winter-aconite

There is nothing blooming at my new (to me) garden. That lack will have to be rectified. But my daughter Cadence was going right by the old place yesterday, and I asked her to take pictures. So I can tell you that the winter aconites (Eranthis spp.) are now blooming. I was there less than [...]

The eighteen inches of snow that had fallen on the night of March 6th had finally melted this past weekend. (For a few dramatic pictures of that storm, visit Cold Climate Gardening's Facebook Page.) And now it's snowing again, to the tune of five or more inches. This is demoralizing. But cold climate gardeners are [...]

Another March, another mud season in full swing. The snowdrops that had barely opened five days ago are now in full flower: The snowdrops that were buried under snow on March 7th are now in full bud, as you can see on the left. This is the path in the Secret Garden that I brag [...]

In January, the snowdrops in the Secret Garden looked like this: This Sunday just passed--March 7th--those same snowdrops looked like this: Such are the vagaries of an upstate New York winter. Since then, the temperatures have been mild and the sunshine brilliant, and the snow is receding. This, my fellow cold climate gardeners, is the [...]

As soon as the snow melts, before anything even blooms, there is color.If you are aware that some plants can grow underneath the snow, this is not a complete surprise, though I always marvel when it is an attractive garden plant that pulls this trick, and not just the tap-rooted and creeping weeds.The first flowers [...]

When I was in high school, my mother handed me a mail order bulb catalog and told me I could pick something out to plant. (I guess I had done all right by the daffodils and she wanted to encourage me further.) I was ignorant, but I knew I wanted the earliest blooming bulb I [...]