Anything spring would be beautiful right now, on the cusp of February. We've had minus eighteen degree nights and not much above zero days, snow off and on all for weeks, then yesterday, inexplicably, rain, and a gale force wind that blew all night and on into the morning. Later, of course, it snowed, and my neighbor tells me that we have approximately two feet of snow in the fields. At these times I look outside and wonder again how anything that was alive last fall can come back again in two short months.

And yet plants do, year after year, for the fifty or more years that I've been planting things in the ground. I was kept awake last night worrying not only about the feral cats that shelter on our back deck in the winter but also the 400 crocus bulbs we put in the ground around a recently felled tree last fall. They're small corms and planted only two to three inches deep. And, though we spread a layer of mulch over top of them, those tiny things seem vulnerable in the extreme lying so close to the soil line in Cache Valley weather.

We planted these in an asymmetrically shaped mat about eight by twelve feet and they're all in shades of lavender. The ad for these came in via my email from White Flower Farm. They were hard to resist. I've always had a few crocus scattered around but never sweeps of them that I read about so often and saw, pictured. And I especially liked the lavender ones among the ones I have already (a closeup to the right, taken by Larry Cannon). We also planted them closer than the three to four inches recommended. I'm too old at this time of my life to wait until they fill in by multiplying.

So the seduction of White Flower Farm's "Crocus in lavender shades"occurred in the blink of an eye late last summer, the box of bulbs duly appeared, and the planting, I'm happy to report, was accomplished immediately. I'm already looking forward to the time that the number is increased to a thousand.

This planting efficiency was more than I'd expected – both of myself and my helpers.  I'd had my daughter, Melanie, to help me, and also Dillon, one of our landscape manager's crew. And so it took only a couple of hours to get them in the ground and covered with mulch. Although, I'd managed to buy so very many bulbs of all kinds to be planted last fall that I was afraid (not realized, thank heavens) that I was going to have a mass resignation among the garden help.

Layering

We placed this swath in and around plants already in the ground. There were several low mounding Corydalis lutea in there that I'd planted in an attempt to disguise the long gangling legs of a crowd of lilies out there. Corydalis lutea is a lovely little plant with leaves like bleeding heart (Dicentra, to which it's related) and with golden yellow flowers that bloom all summer. The flowers are probably why the common name some nurseries use for this plant is golden ear drops, a slightly ridiculous term that I'm a little ashamed to mention, but there you are. By far the best thing about it is its masses of delicate leaves that spread a foot or more and stays around a foot high. Best of all, it self seeds prolifically, though it does need part shade to thrive.

Aside from the Corydalis there are peonies, a 'Little Lamb' dwarf hydrangea, and an 'Endless Summer' hydrangea, rather compact itself, along with daffodils, tulips, Lenten rose (Helleborus orientalis), peonies, wood hyacinths, some very difficult to control perennial corn flower (Centaurea  cyanus) and, of course some really towering Aurelian hybrid lilies already mentioned.

This type of planting is called layering, and I've read down through the years that some gardeners who know what they're doing plan layering like this. But any layering that goes on around here has grown more like an algae bloom with the additional layers added impetuously as the years went by. Inspecting the beds during spring walkabouts, for instance, I start wringing my hands about the bareness of certain beds. "Not enough daffodils!" I mutter. "And we need more grape hyacinths!"

Bulb marketers know this gardeners' syndrome well. That's why emails offering specials on bulbs start shooting into our inbox during bloom time to underline any lack we may notice. And they never fail with me. But planting impetuously is not the way to do things, we're told, because in the absence of a plan carefully laid out on graph paper you're in danger of digging up other bulbs, their foliage gone by fall, their locations a mystery.

Alas, I've done this many times, digging up established bulbs, that is. But I've found that, even with a bit of their sides sliced off with the shovel, wounded bulbs manage to pop up once more the next spring with their blooms intact. I've recently read the writing of a gardener who agrees with me on this which pleased me immensely. It was in her recently published book, Down to Earth With Helen Dillon.  In it she has a delightful page (also) describing "unsettling" remarks she's heard on garden tours and in her own garden, and I include here the one I felt, personally, was the most telling.

In a garden north of London and west of Oxford (Helen Dillon gardens in Ireland), I overheard the comment "Of course she throws money at her garden" – and then, after a long pause, "But she does it impeccably." However flattering the afterthought, by then the wasp had already stung.

After reading that paragraph I wondered how many people, looking at DragonGoose Farm's garden, might have also felt that I "throw money at" my garden (I know already that my family feels that way) but would they even bother adding that I do so impeccably – that's the more important question.

Other Early Spring Flowers


Along with the crocus, and even before they start their main bloom, we have the yellow mats of winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) pictured left. There's a small patch confined in a square in the brick herb garden, Melanie has a patch in the front of her house, The Granary close by, and we have quite an extensive swath in the oval bed in the middle of the front drive.

These are charming little plants, not taller than two to four inches, with flowers that look like buttercups sitting on a green neck ruff. They arise from tiny corms and (incidentally) are the very devil to plant. Each spring I beg the girls who work around them to allow them to seed and the foliage to dry up, to let the seeds lie, and to please not rake too cleanly so that the seeds can root. 

The corms that result from these seeds, and that come ready to plant from the nurseries, are tiny enough to simply sow like corn or peas, but the instructions say, naturally enough, to plant them three inches deep and four inches apart. I thought I'd never finish getting the first batch in, years ago, and then five or six years later, one of the garden crew was wedded to the soil for hours as she planted some more. I keep hoping they'll magically reproduce to cover the entire oval bed with yellow before any of us will be faced with planting any more, but it's been difficult going.

In the bed in front of the parlor we have batches of common snow drops (Galanthus nivalis), too, which bloom with the winter aconite and crocus, and which are slightly less tedious to plant. We also have many of these in the brick herb garden and Melanie has some, too. They're very sweet, their white flowers drooping down rather shyly, and while they're blooming, the Cyclamineus narcissi ('Jenny') are showing their leaves. Between the old row of common lilac there are clumps of grape hyacinth, and clumps of early dwarf iris in the brick herb garden. The iris comprise a planting of Melanie's when she was younger (shown left above). They always surprise me, appearing almost while my back is turned, bursting into bloom from tight little buds forming while the winter aconite and snow drops are putting on their big show.

The Lenten Rose
Meanwhile, in much of the long west bed, not far away, and around and between an extensive hosta planting are masses of the  lenten rose (Helleborus orientalis) blooming their hearts out. Many years ago when Melanie was in her teens she bought a lenten rose and put it in her garden – a single lenten rose.  The many patches and sweeps of this plant that grace the garden now come from this one plant of Melanie's.

You see, under and around each plant in the early summer are many tiny seedlings which are terrifically robust and don't mind being transplanted. The large planting in the big hosta bed was done by Melanie five or six years ago. In fact, it was a planting and a half, with about half the plants weeded out by one of the gardening crew who mistook them for weeds and Melanie's efforts, after that, to replace them all. I'd glanced out the study window and saw the massacre before it was complete, rushed out waving my arms or it might have been worse. The boy recovered and turned out to be a pretty good gardener. However, it was back to gently digging up more hellebore seedlings for Melanie. She has  since added several times to that planting with more seedlings, making a really impressive show.

The wonderful thing about the lenten rose is its ability not only to bloom while the snow is still lying in patches all over the garden, but also to hang on to its blooms all summer and into the fall. They just turn from purple and mauve shades to green. The leaves are leathery and attractive, too, and the stems are strong, staying upright in the heaviest onslaught of summer rains and sprinkler water (which admittedly is often worse than a downpour). The seedlings from this one plant that Melanie planted so long ago – unlike many other hellebore types – appear to stay true to the parent's form and color.

Baby Trumpet Daffodils

Then come the dwarf daffodils under the river birch (Betula nigra) which are always a cheery sight. These tiny plants will quickly be covered with common violets (Viola odorata) still underground at that point, as are the soon-to-appear columbine, tulips, and liliy-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis).

This area which is in the shade of several lilac and honeysuckle shrubs and trees both large and small is a true shade garden that gets little sun once the trees leaf out. To the east in the photo below, across the brick walk, is a thick planting of bishop's weed (Aegopodium podagraria) that covers that entire area growing finally to six or eight inches high. Weeds have a difficult time penetrating it, thank heavens, though it's considered a weed itself, proliferating wildly if it's given any kind of a chance.

We've dug up mats of it in various beds. And we still are surprised at patches of it appearing, then taking over, various parts of the garden. I planted it everywhere when we first moved here forty years ago, just to cover the bare earth all around us. A colleague from USU had a huge planting of it in her own garden and put several shovels full of it in a black bag for me to take home. Little did I know that some thirty-odd years later I'd be digging it up and throwing it away.

I had intended tilling this patch of it under a decade ago but one of the girls helping to care of the place was very upset. She thought it made a lovely picture under the trees. And she was right. I'm glad I let it alone, letting it line the walk with its variegated leaves. I do have to go over it every once in a while during the summer with the lawn mower, though, to keep it back where it belongs on the east side of the brick walk.

Well, we're a week or two less from spring, so keep the faith.

Best wishes,

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Photos by Joan Shaw

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