It’s shaping up to be an elongated spring that began in early February with sheets of crocuses opening their flowers in the sunshine and even some daffodils in bloom. Late winter gardening was accompanied by the pleasant buzzing of bees working the crocus and sweet violet plantings. In the warm afternoon sun parts of the garden have been filled with the violets’ heady scent.
Mainly mild daytime temperatures in January and February initiated early bloom in spring-flowering trees, bulbs and other plants, while cold nights in late February and early March have prolonged the flowering.
I’ve never seen such an extended period of bloom on my sweetly fragrant winter daphne shrub. Unless the weather turns sideways, the spring of 2015 will be remembered as stellar.
In my house and garden, the season is progressing nicely. The three tiers of my plant light stand are filled with seedlings. The vegetable plots are mapped out and partly filled with broad beans and peas, bok choy, spinach and other hardy greens. The root vegetable bed will soon be sown. Meanwhile, kale plants are exploding with fresh foliage and tasty flowerbud rosettes and the push is on to use what’s left of last year’s carrots and parsnips, stored onions and winter squash. This leads to colourful, vegetable-rich meals.
For one recent dinner I roasted a ring of banana squash with a few garlic cloves and served the squash ring filled high with cumin-flavoured carrot-kale salad, with the garlic cloves placed on the plate alongside leftover, reheated brown basmati rice topped with onion-lamb curry.
Many are the ways for a gardener to relish a beautiful springtime.
Garden Design: A Book of Ideas, by Heidi Howcroft and Marianne Majerus (Firefly Books, 320 pages, hardcover with jacket, $49.95).
The impact of this gorgeous book rests in the richly lustrous photographs that fill every page. The photos, all numbered and described in concise detail, teach and inspire. They propose replies to key questions: What do I want from my garden? What are my choices in path coverings?
Plants featured in the photos are identified, which is important for gardeners with an eye out for new and interesting additions and plant combinations for their landscapes.
In a section of the book titled “A Question of Style” I was struck by a photo of a garden space that combines the formal with the informal. The scene shows a low, neat boxwood hedge winding its way through a lively bed of cottage-style flowers: hardy geraniums, tall flowering onion, eryngium, yarrow and more.
Traditional mixed borders in the style of Vita Sackville-West are illustrated, along with English flower gardens with their exuberant “riot of plants” like a pictured merry medley of purple sage, pink cosmos, cleome, tall white nicotiana, sunflowers and Verbena bonariensis.
My old friend Mexican (or Spanish) daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus), abundant and enduring along sunny path edges in my garden, is shown in bouncy little clouds of flowers growing from spaces between paving slabs.
In a section on using shrubs is a stunning portrayal of late winter colour from a planting of light violet crocuses blooming underneath the slim, brilliant coral-red stems of a red-twigged dogwood.
For food gardeners with a strong esthetic sense, ideas abound. A circular bed is pictured housing a rounded row of cabbages that surround purple kale, with globe artichokes and black Tuscan kale in the centre. Onions growing between rows of green butterhead and red oak-leaved lettuces “appear like brush strokes.” Marigolds and nasturtiums brighten vegetable plots.
Raised beds in many forms are shown and described, along with an eclectic assortment of containers holding a variety of vegetables and herbs.
As the subtitle indicates, this newly published book is a source of ideas for tailoring a space with its particular size, shape and position into a garden that meets the needs and desires of its owners.
“Like a suit, a garden has to fit, to have a shape yet be comfortable.”
GARDEN EVENTS
Hardy plant meeting. The Victoria Hardy Plant Group meets on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Knox Presbyterian Church, 2964 Richmond Rd. Connie Young-Davis will present All About Dahlias, Connie will also have some tubers for sale. Non-member drop-in fee is $5.
Rose meeting. The Mid Island Rose Society meets Wednesday from 3 to 5 p.m. in the meeting room of the new Nanaimo North Library, across from Green Thumb Nursery on Hammond Bay Rd.
