Cold Climate Gardening

I took this photo yesterday, a day ahead of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. I knew that rain was predicted for Wednesday afternoon and throughout today, but late yesterday morning it was merely overcast and quite mild, and I thought, “Go looking for flowers now, or forget about it.”

So I went galomphing about in the nearly slushy snow, and took photos of snowdrops in various stages of bud. These were the closest to blooming.

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This time of the year, it’s amazing what a difference a day can make. Thursday, snow on the ground. I couldn’t have taken these photos on Thursday because these plants were still buried under snow. Friday, snow had melted, but nothing had bloomed. Yesterday (Saturday) the sun was shining and I had snowdrops blooming in three different locations. These first ones are ‘Sam Arnott,’ purchased from Odyssey Bulbs, who assured that they are the real thing. (Apparently there are impostors lurking in the trade.) But I remember them being much taller last year. This year, they give the appearance of being buried too deeply, as if (speaking anthropomorphically) they are buried up to their chests instead of their shins. I suspect our wacky winter may have something to do with this. The double snowdrops in the next photo have the same problem.

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Old Roses has won the snowdrop race, but IBOY made a fine showing. Me? I won’t even start looking for snowdrops till February, but I’ll be lucky to find any before March. And what about the Southerners? How far south can one go and still grow snowdrops?

These snowdrops were blooming in the Secret Garden last year on March 28th. (If you want to learn a little more about them, you can read this essay which I wrote a few years ago, and maybe search this site for snowdrops using the Search box in the sidebar on the right.) Just as there are people who go ga-ga over the latest daylily or hosta, there are galanthophiles out there. (Galanthus is the snowdrop genus.) The February 2003 issue of Horticulture had a good article with photos of several cultivars (pp. 64-68) and the February 2002 issue of The Gardener (which is no longer published, unfortunately) has a black-and-white glossary of inner petal patterns. And while it wouldn’t surprise me if Martha Stewart Living had a similar article, I’m not aware of it. Lacking those magazines (or the ambition to unearth them from storage), browse through this British woman’s collection.
If the possibility of minute variations in snowdrops excites you, you should really write to Hitch Lyman, the proprietor of the Temple Nursery, at Box 591, Trumansburg, NY 14886 and request his $3 catalog. I wrote last year in early April, which was when my snowdrops were still blooming, but to my surprise, I was too late. Mr. Lyman responded in an elegant hand that the digging season was over, so he was returning my check but would still send me a catalog this year. He was true to his word, for his catalog arrived in today’s mail, and it is eye-popping and chin-dropping on several accounts. (You can click on the catalog for a closer look.)

First of all, this catalog comes in an envelope which is hand-addressed (both my address and his return address) in the same beautiful calligraphy as his note to me of last year. Secondly, the catalog appears to be hand-assembled. The photo on the front cardstock cover has been pasted on, though the word Snowdrops below seems to be printed. (And that’s exactly what his handwriting looks like.)

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Well, the first blossom was a snowdrop, but it wasn’t any of the snowdrops I’ve been checking on regularly. It was a clump of double snowdrops given to me by my garden buddy Bub, which I had planted near my Cornus alternifolia ‘Argentea’ (now deceased) and had forgotten about. This bed is located in the southwesternmost corner of our property, and I can’t say I had ever thought of it as particularly precocious, horticulturally speaking. Maybe that’s why the pagoda dogwood died: got awakened early from dormancy and then zapped by a killer freeze. I am still …

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The snow is off the snowdrops in the Secret Garden. For all I know it was gone yesterday, but I was out all day running errands. These are up just as high as the ones that the snow melted off earlier this week. None of them, however, look like they’re going to bloom today, and the weather is supposed to turn colder with snow predicted starting tomorrow. Meanwhile, Eric King and Alan Hersker near my sister Ro (in Sackets Harbor) had their first snowdrops blooming on March 4, and I saw a nice substantial patch blooming in Vestal en route to Grandma’s house yesterday. That’s how they look best–in big colonies–but you don’t have to buy tons to get them …

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I don’t keep consistently good garden records, but one detail I have tracked faithfully since I planted my first flower, is the date of the first bloom around here. For you Southerners who have things blooming throughout the winter, I’m talking about the first visible bloom, when the snow has melted enough for me to see it. One reason why it is always recorded is because it is such a long awaited event. An equally important reason is that there is not much else to do, garden-wise, and writing a factoid down makes you feel like you’ve Done Something.

So, for those cold climate gardeners who haven’t kept records, and for those who have, but are interested in comparing notes, here …

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The snowdrops in the Secret Garden are all blooming now, the same ones I tried to will out of the ground earlier. These are my most rapidly increasing snowdrops. I got them from a friend who found them growing in a field near her house. Presumably there was once a house and garden where she found them, but it was a sort of no-man’s-land between a farmer’s field and the road when she discovered them and dug them up.

There are also snowdrops blooming in with the peonies. I bought these snowdrops several years ago, but they were merely called single snowdrops in the catalog, so I really don’t know what they are.

Then in 1998 I purchased …

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