I have a confession to make. I LOVE kale. It's quite trendy right now to make kale chips and growing it organically or buying it at a local farmers market to put in one's juicer is quite the thing. While I enjoy those along with more tradidional kale recipes, I'm talking about the ornamental kale that shows up everywhere this time of year and looks pretty decent all winter long. Perhaps it's despised by many because of overuse in municipal plantings, maybe some people find it common or dislike such garish colors. Do you suppose that some folks find the appearance to be too close to something that belongs in the vegetable patch (potager?) I'm lumping ornamental cabbage together with kale for the sake of this post.
It could be that I think that anything that looks good in the winter is pretty special.
Or maybe that I love eating all the vegetables in the cruciferous/Brassica group.
It works well with autumn colors.
Looks attractive with other lovely foliage.
And can look striking even later in the winter.
These pictures were all taken at Watson's Nursery in Puyallup. Watson's is a very popular place and during the spring and summer seasons, the parking lots are often nearly full of cars & the nursery teeming with people. It was interesting and delightful to visit on this autumn day just a couple of hours before closing when the staff actually outnumbered the customers.
There you have my confession (oh, and I also think that the sweet smell of pansies on a warm winter day is delightful and am not above planting a primrose or two, just not huge beds of them.)
What's your tasteless pleasure? [P.S. I'm thinking that common garden pleasure might be a better choice of words.] C'mon fess up. We're all friends here (or at least we were before I spilled the beans about this whole kale loving thing.)
Those are great arrangements you found. Kale and ornamental cabbage work well around here in winter, just not in the fall when the heat makes them bolt within a few days.
ReplyDeleteMy tasteless garden choice is pansies, they grow and bloom all winter with happy faces. I usually plant a lot of them in all my containers when the other plants die back. Who decided they were tasteless?
Tasteless was a poor choice of words. Many plants that are widely available and way overused are sometimes held in lower esteem than the xeric/native/rare and unusual/fad plant du jour offerings. I have to admit, I love 'em all.
DeleteHi! I love the ornamental cabbage very much. I think its leaves remind me a lace! I bought a small pack with its seeds now, and next spring will sow them in small pots and then in my garden.
ReplyDeleteMy tasteless pleasure is calendulas. They seed themselves in some places of my garden.
Calendulas are so cheerful and happy looking. I love the way they seed themselves.
DeleteI think maybe my tasteless pleasure is primroses. Not whole swaths of them, but just a few. They're hard to resist in the early spring when they appear, so frilly and colorful.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how I feel about ornamental kale. They're a little too frilly and that bright purple hurts my eyes. I actually think I might like them better in subtler colors. I don't use a lot of annuals in my garden, so I don't really have a clue how to incorporate them into it. Maybe I need to think of them as really really big Semps.
I'm with you! My heart sings when the primroses make their winter appearance in every grocery, drug and plant store in the area. Usually a few get tucked into my beds and are forgotten until they rebloom next year.
DeleteGood idea about treating kale like really big Sempervivums! I get a few and plop them into pots left empty by the autumn migration of the tender agaves, echiverias, etc.
I think many would say my love of the common yucca is pretty tasteless (so common I don't even know what it's called...the non trunking kind that you see growing in empty lots and established older neighborhoods, they clump up like crazy and usually have a bunch of dead leaves around the bottom). I once had a friend say that she would never allow space in her garden for "that" yucca. I love that they were the most exotic thing I grew up with and they reliably send up their bloom spike every summer.
ReplyDeleteAny yucca that blooms every year is pretty cool. I think we have that yucca in some places here, too. Ain't it grand that our gardens can please us with both common and rare treasures!?
Deletep.s. you've got the SF badge on your blog!!! Does that mean you're planning to attend?
DeleteI'm hoping to! You?
DeleteHoping to as well, waiting to see what the costs are before I know for sure.
DeleteOh, I hope you both make it to the Fling! I went to the Seattle one, where I met Loree briefly, and it was a lot of fun. I'm definitely planning to go to SF!
DeleteYea! It would be great fun if we all could go!
DeleteM'dear Outlaw
ReplyDeleteI believe the white centered ornamental cabbages look way too much like a grocery display, but the image above of the purple centered ones with cyclamen, well that I appreciated. (Thought-provoking post!) My tasteless but tasty pleasure is local beer over wine, or I suppose hops over grapes in terms of gardens, although I actually like the grapevines better. Now you know the awful and seriously conflicted truth. ;)L
Hi Linnie darlin',
DeleteThank you for bearing your horticultural soul. It feels good to confess doesn't it. Now take a deep breath and realize that we aren't here to judge, we care for you, and we know that you can change if you truly want to. I mean, kale is one thing but beer over wine?! ;o) Of course I'm joking. Really, many of my best friends prefer local beer to wine.
The white centered kale display does resemble that of a grocery store but then I've always admired plantings with the subtlety and refinement of a bulldozer. (Orange marigolds, deep purple petunias, magenta lychnis with maybe some bright scarlet something or other -YUM!) It really isn't a floral display unless it can be seen from space. At night.
I have to go on the list of lovers of kale and the colorful ornamentals. I have 2 tall pots of these ornamentals mixed in with pink, white, pale yellow and fuschia snaps. What's cool is that the kales have been here for 3 years - same ones and the snaps re-seed; I just dead head them and throw the seeds back into the pots. When the kales get leggy, I cut them back, stick the heads in the soil and they root. The short stems then grow another head. One of them has morphed into a monstrouse(sp?), which I love.
ReplyDeleteWay cool! I love that you don't treat your kale as a throw- away annual. I'm going to try your off with their heads trick.
DeleteI love ornamental kale--what is tasteless about it? Designers are always promoting foliage over flower, kale is all foliage, what's the problem? Perhaps because I can't grow it here due to our winter heat waves (it dies from the heat), I love seeing it elsewhere. Here it is rare, not overused.
ReplyDeleteI don't find anything tasteless about it but I've been told that the only taste I have is in my mouth. I've seldom met a plant I didn't like. Glad you're a fellow lover of kale!
DeleteI totally don't mind Kale...and it's nowhere near as garish as most of the plantings I see around Portland during summer! I don't know what my guilty pleasure is...probably just that I love so many "common" plants...I'm tragically un-trendy ;-)
ReplyDeleteTragically un-trendy? Oh Puhlease, We've seen pictures of your gorgeous garden and know that you live in the oh-so-hip city of Portland. (We've all watched Portlandia so it's no use to try and deny it.) You couldn't be more fabulously in!
DeleteGood for you...you found some fine examples to save face for kale lovers everywhere.
ReplyDeleteI am on a campaign to stamp out all guilt (for all but the Tea Party).
Amen. Preach it sister.
DeleteI've never grown kale in the garden but recently I had a salad of chopped kale with prosciutto, pine nuts, and grated parmesan. Delicious! Even so, as an ornamental, it doesn't thrill me. Maybe if it lived through the winter in Chicago ...
ReplyDeleteIt's the winter interest thing that sells it for me.
DeleteKale looks very nice mixed in with other flowers, doesn't look so much like a vegetable then.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, kale needs companions to look its best.
DeleteSuch lovely colours! So beautiful! I'd like to visit that place...
ReplyDeleteJust hop on a plane and come on over, it's a fun place to visit.
DeleteTasteless pleasure, LOL. That's good. I might need to borrow it. :) I like kale but personally I think it is better used when ONE plant, yes, just one, is tucked in to a container with evergreens, say an ornamental grass, a globe and a tall conifer and perhaps a little variegated ivy of the same colors trickling over the edge of the container. When I see a huge swath of kale buttons at the nursery it is a huge turn-off. And perched beside mums, ick. Just my hoity-toity opinion. :) Great post!!
ReplyDeleteDear Hoty-Toity,
DeleteExcellent observation about kale looking best when used singly in mixed plantings. I have 3 seasonal pots spaced out in a large shady bed that has mostly green stuff in it from spring-fall. The pots have coleus in them in the summer and a single kale in each for the other three seasons. The various green stuff in the beds covers the pots and acts as a foil for the color of the coleus or kale. I haven't been horribly successful at growing mums as perennials so I don't bother anymore because they always look kind of artificial to me.
Orange things.
ReplyDeleteMarigolds and wallflowers.
Actually i've come to confess that my garden is a mud bath strewn with frost damaged plants, filthy garden tools and discarded children's toys. There, I feel better now.
I herby grant you absolution for your transgressions against garden fastidiousness in thought, word, and deed. Go ye and sin no more. Except in case of orange things which are lovely no matter what those silly colorists say. Come to think of it, the filth level of a gardener's tools is evidence of his industirousness and the presence of children's toys shows that the garden is loved by many generations. Frost damage and mud are part of the natural cycle which you embrace. You, sir, are not a sinner but a saint!
DeleteMy tasteless pleasure has to be gardening related? Then I'd better not admit I've seen every episode of Sex and the City multiple times and have a mad crush on Colin Firth. I thought all that kale you just outed was fancy ass cabbage. ;o)
ReplyDeleteYou are right, it is fancy-ass cabbage. Sex and the City? Well, there's no hope for you. Don't worry, it's a dry heat down there;o} Don't know about the carrot cake supply, though.
Delete