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By Hilda, on November 25th, 2010
Things turned out pretty well for the settlers at the Plymouth colony. Every year we acknowledge, through our Thanksgiving celebration, the Pilgrim’s agricultural successes. It’s practically legend, the way they learned from friendly natives which indigenous plants could be gathered for food, and how to grow New World crops like maize, beans, and squash.
 jimson weed (Photo: MissouriPlants.com) Then there was the ill-fated Jamestown settlement. Colonists there also had much to learn about the native flora – and they left behind a very different kind of legacy. What we remember today is mainly their misadventures with Datura stramonium, a shrubby, flowering plant that we know now as jimson weed (shortened from “Jamestown weed”). Reportedly, those who ingested the notorious weed “went mad” for several days, due to the hallucinogenic properties of the plant.
Flash forward to the modern, gardening world — and many of the ornamental plants we currently know as angel’s trumpets belong in the Datura genus, and are closely related to the devilish jimson weed.
From its divine scent to its startlingly large, coronet-shaped blooms, angel’s trumpet is an aptly named flower. A single plant can put on quite a show, easily reaching 10 feet in one growing season. Flowers tend to close during the hottest parts of the day and open in the evening. At twilight, fragrance is at its most intense, as the plants seek to seduce lunar moths and other nocturnal pollinators.
 Angel's trumpet comes in many shapes and colors, including ruffly double forms not seen here.
Though tree-like in form, angel’s trumpet is actually an herbaceous perennial in warm climates (zones 7-10), and it’s grown as annual further north. Here in my Atlanta neighborhood, angel’s trumpet is still blooming like crazy at Thanksgiving time, as we haven’t had a frost yet.
But let the gardener beware:
The Jamestown stories are more than myth. Today, Datura’s effects on the central nervous system are well known. All parts of the plant are toxic, containing the alkaloids atropine, hyocymine, and scopolamine. Ingesting the seeds can cause delirium and disorientation, even hallucinations that have sometimes resulted in harmfully reckless behavior.
 Gardeners should also know that the plant’s sap contains large amounts of atropine, the substance used by ophthalmologists to dilate the pupil during eye exams. There are numerous reports of people who have rubbed their eyes after working with angel’s trumpet and have suffered from dilated pupils for days. Since you can also absorb the alkaloids through an abrasion, it’s best to wear gloves and wash your hands frequently if you’re cultivating angel’s trumpet.
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Want to collect Datura seeds for next year’s garden? It’s easy to harvest them from the pods – just be sure to label and store them safely. In 1983, according to a CDC report, a couple lapsed into a coma just after phoning for an ambulance. Upon their awakening, this is what doctors learned: While making dinner, the wife had added a seasoning to the hamburger, but later realized it was Datura seeds she’d saved from her garden. She scraped most of the seeds off the meat and served the meal. Shortly thereafter, the couple began hallucinating and passed out. They were hospitalized for three days.
The genus Brugmansia, once lumped in with Datura, is also made up of plants known as angel’s trumpets. The easiest way to tell them apart? For the most part, Brugmansia has dangling, pendulous blooms, like these, while Datura sports trumpets that are a bit more upright. They are equally toxic.
By Hilda, on August 3rd, 2010
At this point in the summer, your basil plants are likely to be tall and very bushy, especially if you’ve been diligently pinching them back to keep them from flowering. It’s a good time to cut the plants back drastically so you can harvest the leaves and make a big batch of pesto sauce to freeze for the months ahead. It’s amazing how cheaply pesto can be made at home.
Most pesto recipes call for fresh basil leaves, grated Parmesan, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and salt and pepper. The proportions vary however, so you may have to experiment until you find the right flavor for you.
Basic Pesto Sauce
- 2 cups fresh basil leaves, removed from stems and rinsed
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 tablespoons pine nuts (optional)
- 1/2 to 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
- ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan
- salt and pepper to taste
 Put the basil and garlic in the bowl of a food processor or small food chopper. As it runs, slowly drizzle in olive oil till the mixture is pureed. Add the pine nuts and Parmesan, and process to mix. If it’s too thick, add more olive oil or a bit of water. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
This mixture can be frozen in plastic bags or small plastic containers.
By Hilda, on June 20th, 2010
It’s garden tour season! I went on one last weekend, and it was kind of a whirlwind tour (11 gardens in six hours) but I did end up with some snapshots of beautiful container gardens. There’s just something about a flowerpot overflowing with plants that says “summertime!” to me. I love really scrumptious container plantings, the ones that intermingle so many colors, textures, and shapes that you feel like the plants are having a flower party right in front of you.
I’ve experimented with all different kinds of color schemes in my container plantings, but when it comes to choosing plants, there’s one formula I always stick with, and it involves these three elements:
- A tall, spiky, bold leaved, or otherwise dramatic plant for the center of the container (although sometimes it can be off-center for an asymmetrical effect)
- Lots of mounding plants to fill in most of the space – can either be flowers or interesting foliage
- Trailing plants that will cascade over the edge of the pot and soften the edges
These photos from the garden tour show me that other people have the same idea about combining plants in containers using the three-element formula.
I also saw these gorgeous containers designed for shade: no flowers, just plenty of contrast between the foliage plants in terms of their shape, texture, and color. I love both of these compositions and would like to recreate them at home. Each of them only uses two kinds of plant material, but they look stunning.
For more ideas on creating container plantings, take a look at this article on Fine Gardening’s website. The author also recommends the three-ingredient approach, though he’s rather creatively described the three distinct types of plants as “thrillers, fillers, and spillers.”
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By Hilda, on June 11th, 2010
 For more than ten years now, I’ve grown this wonderful vine from the morning glory family in a pot on my front patio. It’s sometimes known as cypress vine or hummingbird vine, but these common names are so interchangeable that if you want to order seed, it’s best to look for the Latin name: Ipomoea quamoclit.
I fell in love with this adorable climber the first time I saw it in someone’s garden, and immediately asked if I could collect some of the seeds. The feathery fern-like foliage would be stunning on its own, even without the tiny, tubular red flowers that flare out into a five-pointed star. I just love the texture of this plant!
Like most morning glories, this vine is easy to grow. I sowed seeds only once and it’s reseeded itself every year since then. Because I grow it in a container on a metal obelisk, the growth is very restrained, but I’ve seen this vine grow to 20 feet tall against a utility pole on a public street corner – just spectacular!
 Did I mention the red flowers attract hummingbirds? They don’t spend long on individual flowers, which probably only provide a sip of nectar, but once the vine really gets going it’s covered with enough flowers to provide a feast.
The vine has one minor drawback – like most morning glories, the flowers last only a day, opening just after dawn and closing up by early afternoon.
 For those of you who like a more dramatic display, I recommend a morning glory named ‘Heavenly Blue’, which was hybridized from the wild morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor) to bear bigger, more dramatic flowers. A friend of mine grew this on a pierced brick wall last summer and sent me this picture. Another friend used to grow ‘Heavenly Blue’ on a lamppost in her front yard. She’d create a lush pyramid of vines by driving several stakes into the ground around the base of the post, then stringing twine from the stakes to the top of the lamppost. After starting seeds indoors, she’d transplant the seedlings into the ground next to the stakes, coaxing them up the twine as they grew.
 Want to extend the flowery display into the evening hours? Many gardeners in the South, where I live, plant ‘Heavenly Blue’ along with moon vine (Ipomoea alba), mixing the two vines on the same trellis or support. Moon vine is kind of a reverse morning glory – its huge, fragrant, white flowers open at twilight and stay open all night. So when you plant these two related vines together, you get 24 hours of bloom, with a color change in the middle!
Planting tip:
Morning glory seeds have a thick seed coat that can cause them to be slow to germinate. You can speed up the process either by soaking them in water overnight or nicking them slightly with a utility knife (some people use a metal nail file to lightly scratch the seed coat).
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About
The Author
Hilda Brucker
 Hilda combines her
love of gardening
and passion for writing
in her blog entries.
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