Focus on Flowers

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...

In her book Making Things Grow---a Practical Guide for the Indoor Gardener , Thalassa Cruso calls succulents “neglectable plants.” That is because all fleshy-leaved succulents are slow to lose the water stored in their leaves. They also can go into dormancy to conserve water during drought. Cruso says that is why succulents make such good houseplants, thriving in the hot dry conditions in our home...

Hyacinths were first found growing in Asia, but because of the efforts of Dutch growers, there are now many varieties in the genus Hyacinthus .  Most bloom in the spring from bulbs planted in the fall. The showiest are the bedding size ones with masses of florets completely surrounding 10” stems. They are dramatic planted in the sun in groups. Probably because of their strong fragrance, deer avoid...

Even after a heavy frost, the stalwart perennial sage plant stands erect in the garden. It shows its elegant silvery grey color even in winter reminding us that next spring it will give us fragrant lavender flowers. Common garden sage, Salvia officinalis , is a staple in the herb garden and a plant for all seasons.  The genus Salvia contains both aromatic and non-aromatic varieties, and the name i...

In the autumn our gardens are mellow and yet the end of the growing season is bittersweet. As we work in our gardens and put them to bed we are reminded of some of our favorite poetry. This poem is an excerpt from the well-known "Ode to Autumn" by John Keats who lived from 1795-1821.    Ode to Autumn      Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!      Close bosom- friend of the maturing sun;      C...

Alliums are members of the onion family, and the bulbs are planted in the fall and extend the bloom spring-bulb season. The most spectacular is Allium giganteum with tall, stiff stems tapped with globes, averaging 5 inches in diameter. These flowering onions look exotic floating above the other plants. Colors range from white through lavender to dark purple.  Plant a ribbon of these bulbs in the c...

If you garden in zones 5 through 9 and are looking for a small to medium shrub that has fall color, Itea virginica , commonly called Virginia Sweetspire, may be a good candidate for you.  It has an upright growth habit and flowers in early summer. The flowers are white and like bottle brushes with nectar that is sought after by butterflies and other insects.  Itea is a shrub that does well in sun...

From late fall through winter, Ilex verticillata produces a grand display of bright red berries that persist and light up its branches long after all the leaves have fallen.  Commonly called winterberry, but also known as Michigan holly or swamp holly, this is a deciduous type of holly for cold climates. However, only the female plants produce the colorful berries. Gardeners must plant one male ne...

There are some perennials that provide an added bonus of foliage that changes color in the fall.  For example, some species of Amsonia feature brilliant yellow foliage. The common name is blue stars, as the plants have pretty little blue flowers in the spring. Another, less poetic common name is dogbane.   The narrow leaves are lancelike, similar to the foliage of a willow, and the stems have a mi...

In Autumn, not only do the colors in the garden seem richer and more mellow, but textures also assume a more dominant role in plantings. The tall sedums become focal points in the perennial beds with their intricate flower heads and fleshy leaves. The flat shape of the flower heads makes perfect platforms for bees and butterflies. Trees, such as Japanese maples, and shrubs, such as Smokebush and N...

Most of our flowering plants are past their prime in fall, exhausted after their exuberant earlier displays. As we walk around our gardens, we notice all those brown stalks we need to remove from the daylilies, and lots of spent plants with shabby foliage that needs cutting back. Aggressive perennials, such as monarda and black-eyed Susans may have increased to the point where we will have to get...

The autumnal equinox occurs during the third week of September. It is the time when the sun crosses the equator making day and night of equal length on all points of the earth. After the equinox in Autumn, the days grow shorter.  In September we stop fertilizing plants, but we continue deadheading our fall bloomers, as we want flowers to continue coming until frost. The purpose of cutting off the...

Chrysanthemums have been grown and hybridized for many centuries it is difficult to determine their parentage. It seems though, that they originated in China.  Confucius wrote of them in 500 BC. The ancient Chinese valued plants for their symbolic and moral associations, and the chrysanthemums which blooms in autumn, when other plants are dying off, was esteemed as a life-prolonging herb.  Chrysan...

Greek frescoes from the second millennium B.C. show what is believed to be the earliest known representation of a rose. The name, according to legend, is because a woman of exquisite beauty, Rhodanthe, was turned into a beautiful rose. Roses grew abundantly in medieval gardens where the rose petals were compressed to make rosaries. Roses have been loved since antiquity, and today there are countle...