Cold Climate Gardening

I suppose there exists, somewhere on this planet, an ornamental gardener who has never grown a plant that they had been given from someone else’s garden, but it is hard for me to imagine it. Before I even knew myself to be a gardener, when I was just a kid, I tagged along behind the lady next door as she planted annuals, despite the fact that our game balls were always flying into her garden, and she was always yelling at us, and I thought she hated all us kids. I don’t remember the conversation between us that day, but I probably pestered her with questions without realizing it, because she gave me half a dozen dwarf marigolds from her flat to plant in my own yard.

I wasn’t even out of grade school yet, and I had my first passalong plant, sort of.

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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 fresh grass be so wonderful to our small minds if they hadn’t been absent?

The first greening of the grass is like the first sight, the heralding, of spring with that glimpse of brilliant green that soon grows to carpet the earth everywhere. Then the trees, warmed by the fresh sunlight and rain, begin to unfold their leaves until even the last late trees have unfurled their finery and it is as if the last of spring has completed its work and summer has arrived. It is as the greenery of new life comes that I feel a long dormant pleasure and realize how much I have missed it all.

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You probably have a Grand Tour of your own, even if you don’t think of it in terms of “grand.” It usually starts with drinking something hot in a mug and looking out the window. Somehow you find yourself outdoors, checking things out, and you’re “only going to be a minute.” Your feet know the way; by now you’ve figured out the best route to take to see everything that could possibly shows signs of horticultural life. I took my first Grand Tour of the season about two weeks ago, with a clipboard instead of a mug in hand, fully intending to share the results with you. After writing “needs weeding” at every bed and border, I decided it was getting too repetitious.

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Kath, which peonies are you getting and from where? What are especially fragrant lilacs? I am getting a Charles Joly from Hortico. What’s with the colchicums? I admit I am not aware of their charms.

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I’ve been reading Lilacs for the Garden by Jennifer Bennett. It’s a much more approachable book than Fiala’s Lilacs: The Genus Syringa and has detailed information on numerous cultivars and species. I’ve discovered lilacs that bloom earlier and later than the ones in my garden, especially fragrant lilacs, especially hardy lilacs, and lilacs that do well in the South (not that I need them). Most enlightening was the chapter …

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