While the memory of your early spring garden is still fresh, why not compile next year’s bulb list for fall delivery? Narcissus should be at the top of your list, from the large-trumpet varieties to the tiny N. bulbocodium for your rock garden. If you learn the different varieties and their flowering time, you can … Read more
The dean of daylily hybridizers discusses their development, beauty, and usefulness as garden plants. There are today about 3,500 named daylilies or hemerocallis. Forty years ago, only about a dozen— including both species and hybrids—were widely known in American gardens. Twenty years later, in 1930, there were about 15 species and approximately 175 hybrids. During … Read more
A shaded garden spot can be mighty frustrating to a gardener who wants color all through summer. Most of the best-known summer annuals demand sunshine to bloom well. Generally speaking, the more sun they get, the more buds they set. But take heart! There are wonderful summer-colorful, easy-to-grow, quick-result plants that prefer shade! A few … Read more
No matter where you garden, in the cool North, or humid South, California, Connecticut, or Colorado, there is a native iris that will be happy with you because it is either indigenous to your region or able to adapt itself well enough to it. Native iris fall into either the beardless or crested divisions. Except … Read more
Few enjoy enviable popularity among tender bulbous plants, and others are treated as such. Most relatively neglected species deserve greater popularity, and none deserves it more than the summer-flowering species of Hymenocallis, or Ismene, as it’s commonly referred to and listed in most catalogs. Hymenocallis clothing, better known as Spider-lily, basket-flower, or Peruvian daffodil, comes … Read more
Iris means rainbow, and no other flower deserves this name quite well. You will find masses of all spectrum colors among the tall bearded irises. Add elegant flower form and texture, plus a hardy disposition that lets the plant live almost everywhere, and you have a spectacular garden perennial. It fails only in the deep … Read more
They wonder what plant combines beauty and color with long life, hardiness, and ease of care. The answer is daylilies, known botanically as hemerocallis. They are truly the delight of the home gardener, for they give maximum pleasure with a minimum of effort. Indeed, daylilies are more widely adapted to various soils and climates than … Read more
Bouquets for your house can have new life if you give the flowers a good conditioning treatment before they are arranged. A chemical preservative in the water frequently produces cut flowers that last longer than if left to grow in the garden. Techniques for drying fresh cutting material from the garden have been so improved … Read more
South of the equator, spring comes in September and October. And here in our Northern Hemisphere, fall-flowering colchicum, crocus, and hardy amaryllis can stage a dramatic spring-like show in your garden in late summer or early fall. Unlike any other fall flower, they bring the same urgency and spontaneity that characterize and make spring-flowering bulbs … Read more
There are three flowering plants that I hope I shall never lose, although I make no effort to keep them. They are the self-seeding sweet rocket, the black-eyed Susan, and the tall blue lobelia. Sweet Rocket (Hesperis Matronalis) The hardy perennial sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) begins blooming early in spring, crowding its paniculate racemes of … Read more