Rhonda Nowak

“I have turned the garden topsy-turvy at great expense. We have a forcing house for forcing every sort of flower; melon frames, cucumber frames and mushroom beds to produce in every week of the year. One hundred loads of gravel have been put on the paths to raise them…and the devil knows what else to swell the items of the bill.”

— from “The Letters of Charles Dickens Vol. 9: 1859-1861” (1998)

Charles Dickens grew up poor in 19th-century London and it’s widely reported that he remained frugal with his money throughout his lifetime. However, Jackie Bennett tells us in her book, “The Writer’s Garden” (2014), that in 1855 at the age of 43, Dickens splurged by purchasing an 11-acre property in Kent with a large brick house called Gad’s Hill Place, and he immediately began adding to the manor and gardens.

In fact, Dickens enthusiasts in America can thank his home and garden expenses for bringing the celebrated novelist to our shores because he was so concerned about his “swelling bills” that he agreed to a public speaking tour in the U.S. to help pay them off.

Although Dickens was too busy touring and writing novels such as “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859) and “Great Expectations” (1861) to do much gardening himself, one of the gardeners at Gad’s Hill Place recalled that Dickens “used to supervise everything himself and would tell the head man exactly where to put the flowers.”

One of Dickens’ favorite flowers was the bright-red Pelargonium x hortorum ‘Mrs. Pollock,’ which he grew in pots and “theaters” by the bay windows where he sometimes worked. Plant theaters were popular during the Victorian era as a way of displaying special potted plants such as auricula primroses, dianthus and pelargoniums. The stage consisted of three to five shelves made of wood and was either planted in the ground or attached to a wall or fence.

P. x hortorum ‘Mrs. Pollock’ is an heirloom variety of fancy-leaved, or zonal, pelargoniums, which are tender perennials but are grown outdoors in temperate climates as annuals. (Conversely, “true geraniums” are a different genus of rhizomatous perennials.) There are about 70 varieties of fancy-leaved pelargoniums available today, grouped into five categories: golden tricolors, silver tricolors, butterflies, bronze and golds, and green and whites.

‘Mrs. Pollock’ was one of the first golden tricolors bred by Scottish horticulturalist Peter Grieve (1811-1895), an early pioneer of fancy-leaved pelargonium breeding. Other pelargoniums that have received the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit include: P. capitatum ‘Attar of Rose,’ an intensely scented variety with butterfly-shaped mauve flowers); P. ‘Vancouver Centennial,’ a bronze and gold variety with orange-red flowers; and P. ‘Dolly Varden,’ a tricolor variety with showy, red flowers.

Interestingly, Dolly Varden is a character in Charles Dickens’ 1839 novel, “Barnaby Rudge,” set in 18th-century London. This Dickens character not only inspired the name of one of the novelist’s favorite kind of flowers but also many other things; to name just a few: a type of dress that was fashionable among women in England and America during 1865-70, a “doll-cake” particularly popular for children’s birthdays in Australia; a species of North American trout, now commonly known as the bull trout; and even a long-standing breakfast and lunch cafe on West Main Street in Medford.

According to Peter B. Moyle, author of “Inland Fishes of California” (2002), the trout’s name came from a young girl who lived in Dunsmuir, California. She had just finished reading “Barnaby Rudge” at the summer resort her family operated in the 1870s when a group of fishermen gathered on the dock to admire the large trout they had caught. The red-spotted trout reminded the young girl of the brightly colored petticoat worn by Dolly Varden in Dickens’ book, so she suggested the men call their catch “Dolly Varden” and the name stuck. (I called Dolly Varden Café in Medford but, unfortunately, no one there knew why the restaurant is named after the Dickens character.)

If you want to add a Dickensian note to your summer plantings, there are many pelargoniums to choose from. Here are a few tips to keep your pelargoniums healthy and blooming until frost:

• After purchasing a potted pelargonium, remove the plant immediately from its pot, untangle the roots, and place into a larger pot (or in the ground if you’re growing them as annuals) with fresh potting soil, compost and a balanced fertilizer.

• Your store-bought pelargonium has been grown indoors, so harden off the plants for a week or two before placing them outside. Position the pots (or plants grown as annuals) where they will receive plenty of sun but with some late afternoon shade.

• Pinching back shoot tips in early summer will encourage bushier plants. Deadhead faded flowers regularly to promote more blooming.

• Pelargoniums thrive when the soil is a little on the dry side. Once flower buds appear, apply a high-potassium fertilizer, such as Down to Earth’s Langbeinite 0-0-22, every two weeks for continuous flowering. Reduce feeding in fall and stop completely for overwintering plants.

• Overwinter pelargoniums either by bringing the potted plants indoors and cutting them back to about 4 inches, or by taking softwood cuttings in September, rooting them in pots over the winter, and setting them back outdoors the following spring after the frost date.