Hyacinthus

The hyacinths are starting to pop now. These are the only bulbs I can think of whose flower buds break ground almost at the same time as their leaves.

I can still remember being in fifth grade, going to some kind of home and garden show, and being bowled over by the fragrance of a large display of hyacinths. It's still one of my favorite flower scents, and a single cut stem can fill a small room with its perfume.

Like narcissus, hyacinths are not bothered by critters, which earns them bonus points in my book. Last year they bloomed in our garden for a little more than two weeks, from early to late April.

Although I'm an advocate of growing narcissus in clumps, I'm not sure what I think is the best presentation for hyacinths. The ones at our current home were planted in a group by the previous owner, and I'm thinking it looks a little crowded.

In New York, I planted about a dozen, but spaced them four to six inches apart, and because they're fairly large individual plants, I thought that worked out well enough, although it's best when each stem is dense with florets (unlike the flower spike in the following photo, which was somewhat sparse).

Several homes ago, I grew a wider variety of colors—white, yellow, pale and dark blue, as well as pink. And I remember thinking one looked much better than the others, though I couldn't tell you now which one it was. Pink is what we have at the moment, so pink I shall enjoy!

Coreopsis 'Zagreb'

When Seiler's first came up with the plan for our sunny border, they recommended including Coreopsis 'Moonbeam'. I ended up going with Coreopsis verticillata 'Zagreb' instead, because I preferred its fuller (though still threadleaf) green foliage and brighter yellow flowers.

'Zagreb' is considerably more tidy and upright than 'Sweet Dreams' (about which I wrote earlier), and starts blooming a week or two earlier, but not nearly as long. Last year 'Zagreb' flowered for a little more than a month, while 'Sweet Dreams' flowered for almost three months. Even within a single genus, there's so much diversity!

Zephyranthes

Don't worry, I had never heard of zephyranthes, either, until my husband bought a few last year. (He thinks he got them from Park or Wayside, but neither seems to carry them currently.)

Zephyranthes are more commonly known as rain lilies, and aptly so, because they have the charming habit of blooming within a day or two of a good rainfall. The flowers last for a couple days, and then fade away, only to bloom again after the next rain.

I believe these bulbs are hardy only to USDA zone 8, so here in USDA zone 6 I had to grow them as an annual. Which is fine. Not everything has to last forever.

Veggie Update

It's amazing how quickly seedlings grow once they get started! The cabbage and cauliflower have their true leaves now, and I have to bottom water them every other day.

These veggies grow in a very similar way to broccoli—a tiny little stem supports disproportionately large leaves!

The weather has been fluctuating quite a bit, as is to be expected as spring approaches. I got some new row covers from Gardeners Supply, so I should be able to get them into the ground in early March. I'm just trying to figure out whether I'll need to pot them up before then.

Hemerocallis

When we bought our house here in Ohio, there were three kinds of daylilies already on the property. In the back bed was a very pretty cherry red variety with a greenish-yellow throat.

One of the two daylilies in the cottage garden looks to me like a wild tiger lily—a very large, vigorous clump of leaves with orange flowers that bloom atop five-foot tall stalks from mid-June through mid-July.

The other one is the ubiquitous Hemerocallis 'Stella D'Oro'.

'Stella D'Oro' is ubiquitous for a reason. Its foliage is dense and upright and attractive even when the plant is not in bloom. As with all daylilies, each flower lasts only one day, but 'Stella D'Oro' typically reblooms—after the first flush in mid-June/July, it flowers again to a much lesser extent throughout the summer.

So why can't I work up any enthusiasm about it?

Perhaps it's the flowers themselves. Given the incredible diversity in color and form in the hemerocallis world, settling for those plain Jane gold blooms seems like going into Baskin Robbins and ordering vanilla.

My first exposure to the true range of daylilies came years ago. The office where I used to work was across the street from a residential neighborhood, and at lunch I used to go for walks there. One day in my wanderings I came upon a house with a very atypical yard—it was almost filled with daylilies. Even the easement between the sidewalk and street was filled with daylilies. What grass there was served only as paths between the beds. It was like a living rainbow. The house belonged to a man named Jerry, a connoisseur of these plants who would spend hundreds on innovative new breeds, and yet generously offered his divisions for five or six dollars to eager neophytes like me and my husband. We happily took a number off his hands and tried our own hand at them, with great results.

When we came back to Ohio after our hiatus in New York, we wanted to add more of his daylilies to our new home, but discovered that Jerry had had to cut back on his own gardening endeavors for health reasons, so we had to find other resources.

One was Oakes, which carries daylilies by the breeders that Jerry used to buy from. We tried their reblooming collection, which included 'Bitsy', 'Miss Amelia', 'Pink Playmate', 'Carefree Peach', and 'Pardon Me'. The stock that we received looked very healthy and hearty, and Oakes even threw in an additional variety, 'Miss Tinkerbell'. So we were a little disappointed when they did not grow very well, and only 'Bitsy' bloomed—the first in the yard to do so, in late May.

I don't blame the good folks at Oakes—the berm where we planted their daylilies had a really bad infestation of moles that summer. If the moles didn't actually damage the roots directly, they certainly upheaved the young plants in ways that were no doubt detrimental. Now that we've gotten rid of the moles, I'm hoping that the plants will make a comeback.

Another daylily resource was White Flower Farm. When we received their Woodside Daylily Mix, I was not terribly impressed with the stock. But we planted them in the sunny border, and they did quite well. Since it's a mix, I don't know which varieties we got, but there were some interesting-looking specimens from late June to late July.

Our other daylily resource has been a couple from my Quaker meeting who are also prolific gardeners. They very kindly share bags of their extra divisions with others, and from them we got several clumps of 'Fairy Tale Pink'...

...along with 'Midnight Magic' (a very dark maroon daylily that I forgot to photograph last year) and 'Quannah'.

Perhaps because they were "born and raised" here in Ohio, they have done particularly well there by our patio and in other corners of the yard.

I know that we'll never have a daylily collection as spectacular as Jerry's was, but with luck we will eventually have enough that we can share with others as generously as others have shared with us.

Narcissus

With the temperatures creeping into the 50s, the eight inches of snow that had blanketed our yard for the last week or so has mostly melted, and I ventured out to see how things were doing, push heaved perennials back into the soil, and do a little of the fall clean-up that I had neglected last November.

While out and about, I noticed some Narcissus 'Minnow' poking up through the ground.

These are not particularly photogenic little shoots—the tips are brown because they must have come up when it was brutally cold, before the insulating snowfall, and got frostbitten. But spring growth is spring growth, and I'm pleased to see it.

We grow a fairly wide variety of daffodils—some old favorites that I can't do without, and some that we've never tried before just to see what they're like. There's a surprising amount of diversity in shape, and even some diversity in color, though not as much as, say, tulips (which I have all but given up on because it breaks my heart to have the buds nipped off by critters).

Back in New York, we grew five different kinds of narcissus, although I have photos of only four. A classic yellow and one of my favorites is 'Camelot'. This is one of the latest to bloom, starting in mid/late-April, and the foliage can last an unseemly long time—as I recall, I finally broke down and cut it back in July! Still, it's too pretty to omit from the garden.

Narcissus 'Mon Cherie' has white petals and an apricot-pink cup, although I don't think it looked as good in our garden as it did in the Scheepers catalog, perhaps because it didn't get enough sun. One thing I did wrong with this—and I should have known better, because I've made this same mistake in the past—is that I planted the bulbs in individual holes a little too far apart. I have found that a much better technique is to dig a large hole and plant at least five bulbs together, just a couple inches apart. It gives the effect of a whole bouquet springing to life.

A beautiful pure white is Narcissus 'Stainless', which if I remember correctly bloomed quite generously, and its narrow foliage disappeared fairly quickly.

I'm also partial to a number of miniatures, including 'Segovia', which is only 5-6 inches tall.

The first miniatures I ever grew were 'Tete-a-Tete', which got their name by producing multiple blossoms per stem. These are also among the earliest daffodils to bloom—here in Ohio, mine started at the end of March.

'Minnow', whose shoots I showed earlier, also tends to produce multiple blooms per stem. It's a bit daintier than 'Tete-a-Tete', and obviously different in form and coloration.

A couple other varieties that we've tried here in Ohio include 'Flower Record' and 'Pineapple Prince'. 'Flower Record' is particularly striking for the red edging along its yellow cup.

'Pineapple Prince' is a somewhat unique shade of yellow. It matures into a "reverse bicolor," with yellow petals and a white cup. Its flowers last the longest of any of our daffodils, blooming a full three weeks in April.

I am generally not crazy about double narcissi, but 'White Lion' is not bad.

We did not plant any new bulbs in 2008, so there will be no new developments to watch for, but we can still take plenty of pleasure from the ones we already have.

Clematis

Gardening is like love—even if your efforts don't work out once or twice, the promise of the reward is so great that you keep trying until you get it right.

My relationship with clematis has been like that. The first time I grew Clematis 'Jackmanii' was a wonderful experience. I planted it at the base of a lamppost, which it happily engulfed in purple flowers all summer. Thrilled, I planted the second at the base of a mailbox post, which also did fabulously well. I then decided to branch out (no pun intended) and send Clematis 'Polish Spirit' climbing up a porch post, which it did with a vigor that made 'Jackmanii' look like a puny weakling.

I was convinced that all clematis were easy to grow, and would always yield fantastic results.

When we moved to New York, I experienced my first couple disappointments. Granted, it was somewhat shadier territory, but when the Clematis 'Montana Rubens' puttered out against the fence that I had hoped to cover in fragrant pink blossoms, and when Clematis 'Montana Mayleen' laid lackluster along the ground, I began to have my doubts.

My faith was restored by Clematis 'Silver Moon'. What a plant! We had put a wooden lattice screen in front of a central air conditioning unit to block it from view, and put three Clematis 'Silver Moon' at its base. And like the 'Jackmanii' and 'Polish Spirit' of my past, it rewarded us well with lush growth and gorgeous flowers.

When we moved back to Ohio, I was so happy with 'Silver Moon' that I decided to plant it at the base of the trellis in front of the garage wall. Clematis are purported to like to have their heads in the sun and their feet in the shade, so I thought this would be a good location—the yews in front would provide shade for the roots, and eventually the plant would grow tall enough to enjoy the sunlight. After a couple years of not much growth, I'm starting to doubt the wisdom of that maxim, as my clematis have almost always done best in full sun.

And yet...when I planted Clematis 'Silmakivi' in full sun down by the mailbox post at our new home, it died the first year. (The drought that year might be to blame for that.)

Stubborn in the knowledge that some clematis would be happy there, I planted Clematis 'Ramona' the next year. Now, it normally takes clematis a year or so to get established, so I was quite surprised when it bloomed within the first few months.

The vine grew a couple feet its first year, and we'll have to see how it does.

I think that the other clematis we currently have is a Clematis 'Arabella', but I'm not sure. It's the only other clematis mentioned in my various packing lists (I've gotten all my clematis from Wayside), yet it seems more purple than blue. Perhaps, like hydrangeas, the color varies with the composition of the soil? In any case, this one is planted at the base of a copper obelisk in the berm. It had a rough start in life—it had a close encounter with some hungry critters its first year, and hasn't quite recovered, but perhaps that "natural" pruning will do it good in the long run. (I have been a little haphazard in my own pruning practices, but there are some good guidelines about this at clematis.com.)

In any case, I shall keep a watchful eye on them, and hope that, like love, with a little care and patience, they will blossom beautifully.