Cold Climate Gardening

Poppies, peonies, and iris: the three Grandes Dames of June
In a cold climate, the gardening season is shorter and more compressed. By the time the spring flowers get going, boom! it’s summer. Consider this: on May 29th we had our last frost. The next day it hit 80F (27C), which we reckon to be summery, and a mere nine days later it was 92F (33C). So anything you wait until danger of frost is passed to plant gets hit with summer before it knows which way is up. That doesn’t happen every year, but it shows why we often have what other people consider spring flowers blooming with summer flowers.

Around here, there are three flowers synonymous with June: Oriental poppies, peonies, and several kinds of iris.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and many retailers who normally don’t feature gardening products have potted flowering plants and other quasi-gardening gifts prominently displayed. I thought I’d take the opposite tack and share with you my favorite non-gardening garden “thingies.” Most of them don’t qualify as tools. Some of them, quite frankly, would look like garbage to most people, and I am always a bit anxious that some of my favorites might be thrown out by mistake.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Just about half a year ago, I was lamenting the loss of my favorite pink peony poppy. Thanks to one of my readers, I learned that these beauties are being sold on eBay. EBay! I had known that seeds and plants were sold on eBay, but had never thought to look myself.

Julie Calhoun and the One Stop Poppy Shop(pe)
That tip led me to discover the One Stop Poppy Shop.

Popularity: 22% [?]

My favorite pink. If you grow it, could I have seeds?Of all the species in the Papaver genus, I think I like peony poppies the best. Perhaps you know them by a different name, for they are also called lettuce leaf poppies, bread seed poppies, and opium poppies. Yes, that opium.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I got my Thompson & Morgan seed catalog today. Talk about rushing the season! It’s usually the first catalog to arrive, but I don’t remember it ever coming this early. I must say, the ‘Fruit Punch’ Oriental poppies on the cover tempt me to break my vow of no more seed starting until the beds are restored to order. I’ve always wanted to try some poppies in the pink/purple range in the southwest front border, but–well, there’s an awful lot of goldenrod to be dug out of that bed first. Sigh. Maybe next year. If you’re thinking of growing lots of plants from seed, check out this seed growing stand. I found a stand with lights made a …

Popularity: 8% [?]

This is bugging me so much I actually was dreaming about it, so I hope you can help. I still can’t figure out on which blog I read about the weeding poppies rule (see previous post). I think it is the same blog that posted about Campanula rapunculoides, the Roving (to put it mildly) Bellflower. So can anyone tell me which gardener blogged about the Roving Bellflower in the past couple of months? They had photos of the roots and said they had to get it out of their rock walls.

Sixty percent chance of rain today. I hope that means 60% chance of steady rain today, and not 60% chance of sprinkles.

I am going to upgrade my version of WordPress …

Popularity: 3% [?]