NOV 2016 A Gardenerās Notebook
NOV 2016 A GARDENERāS NOTEBOOK by Kathleen Worrell
Somehow there seems to be a non-sequitur between watching the verdant garden die-off & imagining your spring bulb design joyfully popping up through the greys of winter. Cā le vie! Such is life. With said ugly brown bulb in one hand & my drill with augur in the other, I must conjure up stalks of straight-up stalks flowing along like a fence ridge around my flower border. Hopefully I will not intrude upon some earlier design plan & the daffodils will share the limited space with swaths of color, organically recalling natureās drifts of wildflowers.
I wanted to order some fresh faces this year to add to my fervent collection of flowering bulbs. While it is always a good idea to calculate the timeline of blooms, as in a sequential display, I decided this time to consider impact & form. Researching heirloom daffodils because of their resilience & longevity, I stumbled upon a delicious recipe for pairing Thalia narcissi and muscari grape hyacinths. If you plant a narrow āstreamā of these white late-bloomers, then edge them with the gorgeous blue little Muscaris, it will reflect a river of rapids surrounded by blue water. As the blues naturalize over the years, the design changes, much like a brook in nature.
Further study took me to an anthology of Vita Sackville-Westās columns about her garden creation within the ruins of Sissinghurst Castle in England. One of her theories was to plant side-by-side those flowers that bloom at the same time, coordinating colors & elevations. This produces impact instead of a scattering of trinkets lost in a sea of mulch. Perhaps her most famous garden āroomā is her White Garden. In America we are told to avoid white as pale & forgetful. She took that purest of hues & with repetition, consummated a world class wedding enclave. What bride wouldnāt want to have her portrait taken there? It is a glory to behold, white climbing roses arching over a central iron gazebo, accessible from paths facing the four points of a compass.
Other design issues to contemplate are the residual leftover leaves & stems after deadheading spent blossoms. Either plant your early-blooming bulbs near later-blooming perennials for cover or stage your bulbs like a three act play. Think of the cascade effect. Most very early bulbs like crocus, snowdrops, winter aconite, & rock iris are tiny anyway, so freely plant these gems next to your entry pathway, but far removed from snow shovels, plows & salt. Their leaves are spindly & small, some even variegated, hence wonāt interrupt the eye.
Daffodils are poison to deer (& other flowers in a vase), quite hardy for our climate, & come in many new color combinations to please the most jaded of palates. To keep it simple, letās use the idiom of Acts 1, 2 & 3 for succession purposes. One idea is to plant the earliest bulbs towards the back, progressing forward, so as to ācover your tracksā, so-to-speak. For Act 1, my āgo-toā earliest narcissus is āTete a Teteā, so bright at the end of winter it hurts your eyes & an excellent multiplier. For Act 2, I like āFalconetā: showy colors of orange & yellow, 8 flowers per stem, fragrant & shade tolerant. My Act 3 favorites are āHaweraā for generous naturalizing, āCheerfulnessā for fragrance & āSun Discā, small but magical. Just remember to leave some spaces for those tall summer-blooming tiger, Asiatic, or Oriental lily bulbs or perennials to bolt upwards like an umbrella over the lot of them.
I am still resonating with the idea of power partners. There are oodles of escorts for daffodils. Donāt forget Alliums for those late bloomers in consort with the Muscaris & Anemone blandas. I avoid most tulips due to critter pub grub & also for their notorious reputation as a one-night stand. Stick with the species varieties like āPeppermint Stickā for return rewards. Most fritillaries are too late, but if you want a really unusual flower pattern in checkerboard (no joke), then try out the F. meleagris. They have a peculiar growth habit of lying down at first, then scooting up towards the sun near bloom burst. The key, as always, is to observe the plant in its native habitat, which is in a meadow of grasses that act as support for their weak stems.
Autumn garden work is important. Do as much as you can now because in the Spring you never have enough hours in the day for the garden.
