gardening: observing, planning, designing, and editing
After a cold end of week, it got into the mid-40s this weekend. Most of the snow has melted, but not to worry, there is snow in tomorrow’s overnight forecast. These plants will not care.
What could off-and-on snow cover mean in February? Snowdrops. It took years for them to really take hold in this little downtown yard, but the squirrels were really helpful. They rearranged the bulbs endlessly, resulting in some lovely swaths of snowdrops. They are just beginning to bloom.
The weather people are starting to make breathless prognostications about sleet and snow flurries—Novemberish weather, in other words—however, the sun came out for a little while shortly after lunch today, so I zoomed outside to capture some more color. Continue reading “November’s Gloom Has Its Bright Spots”
Oddly enough, despite the fact that I have been nattering on about mostly native plants since January, I love many of the traditional plants you would find in any perennial garden, and this is their peak time. I am a very laissez-faire gardener however, so the plants that I am writing about are sturdy, hardy, and reasonably well behaved.
I love this rose. It’s a shrub rose, only lightly scented, but a lovely pink, and a dependable bloomer. Besides, it’s hardy to zone 3, -35°F. We are in zone 6, but we have had a couple of truly vicious winters this decade that this rose survived, completely unperturbed. It is one of the Parkland Series of roses that were developed by the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) at Morden Research Station in Manitoba. Yup. Manitoba.
This tough rose is blooming, despite living in a huge planter box with little supplementary water in June—mostly what has spilled over from filling watering cans for potted plants.
Continue reading “Roses and Other Traditional Garden Plants”