Lily, Rose And Rhododendron In Your Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

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Tiger - lanceolate - lily

The tiger lily, as it is most often called, is highly regarded by connoisseurs of ancient teachings and art.

In China, where the plant comes from, its underground bulbs were stewed or boiled and used for food; it was also used in folk medicine for stomach ailments and headaches.

In our climatic conditions, it blooms in July-August. According to feng shui, the inclined flowers of the tiger lily are considered the best qi conductors, and no gardener, a zealous follower of the ancient art, can do without these flowers in his garden. This lily looks good in the back of the garden in a mixed flower bed or in a border.

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Rhododendron (naoyanghua). Element: yin. Symbolism: grace

The name "rhododendron" comes from the Greek language (rhodon - "rose", dendron - "tree"), the origin of the plant from China.

Feng Shui experts strongly recommend using rhododendron in rock gardens, as well as for mixed and shrub curbs; rounded inflorescences of white, yellow, pink, red or purple flowers combined with large, smooth, oval leaves that form a kind of green fan, give a wide wavy outline, ideal in terms of qi conduction.

Rose (musyan). Element: yin. Symbolism: beauty

According to feng shui, the rose has unique properties and is a good conductor of earthly energies. Dried rose petals are said to ward off evil spirits. The sages of China, before others, also discovered the benefits of anointing with rose oil.

Roses have always attracted beautiful women, or women who deal with roses become beautiful, perhaps this is magic. In Europe, knowledge of the magic of roses is attributed to Napoleon's wife, Empress Josephine, one of the first to realize the power of this flower and who created a beautiful garden of roses in Malmaison, where there were winding paths, trellises and gazebos, as if involuntarily copied from those prescribed by Feng Shui, although Josephine did not study Chinese floriculture, but apparently had an intuition.

If we break away from the legends, then near St. Petersburg roses once bloomed abundantly and gave large beautiful flowers. As for the danger of their freezing, the gardeners knew how to properly prepare the rose bush for wintering and how to cover it. There are now so many different types and varieties of roses that it is impossible to list.

I found the most practical and time-tested taxonomy and some recommendations from the 1908 gardening magazines. Here are some excerpts from these articles. For practical purposes, it is enough to divide roses into the following groups: 1) park roses, 2) noble roses, 3) low multi-colored and 4) curly multi-colored.

Park roses include, first of all, wild-rooted roses and rose hips, simple and double, usually tolerating winter well without shelter.

As, for example, northern rose hips (Rosa cinnamemea), common rose hips or dog roses (Rosa canina) - considered to be the best stock for noble roses; yellow capuchin rose (R. lutea); wrinkled rose (R. rugosa); apple (R. Pomifera. = R. Villosa).

This should also include, in addition to real wild-growing, unpretentious various rooted roses, such as capital or centifolia (R. centifolia); moss roses (R. muscosa); French (R. gallica) and others. All park roses always bloom only once in spring.

An intermediate class - transitional from park roses to noble ones - these are roses obtained by crossing park roses with noble ones, of which the most successful are Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Soleil dor. These are excellent ground roses that winter well in the middle lane, but to the north they require shelter for the winter.

Grafted roses are predominantly noble roses, although they can also be derived from cuttings. Noble roses can be divided into three types:

1) remontant (Rosa hybrida bifera) - the most hardy;

2) tea roses (R. Thea indica) - the least hardy;

3) tea-hybrid (R. thea-hybrida) - semi-hardy.

They are very close to hybrid tea in terms of their merits and requirements for shelters for the winter:

a) bourbon roses (R. borbonica), with a flatter flower structure; the best of them is the old variety Souvenir de la Malmaison (pale pinkish);

b) Noisettiana, at least in the more hardy varieties - Aime Vibert (white) and William Allen Richardson (coppery yellow).

Multicolor roses bloom in large clusters of small flowers and exist in two main forms: old - multicolored curly rose; and a new multi-color low. The first is called R. polyantha, and the second is simply multi-colored (R. multiflora). But since both of these terms mean the same thing, but only in two different languages - Greek and Latin - this does not in the least eliminate the constant confusion.

Therefore, it is much better to add the words "low" or "curly", and then it will be clear what kind of rose we are talking about.

Low multi-colored roses are used mostly only for the border in flower beds with roses, but some, for example, M-me Levavasseur, are sometimes grafted onto the standard rosehip. They are bred for the most part by cuttings, and not by grafting, and therefore, if they freeze from above, they can again shoot from the root. Among them are:

1) small flowers, for example, M-lle Cecille Brunner (slightly pinkish on a yellow background), Gloire de Polyantha (pink), M-me Levavasseur (carmine red) and others;

2) with medium-sized flowers, for example, Eugenie Lamesch (yellow), Clothilde Soupert (white pinkish);

3) large-colored, for example, Mosella (white), Gruss an Teplitz (cinnabar red).

This also includes Bengal or monthly roses (R. bengalensis, R. semiperilorens), for example, Hermosa (pink), Cramoisi superieur (velvety carmine) and others. These roses are close to hybrid tea and partly to tea roses in their requirements for winter cover."

In the pre-revolutionary articles on gardening, a very extensive practical material is presented, of course, it requires some correction, but this is another topic. I want to end my description of roses with a quote from a 1902 gardening magazine. The rose, like the queen of flowers, requires attention to itself and careful choice of place and care.

First of all, it needs clean, fresh air and an open location. In the immediate vicinity of factories or in a narrow, surrounded by high walls of the city garden, where air circulation is very difficult, none of the buds will ever develop in roses in all their glory.

Further, you should never plant roses under the shade of large trees, which take away a lot of moisture and block the sunlight from the rose. In extreme cases, a rose still tolerates a shadow, but in no case is it a "cover": she loves to feel the open sky above her! "I think that comments here will be superfluous, as far as Russian gardeners intuitively followed the laws of feng shui.

I lingered on roses a little more than on other plants, although in China now there are more than 70 thousand different, equally revered types of flowers, each of which has its own symbolism and purpose.

Moderation and harmony must be present in all the variety of choices. Do not forget about the mystical component of excesses. A famous example of this kind is found in the love story of Emperor Genso for a beautiful and capricious young girl named Yokiki. The emperor admired her so much that he fulfilled her every whim immediately.

The balcony in the palace, from where she admired the flowers in the garden, he ordered to be made of the rarest species of fragrant wood, and the stones for crossing the streams were covered with blooming lotus everywhere in the garden, so that it did not touch the rough surface with its leg. But the story had a tragic end: the cup of patience of the imperial servants overflowed, and once, having heard another command, they rebelled, killed Yokiki, then the death of the master followed.

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