Cold Climate Gardening

I’m not sure what’s going on here, whether it’s some kind of mutation or a result of weather or other kind of damage. On the right is a typical Virginia bluebell (Mertensia virginica). It has the typical salverform blossom, and 5 sepals in its calyx (the part that is circled).

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Hitch Lyman is a national snowdrop specialist. Of course, the snowdrops are long gone, but doesn’t his garden sound wonderful? From the Garden Conservancy website:
Enjoy this extraordinary collection of 200 lilac varieties as well as species of peonies, daphnes, and crabapples. The 1848 Greek Revival-style farmhouse was moved to this site in 1990 and […]

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This looked spectacular earlier in May, but the narcissus were already done by the time Gardeners Bloom Day came around.
Those orange-cup daffodils were blooming at my neighbor’s, between her house and the brook, but too far away from the house to be noticed. I marked them and dug them up and got half for myself […]

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Yes, I know the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day was yesterday the day before yesterday. I didn’t get finished in time. So just pretend this is May 15th, okay? (As always, hover your mouse over any thumbnail for a caption, and click on any photo for a larger image.)
Narcissus
Let’s start off with the narcissus. The early […]

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Sights
One of the many good things about spring is that without it, and without the absence imposed by fall and winter, we flawed mortals might fail to appreciate the beauties around us. So much of the wonder of spring is found in the return of what was absent. Would the appearance of new leaves and […]

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I spent my childhood in climates where the flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) flourished, and I loved its elegant simplicity. When we moved here, I was dismayed but not surprised when my new neighbor told me that she had twice planted a flowering dogwood in a protected corner of her house, and twice it had died. […]

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Hello to the members of the Connecticut Horticultural Society who have come to check Cold Climate Gardening out after reading my essay, Defiant Gardening, in their May newsletter.

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