April 2009

The only nursery selling snowdrops exclusively, in the NYTimes today: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/garden/16garden.html

Compost turned today. Long-lost kitchen thermometer found. Now if they could only find the measuring cup . . .

Looking over last year's April Bloom Day post, I see the same things blooming at pretty much the same time. The smaller-and-earlier species crocus are on the wane, but the later-and-larger Dutch crocus are definitely making a color statement. I'm thinking about getting more of these and extending the crocus bank further towards the road [...]

A big thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the Scavenger Hunt, which I organized to help celebrate the new design here at Cold Climate Gardening. I hope you all had fun as you hunted for the clues. The prizewinners have all been notified by email, so I'll give the rest of [...]

Low tonight=15F? !! Probably should pile leaves on those foxgloves greening up, if the wind ever dies down.

As Saxon Holt, photographer for Hardy Succulents: Tough Plants for Every Climate by Gwen Kelaidis pointed out yesterday, hardiness is relative. I remember early on in the life of this website, learning that someone from Australia had found my blog searching for hardy plants. Since, according to this map, the coldest zone in Australia, a [...]

Coltsfoot is blooming along the road, and the dormant trees on the hillside have taken on a reddish tinge.

Saxon Holt is the photographer for Hardy Succulents. He shares his perspective on the book in this guest post. What exactly is a hardy succulent ?  How tough is tough ?  How cold is cold?  How can  a garden book cover cover the entire country ?  All these questions come to mind every time I [...]

Cut back dead stuff in the birdbath garden, mostly phlox and Siberian iris. Only nice day this week.