It's weigelia season; they're the marigolds of flowering shrubs...

...or the Rodney Dangerfields. Deciduous flowering shrubs get little enough respect as a group, and I'm thinking that, excepting forsythia, weigelias are the low rung on that totem pole. It is true that they take up a lot of room and only look good for a few weeks a year, but. Their shape, gawky with multiple arching branches, works wonderfully for those few weeks that they're covered with flowers. And a few, actually a good number, of them rebloom lightly.

The older I get (and the more perverse?), the more I appreciate these plants. The red one is 'Red Prince', one of the "usual suspects" at the garden center; they were only planted last year so they're really just babies. The middle plant with multicolored flowers, they darken as they age, is a favorite. The plants, there are more than one, in the bottom photo were renewal pruned last year and they did a darned good job of renewing themselves. Still, if you want to grow these older larger selections, you're going to need a good bit of property.

From the top: Weigelia florida 'Red Prince' (closeup and plant); Weigela japonica sinensis (closeup and huge plant); Weigela florida

UBC Botanic Garden volunteers led by Douglas Justice, tour the Asian Collections at the USNA

Mr. Douglas (the disembodied head at the back of the photograph) is the Associate Director, Curator of Collections, and a research scientist at the University of British Columbia Botanical Gardens. Carole Bordelon, our curator, leading the tour, is at the far left. They chose a good time of year and a good day, but then I guess they knew what they were doing!