“There will be days, most likely in November, when you question the desirability of having a garden at all.”—Elsa Bakalar
Over the years I have spent hours in November planting garlic, tulip, and narcissus bulbs. I don’t recall the time fondly; what I distinctly remember are frozen, muddy fingers and a frigid north wind cutting through my clothing and chilling my bones. It is a good month to look back at the past season in the garden.
There were two big, bold beautiful plants much admired this year: the castor bean plant, Ricinus communis ‘Carmencita’, and Amaranthus caudatus ‘Dreadlocks’.
I grew a few varieties of amaranth two years ago but never managed to sow seeds for this season. No problem. Plants sprouted from seeds dropped last year and continued to pop up all summer and I had close to a dozen sturdy Dreadlocks growing. Amaranth is a large family including the popular grain quinoa and I was often asked if my amaranth was edible. Apparently it is, which I wasn’t sure of. The young leaves are tasty greens and, under the maroon flowers are edible seeds which were a staple grain for the Aztec, Maya, and Inca peoples.
But, oh, the flowers! By early summer deep maroon dangling blossoms emerge and grow and grow becoming long, luscious, lumpy ropes of chenille drooping down to the ground from the six foot plants. Extraordinary descriptive nicknames have been given to this amaranth. It is called ‘chenille plant’ after the fabric it resembles (‘chenille’ from the French word for ‘caterpillar’,and what a big bug it would be). ‘Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate’ is a sweet descriptive sobriquet but two others are rather gruesome. ‘Love lies bleeding’ could have come from the fact that the plant often topples over from being top heavy, leaving the blood colored blooms sprawled on the ground. ‘Nun’s scourge’ is also macabre but it would be a soft, gentle flagellation for the good sisters.
My amaranth may be edible but the raw seeds of the castor bean plant contain the deadly poison ricin. Yet castor oil, made from processed seeds is used in traditional medicine to treat arthritis, pain, constipation, and insomnia. There are claims of regrowth and thickening of hair, eyebrows and lashes from topical use. The oil was once popular as a laxative. Mussolini tortured political prisoners with massive doses. And castor oil is a deterrent to moles.
That is a lot for one plant, but I grow it only for its striking beauty. The cultivar ‘Carmencita’ has a branching habit with large metallic, burgundy, palm-like leaves and grows over six feet tall. Small white flowers are insignificant while the seed pods are gorgeous. Clusters of soft, spiny, scarlet capsules are held on erect stems. When the sun hits them they glow as though lit from within.
On a smaller and more discrete scale is a plant I bought at a plant sale in Damariscotta, Maine. Verbena officinalis var. grandiflora ‘Bampton’ is a wee thing compared to the other two, but I planted it in a terracotta pot and set it on a stone wall where I admired it every day. Named after a town in Devon, England, this is a delicate plant with bronze, dissected foliage and dark stems topped with purple flowers. Verbena is also known as vervain, an herb used to relieve stress, promote sleep, and, according to the writings of Nicholas Culpeper in 1652, it can be used to treat “over-enthusiasm”. Hmm.
The family of sage is large and from many continents. One of my favorite members is Salvia confertiflora from the tropical wilds of Brazil. I haven’t been able to find plants in the last few years but Helen O’Donnell at Bunker Farm in Dummerston, Vermont found one in the depths of her greenhouse for me. This is a tall, rangy plant that comes into its glory late in the season when it sends out two foot long wands covered with blooms. The epithet “confertiflora” translates as “crowded flowers” and these dark, hairy stems are a mass of velvety beauty. Small crimson petals are surrounded by rusty orange calyces resembling glowing embers.
None of these plants are perennial in New England. The salvia and verbena will be cut back and stored in my cool basement for the winter. The other two will collapse with the hard frost (which hasn’t occurred yet as I write on the 23rd of October!). The amaranth seeds dropped this year will wait under the snow and germinate next season and I will sow the seeds of the castor plant in the spring. These four plants were stars in my garden this year. Now November arrives. Time to hibernate.
“By late autumn my enthusiasm for gardening is curling at the edges as I look forward to the impassive oblivion of winter.”—Mirabel Osler
November, 2021