Weirdly Warm Winter WeatherHappy New Year and welcome to a new gardening year. I just spent two weeks in North Carolina spending time with a very active four year old while her baby brother was on his way. Between hide and go seek and chase, we found time to forage for an arrangement. You can find cool stuff at any time of the year in the South – seed pods, foliage, berries, and an occasional flower such as this Camellia blossom. Arriving home the day after Christmas and after spending an entire day and night sleeping, I headed for the garden. Due to the exceptional warm weather over the holidays, I still have summer flowers blooming like this Ageratum. I grew this from seed and hopefully it will reseed and spread again next summer. Just in case, I put in my seed order for the spring with Johnny’s Seeds in Winslow, Maine. I have used many companies and find that they have the best germination rate. www.johnnyseeds.com The most surprising thing I found in my garden was this Cestrum elegans or Red Cestrum shrub. It is a mass of tubular shaped blossoms. It seems to bloom from autumn through until the heat of summer. Cestrums have only a few arching branches so it is a tidy shrub and does not out grow its space. I highly recommend it so do an online search for it. I have not seen it at any local Lowcountry nurseries. Yet. It is not too late to plant spring bulbs. I just planted mine. They have been in the garage fridge since October. I always order species bulbs – that is tulips and daffodils (narcissus) as close to the original form as possible. They seem to take our heat better than most hybrids. January and February are great months to do some hardscaping if you choose. Shrubs can still be moved around and it is always good to do it before the heat of late spring or summer. Seed and plant catalogs arrive in the mail and I often sit and plan what I will do this spring with a catalog on my lap. Now is a good time for some “creative staring” at your garden and yard to plan for the new growing season.
Down here, spring will be here before we know it.
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First Frost in Our Lowcountry GardensThere was frost on my roof this morning, but my plants do not seem the worse for it. This is a wake up call for what we should and can do to protect Tropicals and tender perennials. Many things breeze right through below freezing temps such as most perennial Salvias, Pelargoniums (Geraniums), Dianthus, snapdragons, and pansies. Tropicals should be brought under cover on a porch or inside a garage. If you have large containers, cover them with cloth. Old sheets work well although your yard will look like it is decorated for Halloween. Do not use tarps or plastic – plants need to breathe. Now is not the time to prune. You do not wish to encourage new growth that can be nipped by the frost. The exception to this is dead branches and crossing branches that are rubbing against each other. Those can be pruned at any time. Your Camellias should be starting to bloom. Sansanquas bloom first and then later in the winter, the japonicas will bloom. Prune Camellias after they bloom in the spring. Tea Olive (Osmathus fragrans) can bloom for an extremely long time all through the winter months. Loquats bloom in January and February. Rather than buy cut flowers for the holidays, see what you can forage in your yard. I always do foraged arrangements. I find that this is actually a beautiful time in the garden with seed heads, berries, and interesting stems. What fun to get the kids and grandkids involved as well.
Happy garden scavenger hunt! The year is 1956 and I am ten years old, My parents have moved to a new house in the suburbs. We are landscaping as everyone did in the 1950’s – a few shrubs along the front of the house and that is about it. I go along for the ride out to a nursery in Chesterland, Ohio, owned by a nurseryman named Julian Potts. While my parents are looking at Yews and Japanese Boxwood, Mr. Potts notices me eyeing some plants on a stand. He asks me if I like to garden and I say “I would if I had a plant.” He hands me a plant as a gift that he called a “Cup Plant” (Silphium perfoliatum) – an American native prairie plant that is all the rage today, but unheard of in those days. With that act of kindness, a gardener was born. I cherished that plant as it grew to six feet tall and had yellow flowers that the bees loved. The leaves formed cups that collected water and birds drank out of them. (I just noticed that some Cup Plant seeds I planted are sprouting! More for next spring.) My parents had a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens Garden Book, copyright 1951, and I poured through it. I found the perfect garden pond photo on one page and begged my parents to let me use a little plot of land to work my miracles. They gave me permission to do anything I wanted in the field behind our house. The original photo and my reality was not exactly close, but I had fun setting an old half oil drum in the ground and filling it with water. - that was my "pond." Mr. Potts continued to gift me with little plants and I dug violets and small trees out of the woods across the street from our house. My garden wasn’t much, but at age of ten until I hit High School and discovered boys and parties, this garden was my special spot. I googled Julian Potts and discovered that there is conifer credited to him. “Hal’s Fraser Fir” was propagated by Mr. Potts in 1975 and later named after a man who lived near the old Potts nursery and found seedlings that he sent to a collector. So Julian Potts’ memory lives on among Conifer collectors and certainly with me. I have to admit that a few tears were shed when I read his name.
The moral of this story is that a single act of kindness has given me a life long love of gardening and so much pleasure. Think about that with your children and grandchildren. A child’s size set of garden tools, some seeds, gardening books, and maybe a plant would make a wonderful Christmas gift and who knows, you could be encouraging a new Comya Gardener. She's About a Mover! |