Cold Climate Gardening

Thumbs, toes, and baby toes up, Hawthorn Hill Farm daylily nursery is a winner. The setting is bucolic, the grounds are beautiful, the plants are well grown, and the pricing is good.

Beth and I planned our trip for a Saturday and wouldn’t you know it, rain again. But the sky water was mostly light showers that were intermittent so we decided to chance it. We followed the directions as advertised and, of course, got lost by taking an early turn, our mistake. But our turn circled back to the main road so we survived and enjoyed seeing an area we hadn’t been to before. We corrected our course and made it to Dick and Sandy deRosa’s nursery.

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Over fifteen years ago, my very first plant order had an error in it. I had ordered coral bells (Heuchera) and I was sent Heliopsis ‘Summer Sun’ instead. The mail order nursery very quickly remedied their mistake, sending me the coral bells and advising me to keep the false sunflower. Great, I thought, free plants.

Only, I really don’t care for that yellow-orange color that all the plant catalogues call “gold,” but to me looks like no jewelry, cheap or otherwise, said to contain that precious metal. Being a long-time fan of the adage, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” I tried to think what I could do to make the color more pleasing to me, and thus was born the Purple-and-Gold bed.

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It’s been a long time since I last published an entry. It was painful to be gone, and I’m glad to be back. Perhaps I’ll devote an entry to my excuses, but for now I thought I’d share a few of my favorite things, culled from images taken while I was “gone.”This is the bird bath I agonized over in February. Some readers requested I post a photo of it in situ. It is resting on the lid of the septic tank, which is one of the few level, perfectly flat sites on our property. You see, this all started with me trying to figure out a way to deal with the septic tank lid. How do you make a circular piece of concrete seem like an integral part of the garden, and yet maintain the kind of access to it that a large tank truck would require? I envisioned a garden that had ground covers that could tolerate foot traffic immediately surrounding the lid, gradually rising in height on either side. The bird bath was meant to be acquired after the flowers were established, the piece de resistance, the crowning touch. Only somehow I got the last, first. And knowing my life, and seeing how the garden I already have is faring, the “first” may never come. Perhaps I’ll eventually find a new place for the birdbath and ignore the septic tank lid. Thus far into the summer, precisely one bird has been seen taking advantage of the facilities. Oh well, I still like it. . .
Here is the garden on the north side of the house. This garden pleases me mightily in spring. I like how the variegated oat grass plays off the emerging ‘Francee’ hosta and the ‘White Nancy’ lamium. You can see the pure yellow globe flower towards the back. That yellow is always somewhere in my garden, from daffodils and forsythia, to globe flowers, to red-sepaled evening primrose and now to daylilies, ‘Suzie Wong’ and ‘Butterpat,’ ‘Hyperion’ just starting, ‘Lemon Cap’ soon to follow, plus others whose tags I’ve lost.

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First I’d better define my terms. By narcissus, I mean plants in the genus Narcissus, which many know as daffodils or jonquils. By heirloom, I mean that I inherited them. There is probably an official definition of “heirloom” as relates to Narcissus, but I don’t know what it is. I have seen some of my daffodils called heirloom in other places, but I haven’t made a positive i.d. on all of them, so the names by which I call them have either been discovered after some research or simply made up. I will describe them all in order of their bloom time. Several of the heirloom narcissus that are growing in my garden now were growing here when I arrived. Most of them, however, were growing blind, and I didn’t know what I had. (Growing blind means foliage is coming up but there are no flowers. One cause of this is overcrowding due to not being divided for years and years.) I dug them up, divided and replanted them, and it sometimes took two or three years before I was rewarded with a blossom. These trumpet daffodils bloom early, earlier than the ‘Rijnveldt’s Early Sensation’ planted elsewhere on the property, and as you might suspect of a plant that survives long periods of neglect, they bloom and grow vigorously. How fortunate that I planted them near the road, where the whole neighborhood can enjoy them.

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The next time I doubt the depth of my gardening devotion, remind me that one of the very best Mother’s Days I ever had was spending the entire afternoon pulling garlic mustard out of the Secret Garden with my younger sons. In case you aren’t familiar with it, garlic mustard is a very invasive plant that crowds out a lot of native spring ephemerals. I don’t believe it grew on the property when we moved here over 16 years ago, and then suddenly it was everywhere. Knowing the seeds persist in the soil for at least 5 years, I looked at the growing patches with increasing dismay. I finally came to my senses and realized that if I had help, it could probably all be pulled in a day–this year. Next year it would only be worse, so now was the time to start.

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May is always a busy month, what with birthdays (3 this month), Mother’s Day, a garden going to weeds, and homeschooling paperwork, but this past week had additional expected and unexpected busy-ness. It’s very easy to miss the spring ephemerals if you’re not careful. I know, because I’ve done it before. And if you go traipsing off in the woods, it’s very easy to use up whatever time you had to spare for blogging. Been there, done that, too. Well, dear readers, here are some posies to make it up to you. Violets in purple and white, and false strawberry (Waldsteinia fragarioides) in yellow. I actually grow a yellow violet on the north side of the house, but it bloomed and went by before a photo was snapped.

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We are on the cusp. We balance for this one moment–these few short days–at the place of middle spring.

The grass has greened, but the trees have not yet burst into full leaf. It is fascinating to look at the hillside and see how different varieties progress. In some places bare wooden branches stick up, rimmed with the red of buds. I think these are red maples, so called because of their red buds at spring. Other trees on the hillside provide a sprinkle of pale green, not yet leafed out, but prepared and ready, almost there. The poplars seem especially eager to leaf out, as well as some other varieties of maples. The ragged emptiness of winter branches is almost gone and the vigor of new spring life sits just on edge, ready to burst forth. It is life barely contained.

Popularity: 7% [?]