A scent of waterlilies

The shiny leaves and creamy, cup-shaped flowers of Magnolia grandiflora 'D.D. Blanchard' in my front garden, shedding their yellow stamens on the opening petals...

K

After a couple of hot and steamy days of over 90ºF (32ºC) and one reaching a record 104ºF (40ºC), I am totally content with a cool change that came in during the night, the clouds filling the sky and relieving us from the scorching sun. We have been sitting late into the night on our West facing deck, drinking white wine diluted with sparkling water and recalling with nostalgia the equally hot summer nights in Melbourne. There, we sat on our beautiful veranda with Victorian cast-iron lace and pillars covered in Wisteria, waiting for the cool change to sweep over from the Port Phillip Bay. And then, about 10 pm, you could hear the breeze rattle the dry Eucalyptus leaves as a sign of a coming relief from the heat.

K

Here in Seattle, it has been a record breaking year; first the coldest winter in at least 20 years and now this dry and hot summer. The results of this somewhat extreme weather can be seen in my garden: first, we lost about 15 good-sized plants of Spanish lavender, and now, it seems like we are loosing quite a many Azaleas, too. Of course, every lost plant can be seen as a possibility for planting something new, but there is a limit to how many mature things you can replace each year. Luckily, the lavenders have self-sown themselves generously leaving me with some good sized plants, even if I'm not quite sure if Spanish lavender comes true from seed. The only plants that seem to thrive in this heat (besides the lavender) are the five Magnolia grandiflora 'D.D. Blanchards' that adorn the street side of our garden.

K

New buds opening in the heat.

K

I have always been a bit uncertain about M. grandifloras in other than tropical or subtropical gardens; only last winter, they looked totally misplaced here in Seattle with their large and shiny evergreen leaves drooping and the snow snapping off whole branches and tops of these brittle trees. They look stately (but maybe a bit too stiff for most suburban gardens...) and are both evergreen and supposedly low-maintenance, even if they do shed their large and leathery leaves all the year round making them look quite messy underneath, their leaves being too hard to decompose easily (I might need to buy a shredder just to be able to include them in my compost...) And you can actually hear when the leaves drop, making a woodsy "plopping" sound when they reach the ground.

K

But there is a very good reason for including a Magnolia grandiflora in one's garden if you happen to live in a zone temperate enough to permit it: the large, creamy flowers emit a wonderful fragrance that is strongly reminiscent of waterlilies. For me, they evoke dear memories of swimming in the Finnish lakes filled with white, wild waterlilies when I was a child. So burying my nose into a one of the Magnolia flowers during the recent hot summer nights has been an experience that almost makes me forget about being so dubious of them during the past cold and icy winter here in Seattle...