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“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
– Huck Finn in Mark Twain’s
Tom Sawyer, Detective, 1896
Spring shipping ends in a couple of weeks and dozens of our treasures are already sold out. But lucky for you we still have plenty of great bulbs left, and we just put a bunch of them on sale!
Five of our easy samplers are now marked down 20%, including Dreamy Dahlias, Classic Daylilies, and Glorious Glads. Best of all, we’ve also added another $5 worth of bulbs to our popular Intro to Heirlooms sampler which means you’ll get $40 worth for just $30!
Sixteen dahlias are discounted, too, including dark-leaved ‘Fascination’ and apricot, dappled ‘Nonette’, along with two radiant glads, two lovely pastel daylilies, martagon-like ‘Guinea Gold’ lily, pink rain lily (great in pots), and yellow ‘George Davison’ crocosmia.
See them all at our Bulbs on Sale page. But don’t delay. Summer is coming!
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An email with that happy subject line arrived here recently from our long-time customer, Alicia Guy of Shoreline, Washington.
“After 17 years of planting OHG bulbs and dahlia tubers,” Alicia wrote, “I’m going to live on a grander floral scale! All of your high-camaraderie notes on invoices have nudged me over the edge. This spring I am starting Bitty Bouquet Flower Farm in Duvall, just outside of Seattle. I’m going to focus on heirloom flowers, most particularly dahlias.
“Just before Scott retired, I called to thank him for how much you’ve contributed to my garden life. The conversation wandered to my secret dream of having a small heirloom flower farm and, of course, he made it seem like that could be meaningful and rewarding work.
“I’ve been bowled over by how much enthusiasm taking this risk has generated with my family, friends, and (now former) co-workers, and I’m so excited to see where it all might lead. You can follow my journey at instagram.com/bittybouquet/, and thanks again for your long, slow part in this crazy mid-life career shift!”
Congratulations, Alicia! Selling heirloom bulbs was a “crazy mid-life career shift” for me, too, and though it was a lot of hard work and worry, it brought me a LOT of joy. May the beauty of your flowers and the happiness of your customers sustain you, and remember, as you said at the end of your email, “Spring is inevitable!”
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Here’s a simple tip to protect your newly-planted iris, dahlias, daylilies, and other young plants from rascally rabbits, squirrels, deer, and other pests. It’s from the “Great Ideas from Smart Gardeners” column that’s in every issue of one of our favorite magazines, Garden Gate.
“Anna Ellenberger discovered some great plant protectors at her local dollar store: Wire mesh trash can baskets.
“They’re 10 inches tall and wide and available in either black or white. The size works great for setting upside down over her seedlings and small plants to keep critters from munching their new leaves, and the black color blends into the surroundings better than the white.
“Anna suggests poking small stakes through the mesh to keep the trash can in place. [U-shaped landscape pins work well, too.] When they aren’t in use, they stack up neatly for storage.”
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Dahlias and cannas were both wildly popular in the Victorian era, so it’s no surprise that two of our favorites grow today at Osborne House, the lavish country home of Queen Victoria and her garden-loving husband Prince Albert.
In 1845, according to an August 2017 article in The English Garden, “Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, then both in their twenties, bought an estate on the Isle of Wight as a seaside retreat for their growing family.” After building a grand new house, Albert redesigned the grounds, and today, thanks to extensive restoration by English Heritage, they once again reflect his vision.
“Rather endearingly, Albert is reputed to have directed work on the Osborne landscape by semaphore from the Pavilion flag tower. Victoria seems to have been less enthusiastic, complaining in her diary of the time he spent planting and pruning. In 1848, at the height of the planting operations, she spent a record 123 days on the estate so as to see as much of him as possible.”
Today “the intricate design of the parterres which was lost when the terraces were grassed over has been recreated.” ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ dahlia stars there in a dramatically dark composition with bronze-leaved castor beans, red salvia, and red-and-bronze-leaved begonias.
The lovely ‘Ehemanii’ canna with its dangling bells of deep rose-pink is also featured at Osborne House where a long row of it flowers exuberantly in the former kitchen garden. (See it at our blog.)
Even if you don’t have 200-acre estate, you can garden with a touch of royal style by planting ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ this spring (and save 20%!) or by signing up for an email alert when ‘Ehemanii’ – which sold out last month in just three days – is available again.
Cheerio!
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As I watched the bees feeding frenziedly on my winter aconites and Crocus tommasinianus this spring – long before any native plants were in bloom – I was reminded of the advice of an eminent British ecologist.
Ken Thompson, who was profiled in Gardens Illustrated last November, has spent most of his long career studying the relationship between gardens and wildlife. He says his work was inspired by Jennifer Owen who, in the course of 30 years spent cataloguing the wildlife in “her ordinary, neat, suburban garden,” found 2,673 species including several which were new to science. As Thompson notes, Owen’s work “showed that you don’t have to create a pretend version of a natural habitat in order to attract wildlife.”
“Gardens aren’t like any natural habitat and because of that people think they are inferior, but they’re not,” he says. “They’re just another kind of habitat. Yes, have a pond if you can, do without chemicals, and leave some piles of dead wood around, but hedges, flowers, and plants all create places to feed and places to rest, and that is all that wildlife needs.”
“My best advice for anyone concerned about wildlife is this,” he says in conclusion – “just grow plants. Creatures eat plants, or the nectar created by plants, and everything else eats the creatures. As long as you are growing plants, you are doing all right.”
So even though native plants are awesome, there’s no need to feel guilty about growing plants that aren’t – and the bees in my garden clearly agree with Thompson about this.
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You can read all of our back-issues at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives – and we’re adding the best articles to our blog!
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