Plant Talk

Cyclamen coum Beats Snowdrops As the Earliest Sign of Spring-To-Come

Don't you love it when snowdrops, those shy, sweetly nodding little bulbs, begin to bloom? It means that in the depths of winter, the spring processional has begun. Starting in January, one kind of bulb after another pokes up through winter-crusted ground to unfurl leaves, stems, and finally flowers.

Bulbs are so inauspicious-looking when planted, really nothing more than knuckly lumps of potential, yet they're the bridge from winter wet and snow to summer sunshine - a bridge that reassures us that we'll cross over ourselves into a fresh, new gardening season.

But even earlier than the heralding snowdrops, you can count on an equally sweet looking and really more dependable flower to brighten winter days.  As I cleared away faded lily stems and the collapsed muck of ligularia on our spectacularly warm New Year's Day, I found tiny Cyclamen coum blooming amid the dead leaves and debris. Shorter than snowdrops and as delicate-looking, they weather the worst of winter to bloom as one year ends and the next begins. Their heart-shaped, marbled leaves are  as showy as the little pink and white flowers. Pure, snowy white cyclamen like the one below are my favorite, for they look so clean and promising flowering away in my still-very-messy winter garden...Cyclamen have the tidy habit of spreading slowly yet persistently to colonize the ground beneath trees and shrubs, then obligingly fade away during the summer so showier flowers can take their place.

These little beauties were gifts from Richie Steffen at the Miller Botanical Garden, so they're probably some special kind of cyclamen - I've long since forgotten their cultivar name, which doesn't mean I appreciate their brave flowering any less....Richie - if you can tell us which these are, we'd appreciate it....

What To Plant? Award-Winning and Recommended Daffodils and Tulips

The garden's biomass is finally dying down enough to make room for bulb planting.. Hostas, asters, and annuals are collapsing into a sodden mass, ready to be cleared away to reveal bare soil. That bit of soil is pure potential for a fragrant spring display...

The basics: Plant bulbs in multiples of 7,9,11....or  even better in masses, spaced as if you'd just tossed a handful in a random pattern and then dug holes where the bulbs landed. Never, ever plant in lines...taller bulbs like tulips and narcissus are rigid-looking enough without adding to the military effect by lining them up. Most bulbs do best in full sun; all need really good drainage. If you have heavy soil, plant bulbs in raised beds or pots.....

  I always buy bulbs - and nearly everything else for my garden - at local nurseries, not big-box stores. If we don't support our neighborhood nurseries, we won't have them...that said, if your local nursery is out of the bulbs you're looking for, Brent and Becky's Bulbs is a great mail order source.

A couple of suggestions - Narcissus 'Thalia' (left) is a pale, fragrant daffodil from Victorian times. And it just won the 2011 Spring Flowering Bulb of the Year award because it's a good cut flower that happy naturalizes and spreads about the garden.

I love the amber colored, supremely sweet-smelling hyacinth 'Gypsy Queen' and also the navy blue 'Crystal Palace'.

How about this combination of the bright, warm little narcissus 'Falconet' and my favorite orange tulip 'Princess Irene'?....All bulb photos courtesy of Brent and Becky's Bulbs..

Procrastination Pays

You know all those bulb catalogs that started showing up in July? It pays to ignore them....now is the time to get great deals on bulbs. Order now, and your bulbs will arrive just in time to go into the ground. It's  easier to find some bare soil after first frost, which usually hits around Nov. 11 in the Seattle area...

Check out the Van Engelen web page for the best deals around (40% off all in-ground bulbs), or call 1-860-567-8734 for a catalog.  You'll find discount prices on allium, erythronium, scilla, iris and hyacinth. I just ordered a mix of 100 fragrant narcissus (jonquilla, tazetta and poeticus classes) for $30.56 (!!). Can't you almost smell their sweet scent? 

and 100 lavender striped crocus for $15.45.

As leaves fall and darkness arrives earlier every evening, it's time to plant springtime....Most bulbs do best in a sunny spot, with sharp drainage. Plant in generous sweeps and drifts rather than in rows or dotted about. Besides tons of lilies and allium, I'm mostly growing just narcissus these days, because they bloom early, are truly perennial, and best of all squirrels and other varmints leave them alone, knowing full well that daffs are poisonous...

 

Now In Bloom - Crown Imperials

As extravagantly showy as lilies, crown imperials (Fritillaria imperialis) bloom months earlier and look more like extravagant parrots than plants. You'd never guess these imposing fritillaria are kin to the modest little checkered lily, but they're actually much easier to grow than their shy cousin. Native to Afghanistan, Iran Pakistan and into the Himalayan foothills, crown imperials have been grown in gardens for centuries - I like thinking that the moguls were as enchanted with these flowers as I am....

Plant bulbs of crown imperial in autumn in a well-drained, sunny spot (I grow them in feed troughs and raised beds) and in spring you'll be amazed when a dark stalk shoots up 2-3 feet high. The cluster of large, drooping bell-shaped flowers near the top of the stalk are topped off with a frill of leaves that supposedly resemble a crown, hence the royal name. This ruffled topknot is echoed by a similar leafy ruff toward the bottom of the stalk, giving these show-boaters pleasing solidity and symmetry.

Crown imperials are deer and mole resistant due to their slight musty odor which repels predators; in truth, I haven't noticed it, because I've never had the nerve to cut one of these beauties to bring indoors. They bloom over several weeks; after flowering, let the stalk wither down, cut it off at the base when the leaves and stalk have turned yellow, let the bulb rest in the ground, and next spring you'll have even more of these show-stopping flowers blooming in your garden for Easter.

Spirea 'Magic Carpet' is at its colorful best at the same spring moment when the crown imperials bloom; bulb and shrub complement each other beautifully.

Really, doesn't this look like a tropical bird or some other exotic creature that just happened to land in the garden, rather than something that grew from a little brown lump of bulb I planted last fall?

Anna Pavord in Seattle

Spring is in full swing at the Dunn and Miller Gardens. British author Anna Pavord was enchanted with all the bloom; after the coldest winter ever in England, Anna was seeing her first daffodils and flowering cherries of the year here in Seattle.

Tuesday morning I was lucky enough to get in on touring the Dunn and Miller Gardens with Anna, who is tall, regal, quintessentially British, and the author of the bestselling "The Tulip." She stopped briefly in Seattle to lecture on her new book "Bulb" - more on her visit and her beautiful new book in an upcoming Pacific Northwest magazine column. In the meantime, here's a dose of what's in bloom at these gorgeous north Seattle gardens:

(People photos courtesy of Sue Nevler; I took the plant photos with my new camera....)

Layers of white narcissus and cherries at the Dunn Gardens

Exquisite little black lace primroses growing with mondo grass

Anna swooned over the masses of native Erythronium colonizing the lawn

Epimedium flowering in a pot, and our tour group: me, Tanya DeMarsh-Dodson, Anna and U.W. professor Sarah Reichard who organized the day...

On to the Miller Garden, where an intern was cleaning up the mondo grass 

 

We found the ground-hugging peony Paeonia mairei already in bloom

A stand of velvety Trillium ‘Volcano’ in the woodland garden

A trio of great gardeners; Richie Steffen, Anna and Greg Graves, and a trio of dramatic spring pots

 

 

A Luxuriance of Bulbs

On March 23 you have a chance to hear a famous British writer talk about her most favorite flowers,  right here in Seattle. Come see Anna Pavord speak on the luxuriance of bulbs and support the Center for Urban Horticulture at the same time.

If Anna Pavord's name sounds familiar, it's because she writes for that beautiful British Broadcasting mag Gardens Illustrated and she wrote the best-selling book "The Tulip: The Story of a Flower That Has Made Men Mad."

“Of all the different plants in the world,” says Pavord, “bulbs intrigue me the most... Bulbs are not just a spring thing. In this talk I introduce some of my favourites and suggest how they might be used in a garden.”

Pavord lives and gardens in Dorset, England. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23 she'll be speaking at CUH, 3501 N.E. 41st Street. Admission is $15. You can pay at the door or register in advance to save your seat. To sign up or seek more information, contact Jean Robins at 206-685-8033 or jrobins@u.washington.edu.

        
 
 

Beyond Tulips

Not that there's anything wrong with tulips; I can't resist buying dozens of glossy, plum-colored 'Queen of the Night' and glowing orange 'Princess Irene' to fill pots and feed troughs.

But there are many more unusual choices to keep your garden blooming March through May; here are a few bulbs more unexpected than the usual tulips and daffs...

Photos courtesy of Brent and Becky's Bulbs, a quality source for spring and fall-blooming bulbs.

 

Camassia lilies bloom blue in May, on tall, skinny stalks with sword-shaped leaves. Their flowers are star-like with yellow centers, they tolerate heavy soils and bloom happily in sun or part shade.

Allium 'Globemaster' is one of the most dramatic of ornamental onions, and is great for crowded gardens because it takes up little horizontal space. It towers over the May garden; plant as many as you can afford for a celestial effect as the purple allium flower globes hover over your other plantings. Allium leaves appear first, then wither away as the flower stalks emerge. The flowers persist for months in the garden, drying to buff colored.

Fritillaria 'Aurora' (a.k.a. crown imperial) grows three feet tall with burn-orange bells topped with a frill of leaves worthy of a tropical parrot.  These sculptural beauties often bloom in April, in time to heat up the garden for Easter.

All these bulbs are easy to grow and truly perennial. Plant them this month or next in well-draining soil in a sunny location, and they'll multiply and bloom year after year.

Plotting the Resurrection

 
If it wasn't for the great satisfaction of tucking narcissus and allium bulbs into the soil, I'd probably turn my back on the dying garden and head indoors for the winter. But brown paper sacks filled with lumps of potential are lined up on my garage shelves, so there's nothing for it but to cut back the dahlia foliage and dying hosta leaves to find enough bare earth to plant springtime.  

Every year at this time I read E.B. White's introduction to his wife's book "Onward and Upward in the Garden", which contains one of the most poignant scenes in garden literature. White evokes all the absurd optimism inherent in planting bulbs as he describes his wife out in the garden as always, planting flowers she'll never see....

"As years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion - the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection."

Spring at the Nurseries - Bulbs and Edibles

I've been longing so for spring, exacerbated by the freezing cold weather this week. And then I came across this quote:

"Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants." Count on Dorothy Parker to put rushing the season into some perspective.

Nevertheless, as soon as the sun came out yesterday afternoon, I headed for Wells-Medina Nursery (on my way to BAM to see the altered book show - which is both perplexing and stunning).

 I  was reminded that for all of us who didn't get around to planting all the bulbs we wanted to last fall, or worse, if squirrels and/or rabbits have decimated what we did plant, nurseries are now full of sprouted bulbs mature enough to survive critters and bloom soon. This selection of spring bulbs is so much wider than it was even a few years ago - Wells has dozens of different kinds of tulips and narcissus, plus sweet little Iris reticulata, delicate checkered fritillaria, fragrant hyacinths. And the good thing about planting in the spring rather than autumn is that the garden is so bare it's easier to figure out just where the bulbs should go. Just be sure to plant bulbs in drifts rather than rows, more rather than less, and close by walkways and outside of windows where you can best see and enjoy them.

Wells-Medina had racks of gorgeous hellebores, as you might expect. But I was surprised to see that the  whole center section was filled with a great variety of strawberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries - a sign of the times-they-are-a-changing to pick up your gooseberries at Wells-Medina!

Good for Wells to be right on target with the edibles gardeners most want this spring...along with their usual diverse and sophisticated fare. And it isn't just Wells - last week I was impressed by all the lettuces, arugula, greens and herbs already started and ready to plant at Swanson's Nursery in Ballard - now if it'd just warm up enough so that we can get out there and start planting.....