A Conversation about Novelties

I'm a sucker for novelties. So my gardens are often a playground, not a serious botanical presentation. In past years I have grown twelve foot tall sunflowers and “walking onions.” There have been trellises loaded with gourds and almost always Cleomes hovering over the smaller plants. I like other plants from the Victorian era, too, like Balsam Impatiens and Nigella, and the  indestructible Wax Begonias. Mass plantings amuse me, and in any given year there may be a couple hundred square foot patch of corn poppies blasting their gorgeous red color at any observers. I am a fan of bulbs from Crocosmia to Colchicum. The massing of their blooms can be a traffic stopper. 

Of course, this year I found a couple of “new” things to grow. My taste for great big flowering plants has included Cleomes and Castor Beans, along with some of the fancy landscape grasses (I call their florets flowers, even though they don't act like those of other plants).  

This year, I had promised a friend a flat of Tithonia rotundifolia, his favorite annual. I picked up a  pack for myself. I had never grown them. Well, they exceeded expectations, both in size and as a butterfly magnet. The common name is Mexican Sunflower, and the plants lived up to the name. Mine were eight to twelve feet tall and looked like big colorful shrubs decorated with orange daisies. Once they started to bloom,they were covered with bees and butterflies, and   regularly bombarded by hummingbirds. They made great cut flowers, too. When it came time to remove one (because the wind had broken a couple of stems) I had to use a strong pruning tool. All these annuals that grow to five feet or more in height develop woody stems. 

Following my impulse to grow novelties, this spring I also planted a vine that is as tiny as the Tithonia is huge. It's a melon, actually, but tastes like a really crispy cucumber dipped in lemon juice. It's called a cucamelon or a Mexican sour gherkin or a mouse melon plant. The scientific name is Melothria scabra, and it is native to Mexico and Central America. You grow it like any other cucurbit. It makes a vine and loves to climb. It's ideal for a trellis and would be happy in a container. The flowers are teeny and yellow, and the leaves look like those of any other squash or melon family leaf, but very dainty. The fruit look like watermelons, except they're the size of a table grape. The plant produces prolifically, so once in fruiting mode, it will yield hands full of bounty. They're great to snack on or tossed into a salad . Most seed companies carry these little guys, and they're easiest from seed.

As I contemplate these two new-to-me novelty plants, I'm already planning for next year. Maybe the Tithonia can be planted along the road... the deer don't like them. And maybe I can plant something to climb up them, like sweet peas ( a friend's suggestion.) Or maybe I can plant a row of trellises with the mouse melons alternating with regular cucumbers. Or I can plant a forest of Cleome and Castor Bean and Tithonia around a patch of grass for the grandchildren to play inside. Or I can find something else in a catalog that needs some TLC. We'll see.

If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, contact me at jeanthepipper@duck.com.