Sunday Opinion: The Season

Our remarkably cold spring has helped make more than a few things clearer to me.  Every year I encourage gardeners to plant for spring.  In the fall, and again come spring.  It can be one of the lovliest times of year in Michigan.  There are the spring bulbs-literally thousand to choose from.  Some are small and subtle-others are big and showy.  They are easy to plant- little brown orbs that only need to be popped underground.  They are completely programmed for a spring display- the day they go in the ground.  There is no better representative of promise and hope than this;  an early spring blooming bulb you can hold in your hand, and dream of the future.  Part of the party-plant as much as you can, as fast as you can.  That fall dirt will indeed be chilly.  

 The spring flowering bulbs are not the only party going on in the spring.  There are the wildflowers-an equally large group.  The spring flowering bulbs are exotic looking-meaning they are native to countries other than ours.  They look other-worldly.  The wildflowers are native.  Their wild and subtle beauty speaks to the celebration of the natural landscape-wherever you may live.  A nod to the native landscape-this is a pleasure for any gardener.  Phlox divaricata is one of my favorite wildflowers-that blue is unforgettable.  Michigan has more species of native orchids than any other state, save Florida.  Many of them bloom in the spring.  Should you be a gardener who also watched the Royal wedding, I am sure you spotted the long fronds of blooming Solomon’s Seal in the flower arrangements at Westminster.  Were they not beautiful?  There is a spring season.  I would encourage you to celebrate the spring wherever you may garden.

Perennials that represent beautifully during the spring-there are plenty.  I could list my favorites, but that is not my point.  If you do not have some part of your garden which is devoted to a celebration of spring, you will spend a few months longing for another time, and a different circumstance.  My garden has Magnolias, hellebores, European ginger, crocus, daffodils, crocus, tulips, trout lilies, PJM rhododendrons and sweet peas-I have a whole lot going on in my garden in the spring.  By mid March I can sense change in the air.  But dinner on the deck featuring homegrown tomatoes and basil is a long way off.         

There are those cold tolerant spring container plants-why would anyone do without them?  The pansies, violas, primula denticulata, ranunculus, lobelia, annual phlox, alyssum, and ornamental cabbage-all so beautiful.  My favorite combination this year-Creme Brulee heuchera, dark violet pansies, lavender and peach violas, and cream yellow alyssum.  I have some ideas about what fuels the urge to skip spring gardening.  We have four seasons in Michigan.  Spring, summer, fall, and  winter-each last about 3 months.  Our spring has been terrible really-very cold and very rainy.  But this is what we have now-for better or for worse.  Given the prospect of a really cold spring, there is that idea to skip it, as it might be short and fleeting.  I still plant for it.  The beauty of spring plants is such that the risk is well worth taking.  Some years my Magnolia Stellata blooms but 2 days-I have already had over a week of it this year.    

I have clients who wish to plant their summer annuals May 1.  They wish to follow up with planting vegetables May 10.  As much as I understand the idea to try to lengthen the summer beyond 3 months, nature is remarkably uncooperative in that regard.  Annuals and vegetables planted too early, in really cold soil, with cold night temperatures-they struggle to survive.  Should they survive, they are set back.  They may never recover the entire season.  Tropical plants set out too early in cold soil-it will take a lot of time for them to recover from the insult.  The insult?  Pushing the season.  No matter what any of us long for-the seasons turn when they will.  The turning of the seasons apply to all of us equally.  You gardeners for whom a garden is a sacred way of life-nature  could care less about your passion and committment-you will be on nature’s schedule no matter what you do. Plan ahead for a spring garden.  That garden reigns the better part of three months. Stave off the need to plant for summer too early-plan for a gorgeous spring.

 If you have a mind to skip the spring season, and challenge the opening date of summer-be prepared to plant twice.  Of course I have planted summer flowers too early.  Clients have events that are important.  June is such a tough month to plan for.  An unusually warm spring can mean the spring flowers are looking tired in June.  A cold spring can delay the summer plantings-which in the best of circumstances will not look at all grown up in June.  Summer annuals just get looking good in July.  Some years, the summer annuals never get really good.  Investing in gardening is a risky business-there are no guarantees.  No promises can be made.  Plants can die.  A planting scheme can turn out not at all how I imagined.  When I get too concerned about the prospect of failure, or too worried about the risk, I try to remind myself that act of making the garden is as important as the outcome.  Does any summer flower look anything like a forget me not?  Is there a reasonable substitute for dogtooth violets or violas in June that you know of? Pots of pansies and voilas just get looking good in June.  I have had them go on into July.  A beautiful spring is out there, in one form or another.  I would chance it, given that I cannot substitute one seasonal experience for another.      

The truth of the natural order of things will be told.  Ity is not tough to spot plants that are suffering from cold-they have that look about them.  Those gardeners that do not plan for a spring season can be tempted to plant summer annuals way too early.  They forego the beauty of the pansies, violas, and annual phlox for geraniums or begonias that are not prepared to survive outside a greenhouse at this time of year.  They plant out tomatoes the first of May; they buy their tomato plants a second time, once the summer weather sets in.  The end of May usually brings the beginning of our summer season.  It can be a week early, but it is just as likely to be a week later.  I plant my own summer flowers in June.  Given warm soil, they take off and grow fast-faster than plants that have been planted in cold soil.   Rushing the spring, hanging on to the summer too long,  editing the fall, ignoring the winter-this never works.  A life seriously imagined, and experienced in the present-a life well lived.  The changing of the seasons informs, and guides.   

No doubt it has seemed like our winter went on forever, pushing spring out of the picture.  Last spring-the best I ever remember. By best, I mean cool and surprisingly mild.  This year, miserably cold and wet.  Yet both seasons are well within the parameters of what we can call spring.

At A Glance: 11 Good Reasons To Plant For Spring

Lipstick

 

I am not much for getting dressed up, but some occasions call for that.  I oblige as best I can.  Some great vintage costume jewelry, and a little lipstick can do wonders when I need to go out after work.  Lipstick in the garden-the tulips take first prize.  Their large, goblet shaped and brilliantly colored blooms dress up a spring garden like a new lipstick.  Even the pastel colors glow.  Who knows what the real science is, but here is my theory.  The petals are very large, and thin.  This makes them transluscent.  Spring sun shines through the petals-they glow.  This tulip?  American Dream. 

 

A truly beautiful photograph of a flower or a garden is so dependent on a circumstance of light that endows a flat surface with four edges with depth, and great color saturation.  I understand nothing of the science of photography-I just take lots of pictures.  But I do know my favorite experience of the tulips is not only their gorgeous shapes and juicy leaves and stems- that saturated, glowing color relieves my winter headache in an instant. 

Glowing color is so welcome in my zone-after an interminable and invariably gray winter.  Michigan is known for its long run of sunless days.  By the time spring comes, I feel like I have lived my whole life in blah and white.  No flower comes with packed with more vitamin D than the tulip. 

Tulips come in no end of species and hybrids.  Anna Pavord’s book on tulips-excellent and thorough.  My classification of tulips-much more simple.  There are those that are reliably perennial, and there are those that are half-heartedly perennial at best.  The species tulips, the early tulips-most of them are quite perennial.  They are modest in size, and exotic looking.  Why would they not be?  This species tulip-tulipa humilis hybrid is aptly named Persian Pearl.  I am sure the name refers to its native habitat.     

Tulips comprise a group of 109 species-native to Southern Europe, North Africa, Asia, Anatolia, and Iran.  These are exotic places, given that I live in Michigan.  They have that look-from another world.  The very early species can be crushed by late frosts, but they are stubborn about coming back.  Tulip Oratorio-a greigii tulip, is quite persistent and tolerates planting in a pot that winters in the garage quite well.  

The later blooming hybrid tulips- heart stopping.  I have had Temple of Beauty grow in excess of 40 inches tall.  I have had Blushing Beauty flowers fully seven inches across.  Some years for tulips are better than others-they like a long cool spring.  They hate being frozen through and through.  In very severely cold winters, if they are not planted deep enough, they freeze solid, and rot when the soil warms. 

It is no wonder the long stemmed so called French tulips are a spring staple for florists.  The flowers grow after they are cut, and age.  Extraordinary, this.  They are the devil to arrange-they have their own ideas about placement.   

Tulips are a bloody nuisance-the brown orb shaped bulbs want to be planted in the fall after the soil cools.  As committed a gardener as I am, I have an aversion to putting my hands in cold soil.  Warm soil is one of the great pleasures of gardening.  This is by way of saying it is fairly big work to have tulips to celebrate your spring. Not only do they ask for planting late in the year, they want you to wait many months before you can savor the fruits of your work.  Do not be so discouraged that you do not plant any.

Even one giant blob of tulips will will lift your winter weary spirits.  There are no end of tulips varieties and colors from which to choose from. 


If you have no tulips coming on, stop by.  I planted 2300 tulips in the front garden at the shop last fall.  I am guessing they will begin to show color within a week, and be in full bloom shortly therafter.  I have a client who went for the spring tour at Keukenhof-can you hear me sighing?  My business precludes a spring trip anywhere except to the shop.  That’s exactly why I plant my own version of Keukenhof.  You are welcome to stop by to see this year’s shades of lipstick.

Hellebores

What is not to love about a hellebore?  Just one thing.  They are so slow to get going and get gorgeous-more on this part later.  Everything about their habit and flowers is stellar. The thick leatherly leaves are beautiful all season long.  The flowers are astonishingly beautiful.  I rather think they are the the Ferrari of perennial plants.  They deliver beauty in a visually very powerful way.  They have a capacity for high rpms that leave other perennials in their dust-even though they are quite small when mature.  One could easily imagine fields of them.  Another bonus?  The sepals hold for for a very long time after the flowering has finished-as pictured above.  This gives the impression of a very long period of bloom.  The last of the best?  They are quite willing to set seed.

 Were I but one or two zones warmer, I would grow them all.  Hellebore species are divided by those that are caulescent (meaning they have leaves on their flowering stems) and acaulescent.  Acaulescent hellebores-such as Helleborus Niger, and Helleborus Orientalis, send up flowers stalks before they get around to the business of throwing leaves.  I tried for years to cultivate the caulescent hellelorus argutifolius-unsuccessfully.  The leafy stalks armed with flowers were invariably done in by my winter.  I yanked the entire lot of them, after 7 years.  Their leaves would be so ravaged by the winter that I could barely enjoy the flowers.  How upset I was that they did not grow for me was ridiculous-I wanted them that bad.  Helleborus foetidus and Helleborus lividus-not in the stars.

My current collection-all acaulescent varieties. I have grown up about which hellebores make sense for me.  No matter how badly you want them, they have to like you.  Of course I think any plant that I have a great love for would return that sentiment, and grow for me.  Not so.  So not so.

 I have some Heritage hybrids-from the heritage series-bred from helleborus orientalis.   Some are virtually black-others are white, with spots.  I have pink, mauve, green-and every combination thereof.  I have white and green baby orientalis hellebore hybrids from Knot Hill farms.  The baby part is discouraging; they do take years to make good sized clumps. 

I do so hope that by time I am 80, I will have strongly representing stands of hellebores.  They will do more for my heart than any medicine. If I were you, I would plant 10 of them today.

The hybrid hellebore Ivory Prince is an exception to the pokey rule.  It is a strong and fast grower.  This particular cultivar is an upstart you might want to consider for your garden.  The color-hellebore moody.  Green, cream, and a hint of brownish pink.  The habit-garden worthy.  One of its best attributes-the flowers look up at you.  This part I really appreciate. 

I have flowers not yet in bloom-this should give you an idea of late the spring is.  I like that one of my favorite plants is also one of the first to appear.  They fly that flag that makes me want to get going in the garden.
Very lovely, aren’t they?