Week 12 > You are reading Week 13 - March 27th, 2023 > Week 14

Spring Cleaning

The garden is mostly ready for the season, and it didn't wait for me. By the time I got to the spring cleaning, the early perennials were already a foot tall and getting ready to bloom.

The borders are a riot of cheerful daffodils and the roses leafed out before the forsythia bloomed.

It's early, according to the gardening calendar, still plenty of time to plant lilac shrubs and maybe a rose or two.

Colorful arums and Martagon lilies unfurled healthy foliage to get ready for the May bloom.

The Fragrant Cloud rose, a delicate denizen of warmer climates, is alive, despite the subzero temperatures it endured at the beginning of December. This is a miracle indeed; I suppose spending the winter swaddled in bubble wrap helped. Fresh shoots are coming out of what looks like the graft bud and I sincerely hope the scion didn't freeze to leave me in the company of a third Dr. Huey, not that they're not lovely.

Everything looks healthy and on schedule, just waiting for spring planting.

Daffodils

There are so many types of daffodils, it's tough to decide what to plant. I thought organizing them by color might make the task easier.

If you love the classic yellow flowers, pick Quail, Carlton, or Tete-a-tete. They are vigorous, eager to naturalize and fragrant.

The Mount Hood, Snowball, Ice Wings and Thalia varieties are white and fragrant, particularly Thalia which inherited its intoxicating fragrance from paperwhites.

Earlicheer, a special variety of white daffodils, blooms in summer.

Replete, Extravaganza, Shrike, Fire Drill, Pink Parasol and Romance are recently released pink breeds sure to stand out in your spring garden.

Boaz, Kedron, Tahiti, Kiwi Sunset, and Double Suade look radiant in tropical orange hues.

Although there are no true red daffodils, Riot, Amadeus, Cool Flame and Decoy are as close to red as you can get.

And then there are the odd ones, whose blossoms are not what you would expect: Golden Bells and Mary Poppins lost their outer petals altogether, Jonquilla Pipit dressed up in bright chartreuse, and Sinopel colored the centers its poet daffodil flowers green.

I left the best for last: the cyclamineus daffodil, which is basically a yellow tube with contrails. If you've never seen this variety, it's definitely worth a web search.

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