Steve Lorton
Strolling through Madison Park around the Fourth of July, my eye was caught by a cluster of blossoms in a trio of Independence Day colors: Red, White and Blue. Clumps of petunias, in this combination of hues spilled down the bank in front of Park Shore Senior Living Community on 43rd E. “Hum … Those petunias are somehow patriotic,” I thought. “… but mundane”
Then came the voice from the good guy on my right shoulder. “Think outside your box, Dude.”
The box I was in was established in the 1950s in the rural Midwest. Come late May, petunias, along with geraniums and zinnias, started showing up everywhere. They filled porch pots and window boxes, typically underplanted with cascading vinca. They were solemnly planted on graves in the cemetery on Memorial Day. There was often a band of color (commonly white and pink) fluttering under the base of evergreen foundation plantings. House wives labeled them “adorable” and “sweet.” Famers named a hog, their prize breeding sow, “Petunia.” These flowers were as much a part of Midwestern summers as lightening bugs, thunder storms, and ice cream socials.
As the decades past, petunias were replaced by flowering summer annuals that were seen as more sophisticated. But hybridizers and nursery owners did not lose sight of their merits. More tolerant of cold than most seasonal bloomers, they can be set out early and flower late into autumn. They grow profusely and bloom prolifically all summer. Forget to water them and they’ll wilt a bit, but perk right up with a hosing. They are generally undemanding, growing in most any well drained soil with ample sunlight. Fertilize them monthly in the growing season and they’ll repay you with an even greater abundance of bloom.
The hybridizers went to work. Today nurseries offer single and double flowering plants in a vast variety of blossom sizes and colors, solid and bicolored. There are two hybrid forms most commonly marketed: Wave and Supertunia. Both produce masses of flowers. Wave hybrids tend to be upright, good for in-ground massing. Supertunias are famous spillers and trailers. You’ll see them in hanging baskets all over the city. The lamp post baskets along 34th Avenue in the business center of the Madrona District are spectacular, worth a detour to see.
With a good 90 days of freeze-free weather still ahead, there’s reason to add petunias to your garden, now. At this point, nurseries will likely have sold out the 4-inch pots that filled tables in spring, but large display pots will still be for sale. Why not get a pot or two as a mid-summer spruce-up? Plus, they are a gift to nature. Hummingbirds and butterflies love them.
Native to South America, petunias are members of the tobacco family. Discovered by the Spanish in the 1700s, they made their way into cultivation in North America in the 19th Century.
We’re now a month past Independence Day, but those petunias in front of Park Shore are bigger, more floriferous that ever, still sporting their Yankee Doodle colors. Yep, these petunias, all petunias, are patriotic plants. They’ve served our country and our culture for two centuries. They’ve done their part, quietly, happily, in most any soil, asking for no more than sunshine and water. They’ve been overlooked, eclipsed by other, more trendy plants, yet they’ve kept going, kept serving. They’ve been crowded into pots and hanging baskets with an assortment of other plants, happy to be part the whole. I say that’s patriotism, real patriotism. And there’s a lot more to it than just red, white and blue.