Innovation

Jasminum mesney ‘Sunglo’

I’ve been reading lots about a recent study that show that being outside enhances creativity.   Self analysis complete!   Now I understand me and I make perfect sense.

That should help relieve any concerns about how I’ve chosen to use this incredible shrub.   As a vine.    Nothing new really.  Some Jasminum are vines while some just scramble and other are true woody shrubs.  Some giant, some slightly less than giant.   Most need to be supported— trained on a fence, tied to post, woven into and out of ironwork.

Two Jasmine are on my mind today.  One I saw in a garden center yesterday—big, flowering, 3-gallon pots filling the aisle with fragrance Jasminum stephanense but if you see it too, hold on!  It’s been put out on the shelves about three weeks too early for garden planting.   It’s a cool, fast growing, aggressive vine.  I might use it to shade a new trellis but, but flowering does slow down in the heat of summer.

The other, Jasminum mesnyi aka Primrose Jasmine,  left to it’s own would make a huge, fountain of evergreen leaves that are covered  in the spring with yellow flowers.   Huge.   15 tall and just as wide.  Spectacular.   My favorite new variety is ‘SunGlo’.   Trained, it’s going to be a killer vine.   How do I know?   Where have I seen it trained before?   I could say, ‘On the massive pergola’s that line the sea side park in Calabria. I always think of Italian espresso and French women when I see Jasminum trained up a post.”

But that would be my creative answer.  The honest answer is that I haven’t.  But I’ve spent my life in swamps and fields and gardens observing other vines, ripping them out of trees, swinging on them and tying them into knots to see what happens.  It’ll be spectacular: I just know it.