Happy Holidays!
May your holiday season be filled with the peace, joy, and wonder that can always be found in our gardens.
To read more by topic or date, see our Newsletter Archives page.
December 5, 2019
A garden “makes all our senses swim in pleasure, and that with infinite variety.”
– William Lawson, British vicar and author, 1554-1635, in A New Orchard and Garden, 1618
Make Someone Happy with Our Gorgeous Gift Certificates and Bulbs
Warm someone you love with our unique, dream-inspiring gift certificates or the promise of bulbs to arrive at planting time next year.
Holiday Gift Certificates – Pictured here, the holiday version of our gift certificate is merry and bright. For postal delivery by Christmas, please order by noon Wednesday, December 18.
Instant Gift Certificates – Too late for the mail? Deliver it instantly by email, or print one out and deliver it in person.
Bulbs for Spring Planting – Luxurious dahlias, perennial irises and daylilies, graceful little glads, fragrant lilies and tuberoses, easy samplers such as Intro to Heirlooms, and more, all delivered in April. And if you order by NOON on Dec. 18 we’ll send a card announcing your gift for FREE!
We’re Taking a Winter Break, Too
As usual, we’ll be closed for two weeks starting at 4:00 EST on Friday, Dec. 20, so our hard-working OHG crew can concentrate on enjoying the holidays.
We’ll be back to work on Monday, January 6, at 9:00 EST, and we’ll look forward to serving you then!
“Tall Drink of Water” – ‘Autumn Minaret’ Daylily
Andrew Keys – author of Why Grow That When You Can Grow This? – had high praise for our towering ‘Autumn Minaret’ in the August 2018 issue of Fine Gardening.
After describing it as a “superstar” that “sends up rockets of flowers,” he goes on to say that “daylilies always make reliable summer bloomers, and this cultivar sends up fragrant scapes of those voluptuous flowers from late summer well into fall. If that’s not enough, each one tops out up to a whopping six feet and sports yellow petals with an orange eye. This tall drink of water makes the perfect companion for meadow plants in full sun. Though daylilies will bloom in shade, more sun equals more flowers, and ‘Autumn Minaret’ is no exception.”
Always in high demand, ‘Autumn Minaret’ is sure to sell out early, even though we’ve already set a limit of five on it – so if you want it, we suggest you take a break from your holiday shopping and order it now.
2624-Year-Old Bald Cypress Discovered in North Carolina
Now that’s an historic plant!
According to scientists from the University of Arkansas, a bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) growing in North Carolina is 2624 years old, making it the oldest living thing east of the Rocky Mountains and one of the oldest trees in the world.
And it isn’t alone. “There are hundreds of 1,000-year-old trees throughout the Black River swamp forest,” says scientist David Stahle who used core samples and radiocarbon to date the cypresses. “We think there are older trees out there still.”
Awe-inspiring in their own right, these ancient trees also offer a precipitation record in their tree rings that’s “amazingly accurate and detailed.” It not only shows modern droughts, says Stahle, but also “the severe multi-year droughts of 1587-1589 associated with the disappearance of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, and the drought of 1606-1612 concurrent with the hardships suffered during the early years of the Jamestown Colony.”
To read more or watch a short video about these remarkable heirlooms, visit newsweek.com/2624-tree-north-carolina-swamp-oldest-planet-1421844.
Small-Flowered Glads are “Summer Tulips,” Says UK Head Gardener
If you still aren’t convinced that glads belong in your garden, here’s a bit of advice from head gardener Tom Brown of the celebrated West Dean Gardens in Sussex.
It can be “tricky to associate most gladiolus with other garden flowers,” Brown writes in the August 2019 Gardens Illustrated, because “the exotic blooms scream for attention and dominate their companions.”
But small-flowered glads are “the exception to this rule.” Brown explains that he uses “these little flowers in clumps throughout my herbaceous borders, providing a colorful pick-me-up through the latter part of the season. I’ve started to view them as a summer tulip. Plant them around 100 days before you want them to flower and enjoy a burst of color when much of the garden is tired from the summer heat.”
‘Atom’ is our customers’ favorite small-flowered glad, and one of the cheapest. (You could easily pay more for a latte than you will for five ‘Atom’.) Others include dainty pink ‘Elvira’ along with two which are newly returned to our website and – as always – in short supply: luminous ‘Green Lace’ and apricot-freckled ‘Starface’.
Although we hope to have more glads to offer in January, if you want ‘Green Lace’ or ‘Starface’ it’s probably best if you to order them now – remembering that you can always add to your order later.
Did You Miss Our Last Newsletter? Read It at Our Website or Blog
We didn’t send a newsletter in November (Scott had hernia surgery and the rest of us had shipping-season exhaustion), but our October newsletter included:
Fall Clean-Up Protects Iris, Peonies,
Fine Gardening Praises ‘Gravetye’, ‘Rip’,
Martha’s Childhood Dahlias, and
No More Wrong Bulbs? Genome Project May Help.
You can read all of our back-issues at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives – and most of them at our blog!
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