This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
[ABCDE]

HOME

Thursday, July 16, 2009

ADRIAN HIGGINS

Gardening

During Dog Days, Perennials Fill The Bloom Gap

P

lant forms create structure in a garden, and leaf ornament brings texture, but let’s face it, flowers

provide the greatest thrill. I’m thinking of this now as the month-long show of the day lilies begins to wane and gardens generally enter the floral wasteland of July and August.

The truth is, you have to work at filling this gap to keep the garden from looking washed out and tired by the heat. Annuals bridge the dog days, along with the tropicals that are so popular today, but there’s a raft of perennials that provide weeks of show as the days begin to shorten and the heat sets in.

There are some obvious candidates, all of which I can see from my porch. The stand of purple coneflowers is high from the spring rains and in full color. In a month the seed heads will be black and ripe and draw a resident tribe of chattering goldfinches. Coneflower breeders have been hard at work to bring about fresh varieties, some more enduring and worthy than others. Allan Armitage lists and describes 47 hybrids in his book “Herbaceous Perennial Plants.” More are being introduced, and the color range today includes clear reds, golden yellows, wine purples and white. Pink Double Delight has dazzling pompom flowers on strong 24-inch stems. Its white counterpart is Coconut Lime, named for its green-tinted creamy blooms. Magnus is an older selection but still a champ. The petals, or rays, don’t droop as much as the wild purple coneflower, making the blooms appear bigger. I was in a garden the other day and found the Tennessee coneflower, daintier than the purple coneflower, with slender petals that are turned up a little. This species is endangered, so it’s important to obtain plants that have been ethically propagated and not collected in the wild. Rocky Top is a named variety. Wild quinine, or parthenium, is a

wonderful, underused July perennial, upright and bold with clusters of white flowers that draw butterflies. One daisy plant worth getting to know is the Mexican hat, or Ratibida, named because the central disk rises so high that the dainty bloom looks like a sombrero. Most are yellow, but a variety named pulcherrima has beautiful mahogany-red petals. Afriend raves about a recently introduced variety of blanket flower, Gaillardia Oranges and Lemons. Its flowers are a muted blend of orange and yellow and, to my eye, far more pleasing than the clunky red and yellowof traditional blanket flower varieties. It started to bloom in late spring and will keep going until frost. Butterflyweed, Asclepias tuberosa, has already begun to show its clusters of orange

See PERENNIALS, Page H5

H

Auto, Classified

EXTRA INSIDE

Community news

R

AA HO MN MS PN PS SM AX FN FS LD PW VA DE DW

Ed McAllister irons more and takes clothes to the cleaners less now that he is unemployed.

“I am reevaluating the whole need-and-want factor in my life.”

Outsourcing Chores? No More.

“We are trying to be creative and skinny things down.”

“This experience is bringing people back to real values.”

By Jura Koncius

Washington Post Staff Writer

Kathleen Hoppe used to send her blous- es to the dry cleaner and had the luxury of a cleaning lady every couple of weeks. But now the retired nurse from Southwest Washington is finding it hard to live on her fixed income and shrunken 401(k). So she’s made recessionary domestic adjust- ments: dusting off her iron and scouring her own sink. “In some ways this experience is bring- ing people back to real values,” Hoppe, 66, says while shopping at Target in Columbia Heights recently. She was looking for a grill top to extend the life of her Weber because she’s cooking at home more.

Living in a battered economy has forced many newly penny-pinching Americans to fire their housekeepers, can the profession- al carpet cleaning and cut back on yard service. It’s back to work at home, and many aren’t whining about it. “People are stopping the subcontracting of their chores,” says Ehsan Alipour, found- er and chief executive of Oliso, a maker of

Purple coneflower

BY ADRIAN HIGGINS — THE WASHINGTON POST

Inside

Decorating

A Q&A with Phoebe Howard, the decorator to watch in the South. Plus, she joins our weekly live chat today at 11 a.m. at www.washington

post.com/home. PAGE 4

Home Front

CB2 is looking to open a store in Washington. PAGE 2

House Calls

A screened porch in Chevy Chase finally gets comfortable.

PAGE 3

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Become a fan of The Washington Post Home Section on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (wposthome).

irons. “We have seen a rise in first-time iron buyers. . . . Lots of firefighters, police offi- cers and waiters are doing their own press- ing.”

The recession is forcing consumers with no jobs or tanked portfolios to fend for themselves. Carol Joynt, owner of the re- cently closed Nathans restaurant in Georgetown, has blogged about fixing her own toilets. Jean Olive, an unemployed Wheaton mom, is saving on energy bills by laundering clothes every two weeks in- stead of once a week and runs the dish- washer only when every inch of every rack is filled.

Filmmaker and former news anchor Del

Walters says he dumped the yearly mulch- ing service ($2,300) on his five-acre Lees- burg property and is himself spreading free mulch he gets from the county. Walters and his wife, Robin, also eliminated their week- ly cleaning service. “We are trying to be creative and skinny things down,” says Robin Walters, who works for IBM. “And once the economy rebounds,

See CHORES, Page H4

BY MARK FINKENSTAEDT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

In an unsteady economy, the Edwards family of Clinton no longer hires someone for yardwork and other chores. From left are Dana, 4; Natalya and Mykenna, both 12; Coleen; and Paul.

ONLINE READER POLL

What household chores have you stopped paying others to do for you? Take our poll at www.

washingtonpost.com/home.

Local Woman Could Be The Next ‘Design Star’

By Kathleen Hom

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tashica Morgan, a 29-year-old Ethan Al- len design coordinator and graduate student at Marymount University in Arlington, is competing on “Design Star,” a reality series beginning its fourth sea- son Sunday at 10 p.m. on the HGTV cable net- work.

The show, filmed in Los Angeles, pits con- testants in such chal- lenges as designing a kitchen in 26 hours and decorating a 10-by-10- foot white room on a sound stage with prod- ucts from only one store. At the end of nine episodes, the winning designer out of an original 13 will get his or her own show on HGTV. A former foster child from Southeast

Tashica Morgan

BY JOSH GIBSON

A painted bed and neutral palette are signatures of Phoebe Howard’s home designs.

Washington, Morgan, who lives in Bowie, was adopted by her grandmother in Hyatts-

ville when she was 14 and didn’t start out thinking about a career in interior design. At the University of Maryland, Morgan was urged to become a lawyer by friends and fam- ily, who nicknamed her Talko because they thought she could talk her way out of any- thing.

Morgan had graduated from U-Md. and

was working for the Air Force JAG law de- partment in the Pentagon when she “had a breakdown in my head. I was like, ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ ” she says. Design kept calling, and last year, at the urging of her husband, Morgan applied for “Design Star.” She didn’t think her chances were great, so she forgot about the contest until she received a voice mail from a net- work official. “It was so crazy,” Morgan says. She was in her car listening to the message and began screaming in excitement. Though taping for the competition has ended (the winner hasn’t been divulged), Morgan is still mulling over the experience. It’s surreal, she says, going from “not know-

See DESIGN STAR, Page H2

BY MARCUS YAM — THE WASHINGTON POST Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66
Produced with Yudu - www.yudu.com