Focus on Flowers

A novice gardener once told me that she was only going to plant perennials, as they did not need any care. If only that was true! On the contrary, I have found that it seems easiest for new gardeners to start with annuals and then to move on to perennials. Annuals only last one year, but once they are planted they stay in one place, don’t reproduce, and just need water and fertilizer. They are les...

Christopher Morley once said ‘April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks GO.’  Green, in all of its shades, is the color of the month. The colors of the evergreens that anchor the landscape through all of the seasons now provide a backdrop for the early spring bulbs. The herbaceous perennial Hellebores, are flowering now too, and have leathery dark evergreen foliage, but need to h...

April is a month when gardeners long to plant but as T.S. Eliot said, it is “the cruelest month.” Warm days are often interspersed with freezing temperatures damaging over-eager plants that set their buds too soon. Over eager gardeners can also make mistakes. An exemplary gardener, Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13th in 1743 and he died at 83 in 1826. He spent 60 years developing the gardens o...

When we are awaiting the beginning of gardening season in early spring, we sometimes have periods of cold where tender plants, such as the emerging perennials in our gardens, are at risk. Temperatures, even those that remain above 32F degrees, may still damage plants. When they do, it’s called “chill injury.” However, if the temperature that has been warmer than freezing suddenly hits 32F degrees...

Air temperatures that hover just above freezing for a prolonged period of time in the spring can kill most tender plants if they’re set out too early. So if you set out your houseplants outdoors too early, even if it’s actually above freezing in terms of the air temperature, they simply can’t endure it after being accustomed to the warmth in the house. All air temperatures affect plants, as it aff...

The weather in our flower garden has to do with local atmospheric conditions: hot and cold; wet and dry; calm and stormy, and so on. Climate refers to the region’s atmospheric conditions and predictable events for that region or particular place. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) divides North America into 20 separate zones, and the zone we garden in determines the plants that we can grow. B...

Many of us with clay soil complain loudly about it, and it’s true that gardens with clay soil can be hard to dig. Also, with clay soil, it is not a good idea to put a bed in areas where standing water collects. However, one can have very successful flower gardens where there is clay soil, as it has excellent water-retention, and less water and nutrients need to be added to the soil than are needed...

Plant families are like human families in that successive generations of their members often have improved looks, health, longevity, and vitality. This is certainly true of the latest versions of the heucheras , commonly known as coral bells. So many new heucheras are now available in many different foliage colors and combinations. The flowers themselves, spires of tiny florets that are raised hig...

At this time of the year we usually read about gardens instead of gardening. I have been reading about deadheading —the way we ensure plants keep blooming by chopping off the spent flowers. This prevents them from forming seeds, which is a signal that no more flowers are needed by the plant. Annuals have to produce a lot of flowers because they only live for one year and so have only one flowering...

In February, it is appropriate to think about roses. Here is what Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) wrote: " There is scarcely any rose that we can wish to have in our gardens that is not also delightful in the cut state. A china bowl filled with well-grown hybrid perpetuals, grand of color and sweetly scented, is a room decoration that can hardly be beaten both for beauty and for the pleasure it gives,...

The earliest iris to bloom is the petite Iris reticulata . The reticulated irises have a fibrous network on the bulbs that is similar in pattern to the markings on a giraffe, which is also described as reticulated, “like a net.” These earliest blooming iris have 3- to 6-inch stems and they bloom with the crocus. To display the blooms indoors, I use a tiny bottle for each one. There are also intric...

Quite a number of flowering annuals can be started by sowing their seeds directly into the garden.  Wait until after the last frost in the spring when the soil has really warmed enough for seeds to germinate. I tend to pick up packets of seeds wherever I go so usually have a big stash of them, and it is fun to scatter them in my bare perennial beds. Since seeds are inexpensive, I throw them around...

David Hosack was born in New York in 1769 and in a book about him by Kerri Miller, she states that he is responsible for the establishment of New York’s first botanical garden. There was an interview by Victoria Johnson on NPR that drew my attention to this.  Hosack was a brilliant medical scientist who focused on medicinal plants. The Bartrams, earlier on, grew medicinal plants in their gardens i...

Before long now, some of the earliest flowers to bloom will be stirring in our gardens.   Many of them are ephemeral, a descriptor that means “short lived” or transitory. In garden-speak, this means that these cold-hardy little plants bloom early and then die down leaving no trace until they return the following year.  Most grow in woodland settings, where the soil is moist from late snows under d...

In 1785 William Cowper wrote: Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.  Unconscious of a less propitious clime  There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug  While winds whistle and the snows descend. In 1974 Maya Angelou said,  " Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says ‘I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I’m going to snow anyway’." And there is a Chinese pr...

During the middle ages, the Christmas season lasted for 12 days and reached a climax on Jan 6, which is called Twelfth Night .   We often wait, nowadays, until Twelfth Night to take down the Christmas tree and holiday decorations. Once everything is put away the house seems suddenly quite bereft, and we long for something natural and fresh.   January, of course, is a difficult month for garden flo...

Norah Lindsay (1866-1948) lived in the Manor House at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire, England. She was admired for the way that she combined herbaceous perennials in borders, which were so popular during the Edwardian time in England.  In her obituary in 1948 in the London Times it was described how she would trace out a plan for a whole garden in the dirt with the tip of her umbrella. She was kn...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a poem about the garden at the end of the year. This seems to be an appropriate time to share it with you.  A spirit haunts the year’s last hours  Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:  To himself he talks:  But at eventide, listening earnestly,  At his work you may hear him sob and sigh  In the walks;  Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks  Of mouldering flowers:  Heavi...

Oscar Wilde in The Selfish Giant wrote the following words:    “He did not hate the winter now, for he knew that it was merely the spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.”    And Anne Bradstreet, who died in 1672, wrote:    “If we had no winter the spring would not be so pleasant.”   Kathleen Norris sounded a little more impatient about winter when she wrote:    “There seems to be so muc...

The English colonists in Virginia used mistletoe to decorate their homes and their churches during the Christmas season. Mistletoes are evergreen parasitic plants with small leaves, yellowish flowers and waxy white berries. When sprigs are hung as a Christmas decoration, men are, by custom, privileged to kiss women who stand under it, according to the description of it in Websters Dictionary. When...

The first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere is marked by the winter solstice, which for example, in the year 2023 occurs on December 21. For the northern part of the Earth, the winter solstice always occurs annually on either December 21 or 22. This solstice marks the day with the fewest hours of sunshine in the year, which means that it is described as the shortest day.   After the winter...

This winter I have been reading some garden writer’s words of wisdom, which now I will share with you.  In 1899, Gertrude Jekyll wrote:  “For I hold it that the best purpose of a garden is to give delight and to give refreshment of mind, to soothe, to refine and to lift up the heart.” And Sara Stein in 1988 wrote: “January is the best time for gardeners. From the window of the attic where I write,...

Many tropical plants, and also some temperate zone plants that resemble tropicals, make excellent house plants in cold climates.  One fairly easy to grow but underused example is the South East Asian native with the common name of jewel orchid . Its botanical name is Ludisia discolor . This is a terrestrial plant that grows in soil in a pot, and it has narrow leaves. The color of the leaves varies...

Epiphytes are plants that get nourishment from the air. They are non-parasitic, but they frequently, for example orchids, grow on another plant such as a tree. When they are grown in a pot, epiphytes prefer a growing medium made up of two parts soil-less mixture and one-part fine bark mix.  A favorite house plant of many people is the hoya , an epiphyte vine that is commonly called wax plant. Ther...

Torenia is a pretty annual that hails from tropical African and Asian woodlands. This branching annual is not frost hardy but grows rapidly to a height of about 12 inches with a spread of 8 inches. It flowers in summer and fall, producing racemes of trumpet-shaped, two-lipped flowers that look a bit like snapdragon blooms. There are two lobes on the upper lips and three lobes on the lower lips.  T...