry I still hadn’t managed to get any when I hit the UBC Botanical Garden’s sale earlier this Spring and so decided to lay down the cash (four or six bucks if memory serves) for a Japanese and a Chinese Anemone figuring that I’d maybe just add some from my grandma’s house too. Sadly both varieties died. Just withered right up. The tags they both came with said full sun to partial shade, but both my plants ended up totally fried and then eventually dead. I tried to move them in the last days of their struggles to less sunny spots but neither one made it.
I’ve heard that these suckers are particularly fussy and don’t like to be moved (so then how exactly do they manage to get from one yard to another?) so I’m trying not to take it too personally. And unfortunately I think I kind of misjudged a few of my beds this year assuming that they got a bit less light than they do. With the anemone blooming season in full force here, I’ve also been keeping on eye on where other folks’ plants are thriving and they all seem to be in kind of “sun-dappled” areas, which I would typically call partial to full shade, but then I guess that’s all relative.
Anyhow. This weekend I did get a few plants from my grandma so we’ll see how it goes. I planted them out yesterday and this morning they were pretty darn droopy, but I’m hoping they’ll settle in? What do you need to do for plants like this that apprently don’t like being moved? Is there some kind of welcome wagon I should be carting out? Just go out each morning and chat to them about the new ‘hood? Anyone with advice, do share, I know that once I can get them happy to be here they’ll thrive giving me plenty of anemone joy.
September 1st, 2006 at 9:36 pm
I love anemone too! My best advice for moving plants is: doing it on a cool day, keeping as much dirt on the roots as possible, then packing it into a pot with moist potting soil, planting into the ground ASAP, and then WATERING a lot. Adding some compost could help too. Good luck!
September 6th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Hi Emira! I found this fantastic website through an ad in Ready Made; I’m so glad I made the visit!! Your article has made me want to plant anemones too. Which zones do they thrive in best? I live in zone 8 (Savannah, GA).
I know what you mean about not taking a plant’s death personally. It’s difficult, especially if the plant was expensive, if you put a great deal of love/ time into it, if it was a cutting from a neighbor or a loved one, or if the plant had a sentimental attachment in some way to your life. Sometimes we can never understand the reason(s) for the plant’s “failure”, but in truth the failure is never or rarely ours. Mother nature is preparing and molding us to become a better gardener.
I know some people may read this entry and think it’s a bunch of blah, but this is not meant for them. The death of a plant is akin to acquiring the finest gold. The finest and purest gold can only be acquired by heating gold over and over again in order to remove or skim the impurities from the top of the melted gold. Just like an accidents or upsets in life, you can glean lessons from them (at some point though they may not be clear) in the end, leaving only the finest gold, the finest gardner. So this aggravation is but a mere necessity. It saddened you, but it will leave a bed of beauty in the end, a lovely bed of anemones which will make your grandmother weep.
September 6th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Shannon thanks for the advice and Marie thanks so much for the encouragement. Funnily enough this weekend as I started to pull up the sad, withered leaf of what had been my first anemone attempt I discovered that just below the surface there were a bunch of small green nubbins of new growth. So, I figure I’ll leave the sad dead bit there for a while to mark the place and see what happens. My transplanted new ones aren’t doing so hot, pretty wilty and such, but it was a hard time of year to transplant them what with the continual dry heat we’re having here, so I’m keepign them well watered and crossing my fingers.