clear: light wind: 31ºF

When spring does arrive, the Garden will welcome it with 65,000 blooms of crowd-pleasing tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. With all the planting that went on last fall to get ready for the spectacle, it's not surprising that a few bulbs intended for spring never got planted. Now that the snow is gone, I happened upon a lobe of the bulb garden were I saw dozens of hyacinths bulbs that had been spotted for planting, but never planted. The bulbs had rested on top of the ground since fall. Now they are corpses. I wonder how it happened? I've seen how thousands of bulbs are planted on college campuses without error using a two-person team. One person digs a hole with a power auger; the other follows, placing the bulb in the hole and covering it. At this Garden, I think the bulbs must have been spotted by one team, and then at some later time buried by another team with no final check done by the keeper-in-charge.

I am fascinated with descriptions of "miracle plants:" strawberries as big as a fist, pumpkins that are taller than a six year-old, a tree that produces an unending bounty of grapefruit, oranges, and lemons. In their spring catalog, Park's Seeds devotes a full page to describing the virtues of a tree called Thuja 'Green Giant.' They say the "super-quick, ultra-easy" evergreen is their #1 selling product. In bold bullets, Park's proclaims that the tree will grow three feet or more a year, topping out at fifty feet. It will resist attacks by deer, bagworms, and other assorted pests and diseases. It will thrive in sandy loam or heavy clay soil in the sun or shade, in drought or deluge, in extreme heat or cold. In addition, the catalog says that the tree looks fantastic: it stays green all year; it has a classic pyramidal shape, and it smells "piney." I couldn't resist. I ordered six of them from Park's.

This morning I saw the real thing: a stand of four Thuja Green Giants growing in a mostly shaded part of the English Woodland Garden. The tallest of the group topped out at about six feet. I rubbed its deep green, fern-like leaflets. They did smell "piney," and they were soft to the touch too. The stand of trees was shapely and dense right down to ground. None showed even a trace of winter wear. Reality meets catalog description, and I think they match. After I left the Garden, I checked the website of the USDA's National Arboretum to get their take on the Green Giant. They say the tree is an arborvitae cross between a Japanese arborvitae (Thuja standishii) and a Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata). The Arboretum gushes almost as enthusiastically as Park's does over the tree and names it one of their "Elite Plants." I haven't been this excited about a tree since I discovered the Paulownia or Empress tree, advertised on the web as the tree that "will turn a bare lot into a royal estate" because it will grow 12 feet in a single season. As of today, I haven't bought one though (yet).

Once more sulfur-colored catkins dangle from the branches of a clump of American Hazelnuts (Corylus americana). Three- to four-inches long, they are pushed and pulled by the changeable wind. Flora, A Gardener's Encyclopedia calls them "lambs' tails" and rightly describes them as "flouncing." The catkins will with time become even more prominent, puffing-out and widening as they mature.

People who make a sizeable contribution to the Garden may select a tree or shrub that will be dedicated to a person of their choosing. The keepers of the Garden recognize the honoree and the donor by wiring a green metal tag inscribed with the donor's dedication message to the plant. That is the extent of the official recognition. But I've noticed that sometimes donors do more on their own. Last fall I saw a hydrangea with second duplicate tag made of plastic and bit larger than the official metal tag. The plastic tag was carefully positioned between two eye-level branches so that the donor's inscription could be seen more easily and, with any luck, be read by passers-by.

This week, I saw other twist on this kind of added recognition by a donor. In a Manchurian birch tree near the Lehmann Building, I saw that an ornament of a white dove had been clipped next to the green tag metal placed there by the Garden keepers. I understand the need to make the person that the donor champions stand out, but I dislike having works of nature turned into billboards or roadside shrines.






gray, overcast: cold wind: 32ºF

A warm front is approaching. The forecast is for temperatures that top 70º tomorrow. This morning though, parkas, scarves, and gloves are not out-of-place.

Spring edges closer each week. I will declare the season officially open when I spot the first daffodil in bloom. In most years the daffodils here in the botanical garden are laggards. Rather than in here, I am more likely to make my first sighting along a highway or close to the south wall of a brick house or apartment building.

The earliest of the viburnums, a variety called "Dawn" (Viburnum bodnantense), has just started to bloom. The shrub is growing at the edge of the daylily garden along the east wall of the Garden. The viburnum's cherry-red buds open to fragrant, chunky star-shaped pink blossoms that cluster tightly at the ends of their bare branches. The funnel-like shape of the flowers seems oddly out-of-sync for luring hummingbirds or butterflies that a still months away. 'Dawn' is a hybrid that originated in a botanical garden in the 1930s - the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland - and then was rejected because the breeder there thought the hybrid wasn't much better than its parents. A few years later breeders at the Bodnant Gardens in Wales did the same cross. The breeders there embraced the cross, called it 'Dawn,' and named it "bodnantense" for their garden. And the moral of the story: the perfectionists are forgotten and the good-enoughs get the credit.

"Precious gems" they're called. In garden catalogs they're described as having "orchidlike beauty." As much as that sounds like catalog hype, I think it aptly describes the dwarf irises that are in bloom this morning. Sheltered from the west wind by the Temperate conservatory, a clump of Iris histrioides called 'Lady Beatrix Stanley' has popped into bloom in the rock garden. While only a few inches tall, the dwarf irises are not easy to overlook, even on a gray day like today. Unlike the other late winter bloomers that point their heads down when they bloom or that refuse to open until the sun shines brightly enough for their liking, the dwarf irises bloom boldly and unconditionally. Their blue blooms are upright with gaudy splashes of yellow and a radiating tracery on their falls. My bulb catalogs say all of the dwarf irises are fragrant. I'll not stoop to verify that.

The installation of a new heating system in the Temperate conservatory seems to be finished. To make room for the installation of the new equipment, the tall Italian Cypress trees that lined the south wall were cut to the ground. Nothing but stumps remained while the work was being done. Then about a month ago, ten new Italian Cypress (Cuppressus sempervirens) trees arrived. They stayed in their pots, out-of-the way of workers who were putting the finishing touches on the heating works. Today the new trees have been planted in place - spires that are about half as tall and broad as the trees that were cut. As a visitor to this Garden, I see only the result of decisions that the keepers of this place make. Their debates and their reasoning are hidden. Still, I will miss the tall old trees with their ample middle-aged spread.






filtered sun: still: 45ºF

The garden column in the weekend newspaper says that now is the time to trim liriope. Their scraggily clumps of helter-skelter grasslike leaves that have lasted the winter need to be cut to make way for the tufts of new leaves that will soon begin to push up. I needn't bother because the rabbit that is wintering under my deck has already pruned my liriope leaves to a goat-like height. The Garden though has two plantings of liriope, far too extensive to leave to rabbits: one is in the Japanese Garden and the other is in the Mausoleum Garden just west of the mausoleum that founder Henry Shaw had made for himself. This morning we found that the liriope patch in the Mausoleum Garden had just been trimmed - likely with a weed whacker. With last season's dark, green leaves gone, the plot now has that yellow-green look of an early spring lawn.

At this time of year, past and future mix. Spears of new daffodil leaves have started to appear in places where brown stocks of lilies and glads still mark the spots where they flowered last season. Soon the new growth will mask that old, but February is the best time to see the old year and the season soon to come side-by-side.

Early spring bulbs have started to bloom. The first tentative snowdrops began to bloom in mid-January. Now clumps of them are in full-bloom in at least four places I could name. This morning the first aconites and crocuses were in bloom. I counted three aconites in bloom in the English Woodland Garden. Each aconite keeps a respectable distance from the other. Web sites I've visited show pictures of aconites in clumps and even in naturalized colonies that cover lawns in yellow, but I've seen neither. At this botanical garden, they seem to be solitary types. Whenever I've tried to grow them at home, they bloom anemically the first year and then disappear. We found a few yellow crocuses in bloom and a colony of tiny pale-orchid crocuses called Crocus tommasinianus. Their leaf spikes, the color of fresh grass, are more striking than their dainty blooms.

We smelled them long before we saw them. It was a tangy citrus aroma with a faint sweet scent. The scent came from three Ozark Witch Hazels (Hamamelis vernalis) that were in full bloom on the knoll above the Prairie Garden. The witch hazel's ribbon-like yellow blooms stuck out into the walkway about nose-high, inviting visitors to sample their fragrance. We did, and then went back for seconds. In the intensity and fragrance of their scent, these small trees rival a lilac shrub. The sign near the shrubs names the Ozark Witch Hazel as one of the botanical garden's "Plants of Merit." Plants of Merit are picked because they do well in this climate and because they are not well known. The hope is that by being named to the list, the plants will begin to be noticed and then will be used more by gardeners and landscapers. I plan to buy a witch hazel this year. My choice before today was a spectacular late bloomer called 'Arnold's Promise.' (Hemamelis intermedia). Now I don't know. I think I will wait until I can smell 'Arnold's Promise' again.