I love it when I plant something new in my garden, and it way out-performs my expectations. Enter the spectacular ornamental kale. How the species escaped my horticultural attention till now, I don’t know, but it did. I wish I’d taken a photo of these four little people when I first planted them last fall. Then only 6-inches tall, they were bushy, low, and all green. I chose them to finish out the back corners of the four raised boxes my brother Dan built for me a few years back. (That’s a post all its own for another day.) The tags said each kale plant would produce showy white foliage, and my nurseryman confirmed they’d be a nice backdrop to the snapdragons I was putting in the fronts of the boxes. That's all I knew at the time, but I bought them.
That was October. In November and December they bolted into 2-foot tall beauties with showy white foliage indeed. Bright white and 12-14 inches across, they look like a huge flower with a pretty border of green leaves all around the outside. I was beyond satisfied with their late fall growth, and I fully expected them to die out during the winter.
Wrong. They soldiered on through our mildish December and January freezes and are STILL catching the eye of anyone who glances out my kitchen window. I learned they’ll continue showing off until the snap dragons bloom later this spring, but they won't survive our hot summers. AND, they're edible! Will we eat them? Maybe, before high temperatures bring on their demise.
Meantime, I’m getting ready to hire a former first grade student of mine to turn our yard into a native species garden. I doubt if ornamental kale will make the cut, hailing from Europe as it does, but I’m enjoying it while I can.
~dkm 3/4/24
