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Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Armchair Gardening

With temperatures hovering in the teens outside, there's not much gardening that can be done other than armchair gardening. Curling up in an overstuffed armchair with a gardening book chock full of delightful photos is the way to go.

Yesterday I visited our local public library where I picked up "Designing Borders" by Noel Kingsbury. So often I just peruse gardening books to eat up those photos and don't bother with what is written but Noel seems to have sucked me in with some great advice.

Almost immediately I noticed multiple photos that featured Verbascum bombyciferum. This wonderful biennial has been thrilling me in my garden for 5 or 6 years now and I can't wait to find more uses for it. The common name is mullein and chances are you can find it growing out of the cracks along the road somewhere. In fact, I got my first plant exactly that way, I snuck it out of the curbside of the house across the street from me! You know you have something special when visitors continue to comment on a specific plant and in the past few years the Verbascum plants here have drawn many compliments.

Even when not blooming, I love the fuzzy gray rosettes of Verbascum. Hopefully some of you will be inspired to give this plant a try too.

1 comment:

Gayze said...

The blog is looking great, Melanie! I've enjoyed reading the recent posts. Had to comment on good old mullein ... isn't it a classic? Mullein tea makes a good cough remedy, too!

--Gayle