HERE AT A GARDEN FOR THE HOUSE, I’m busy potting tulips for indoor winter bloom. Tulipa ‘Christmas Dream,’ pictured up top, bloomed in my bedroom window one February; how I smiled when its pastel-pink petals open against a background of snow! Tulips will bloom at the wrong time of the year for you, too, if… Read more »
IF YOU HAVE A DEEPLY-SHADED AREA ON YOUR PROPERTY, consider planting Caladium hortulanum there. The leaves, strikingly colored and patterned, are as effective as flowers. I certainly enjoy the psychedelic caladiums that brighten my dark Woodland Garden all summer. Closeups of these deer-proof exotics, and my tips for growing and overwintering them: C. ‘Frieda Hemple’… Read more »
THIS WEEK, Puschkinia scilloiodes var. libanotica, pictured above, opened its tiny blossoms in my zone 5-b garden. For such a tiny bulb, its flowers fill the April air with a luscious scent. This “striped squill,” with its pendent, blue-striped, milk-white bells and a soft mignonette fragrance, makes a pretty scene beneath one of the still-dormant… Read more »
WHEN the bright stars of Crocus ‘Golden Yellow’ opened in my window garden this week, the frozen tundra outside seemed an illusion. The sunny blossoms look picture-perfect on the broad sill in my upstairs bath, nestled among a collection of ferns, vines, and pink and white cyclamens. Need a crocus forcing-tutorial? This one works for… Read more »
OKAY, it was probably crazy of me to accept such generosity, but when Calendar’s Nursery in Chatham, NY, offered me their unsold hyacinths yesterday, I couldn’t refuse. (Why look a gift-bulb in the mouth?) In order to save on space, I decided to double-pot the bulbs. Double-potting, which I learned from Thalassa Cruso (my childhood… Read more »
I CAN STILL RECALL the excitement here last winter when true-blue grape hyacinths (Muscari) bloomed in my parlor window (above; click to enlarge). These filled the entire room with such a marvelous springtime perfume that I thought the snow outside was a mirage. Muscari is extremely easy to force into early bloom: In October (or… Read more »
WHY DO YOU PLANT BULBS? Is it because the first April tulip — like the purple, heirloom ‘Van der Neer’ pictured up top — sends you over the moon? Is it because the snow-white Galanthus, the golden Eranthis hyemalis and the blue-violet Anemone confirm for you that spring is here…even before the snow has melted?… Read more »
