Flowers

We love flowers of every kind. One of the unexpected pleasures when we bought our first house – a small perhaps 1200 square foot house on an eighth acre lot on Crabtree Drive in Tallahassee was the spectacular amaryllis that bloomed every year on Easter Sunday. The previous owner had planted large red ones (perhaps Red Lion) all across the front of the house. Three years later when I dug them up and separated the bulbs, I counted over 500 – most had several smaller ones next to the large parent bulb. I replanted the largest ones across the front, the second largest across one side, and the smallest across the back. I am not sure the smallest were large enough to bloom until they had been in the ground for a few years.

We also had large geraniums in the front. Judy would cover them the few nights of the year when the temperature would drop below 32. In the back yard were seventeen roses – a true pain in the humid Florida weather. We spent hours and hours picking off the black spot leaves, but we loved the blooms. When we moved to New Jersey, we could only afford a house in a new development, but ours had been built on the land where the old farmhouse had been, so we had five large maple trees. We hired a retired landscaper, Mr. MacIntosh, to carefully draw out a planting plan with the common names and Latin names of what he recommended for the front yard and a rough sketch for the back yard. He even gave the names of the nurseries he recommended for different plants.

We slowly followed his directions over the years usually investing our tax returns each year in new plants. Judy saved the maple seedlings in the garden then replanted them around the back yard and later moved half of them when they reached thirty feet or more to the front yard. She also gave new maple trees to neighbors. Looking at our street from the air on Google Maps, it is easy to see the impact she had. The yard became quite beautiful with the many free forsythias and lilacs from friends we also added.

In the front we created two long flower beds we filled with tulips and yarrow and two wonderful laceleaf Japanese maples. Bell Labs had a garden club with over 2,000 members, and every spring the club would take orders for bulbs shipped directly from Holland. I remember one year I ordered 600, and Judy planted them close to the front sidewalk in one of the long beds.

After moving to Connecticut, we gave up on tulips. We had two acres and although the back yard was fenced since we had a pool, we had a daily parade of wildlife. Directly behind our back yard rock wall was a 200-acre nature preserve. The deer loved the hostas and tulips, and racoons, skunks, and possums all had their preferences. We fought hard to keep our azaleas alive and carefully selected plants not high on deer diets along with all our other neighbors. The daylilies we had brought from New Jersey were soon discovered by the deer along with many other things we tried to grow.

When we moved to North Carolina, we discovered that deer and squirrels don’t eat daffodils. The bulbs are poisonous. We have become daffodil fanatics. When we bought the lot next to our lot, we found a sunny spot near the sidewalk we felt would be a perfect daffodil bed and quickly ordered 250 bulbs from White Flower Farm, our trusted Connecticut nursey – the Southern Collection. They were spectacular the first year, so we ordered another collection. I had almost 600 bulbs in the garage in 2000 to add to the yard over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. Then I had a heart attack on Thanksgiving night. In late December I realized I still had boxes of bulbs in the garage, the ground was now hard, and I still was limited in my activities. I called a local nursey to see if there was someone there who could help and found Mark Bishop who has been helping me ever since. We decided to put the bulbs in pots rather than try to dig that many holes. It was a great decision – spring was spectacular.

Every year since, Judy and I order five or six hundred new bulbs and put them in pots. We save the old ones every year and put them in the ground, so slowly our yard is getting full of daffodils and each of the four patios and the driveway are lined with pots of bulbs. We have discovered that we can plant tulips and hyacinths in pots on or close to the front porch. Hyacinths also do well when buried under the daffodils in what our gardener friends call lasagna planting.

One of the advantages in putting the new bulbs in pots each fall is that I know what they are and can fill each pot with similar bulbs that bloom at the same time. Judy and I usually pick new ones we have not seen before or old favorites for the pots. We even fill five pots with the same kind across the front of the pergola base (one of our patios). Over the years, we have discovered so many different types of daffodils. Our favorite supplier now, Dutch Grown, is one of the supporters of the Keukenhof Gardens in Holland. We first visited Keukenhof our first year living in Germany and fell totally in love with Dutch tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils. We were lucky to visit a second time when I was at Juran Institute and created out first international office in Amsterdam.

When we moved to North Carolina, we wanted to plan our gardens to have something blooming every month. We found out that was not difficult. Camellias start blooming in October, we had one bloom on October 1st last year, and bloom until May if you have a mix of Sasanquas and Japonicas. Pansies here will bloom all winter too. Our Japanese apricot blooms in January and even a few daffodils will usually bloom in January. By February we have perhaps half of our daffodils blooming and the other half bloom in March with a few still blooming in April. The cherry trees usually put on their show in March also.

April and May bring our gardens to life. We have a blue bed full of blue salvia, anemones, and even a lilac. Phlox, butterfly weed, coreopsis, remaining grape hyacinths, quince, thistle, and the peonies are all in bloom. By June the coneflowers, balloon flowers, daylilies, crepe myrtle, yarrow, asters, and hydrangeas are blooming followed in July by the dahlias, lantana, abelia, beauty berries, and the summer begonias, impatiens, daisies, Black-eyed Susans, and goldenrod. August is a tough time with the heat, so many of our pots are in the shade as well as many of the planted flowers. The dahlias are at their peak then, the coneflowers, gloxinia, Veronica, and Peruvian lilies add to the show. The dahlias, goldenrod, coneflowers, asters, begonias, impatiens, crepe myrtle, and some wildflowers bloom through September and sometimes into November when it is time to plant the pansies and start enjoying the camellias.