-- Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady and wildflower advocate, 1912-2007

Spring Shipping Starts April 2

        We're eager to start, but Mother Nature insists we wait. It's still freezing here in Michigan, and we don't want your tender bulbs to get frost-damaged on their way to you. We'll start shipping to the warmest zones April 4, and your patience will be rewarded!

Don't Miss Our Summer-Blooming Treasures!

        Enjoy a cornucopia of heirloom beauty this summer with our luscious dahlias, perennial iris and daylilies, fragrant tuberoses, unusual glads, graceful crocosmias, pixie rain lilies, and classic crinums.
        Can't decide? Try our easy spring-planted samplers, including our money-saving Intro to Heirlooms sampler. As always, every bulb is guaranteed to please!

Love Letters to Our Dahlias

        Every spring, more and more of our customers try our dahlias -- and many get so excited when they bloom that they send us happy emails like these:
        "Your bulbs never disappoint. My 'Little Beeswings', and 'Wisconsin Red' dahlias are still multiplying and returning faithfully here in zone 8." -- Miranda Hein, North Augusta, SC
        "'Prince Noir' was unbelievable last summer, blooming in a raised bed in my vegetable garden, cucumbers at its feet. Deepest color. Many, many blooms." -- Constance Casey, New York, NY
        "The blooms of 'Union Jack' were so vivid that a lot of people thought they were fake. Loved it!" -- Donna Kidd, Crab Orchard, KY
        "I love the dahlias in my Endless Bouquets sampler, especially 'Claire de Lune' which is the prettiest yellow dahlia I have ever seen. They're all providing the color my garden needed between summer and fall." -- Jane Wettstone, State College, PA
        "At first 'Kidd's Climax' struggled in our [zone 9a] heat, but now [in October] it's about five feet tall, loaded with buds. The first one just opened and it's six inches across! Very interesting flower, like some exotic sea creature. I'm very pleased that I FINALLY got a dahlia to bloom in Florida." -- James Waters III, Jacksonville, FL.

Staff Pick: Mike's First and Favorite Glad

        Mike joined the Navy right out of high school and came home six years later to start work on a degree in computer security. For the past year and a half he's also been our awesome IT assistant, the guy behind our Facebook page, and a brand-new gardener. Kelly, our Micro-Farms Manager, writes:
        "Mike loves glads. He came to us as a non-gardener, but since he's such a nice guy I managed to rope him into helping me out on our big glad-planting day last year. After we'd planted thousands of corms and cormlets, Mike found an unidentified corm stuck in the cuff of his pants. I told him to take it home and plant it. Wasn't he surprised to see a big spike of leaves emerge from that small corm. And then came the bloom stalk -- 'Lavanesque!' It was even better than the picture.
        "Mike has very little garden space at his apartment, so he was growing the glad in a pot on the porch. Just as it started to bloom, the wind blew it over. Undaunted, he salvaged the bloom stalk and brought it inside where the buds all opened and impressed the heck out of his girlfriend. Then the corm produced a second bloom stalk just when his mom had to go into the hospital, so he could cheer her up with it -- cementing 'Lavanesque' as his favorite. This summer Mike plans to plant a purple bed of 'Lavanesque', 'Violet Queen', and 'Fidelio' in front of his mom's smoky gray house. As he says, 'It's gonna look awesome!'"

1927 Advice: Companion Plants for "Loveliest" Iris

        Louise Beebe Wilder was a popular garden writer in the early 1900s who's been called "America's Gertrude Jekyll." Here's some advice from her 1927 My Garden about one of our favorite iris:
        "'Florentina' . . . is one of the loveliest of irises, and its French-gray crepe flowers are invaluable to us in creating May pictures. It is fine with Dicentras [bleeding hearts] and tall pink tulips of the Cottage and Darwin types; with the yellow Doronicums [leopard's bane] and the pretty lavender-flowered Phlox divaricata; and is splendid in spreading groups near pink-flowered crabapple trees."

Weird Winter? How Will It Affect Your Bulbs?

        Warmer, colder, wetter, drier -- weird weather seems to have been the norm this winter. Of course heirloom plants have been taking weird weather in stride for decades if not centuries, but here's how it may affect your plants this spring.
        WARMER? Mild winters allow the eggs of iris borers and spores of fungal diseases to over-winter more successfully, so it's especially important to remove all of last year's peony foliage and clean up around your iris before temperatures warm any further. If you mulched your peonies with straw or leaves last fall, loosen the mulch now and make sure it's not starting to mold.
        NO SNOW? Like a down comforter, snow traps air which makes it a great insulator. If your winter was short on snow, your bulbs and newly planted perennials such as peonies may have gotten a lot colder than usual, which could result in dead or weakened plants this spring.
        Snow also protects the soil from the freeze-thaw cycle that occurs when sunny days are followed by much colder nights. Freezing and thawing can break bulb roots and heave newly planted perennials out of the ground. Check now and re-set any plant that's been heaved, putting a brick or rock on either side to anchor it. In colder zones you might even want to add a light straw mulch now to protect your plants through the last weeks of winter when the freeze-thaw cycle is often at its worst.
        When snow melts, it recharges soil moisture which is especially important to the mad rush of spring growth. If snowfall was skimpy in your area, water your bulbs and perennials as soon as they emerge this spring instead of waiting till later on.
        MORE RAIN? If your winter -- or fall -- was wetter than usual, that may lead to better bloom on your daffodils this spring, but it could be hard on other bulbs. The freeze-thaw cycle is most damaging in water-logged soils, and some bulbs such as crocosmia always do best in very well-drained winter soils. Soggy soils are never good for iris or peonies, so if water puddles around yours this spring, drain it away to avoid rot.
        DROUGHT? Bulbs are built to conserve moisture during dry periods and often bounce back after a drought better than most plants, although it may take a while for them to recover completely. Some bulbs like tulips and hyacinths actually bloom better after a dry summer, but even they will suffer without good moisture through fall and winter.
        No matter how weird your winter was, paying attention to how your plants respond will make you a better gardener. And try not to worry. Most of the time, most plants will be just fine -- and on the bright side, dead plants give you more room for new ones!

Bankruptcy Rocks Van Bourgondien Bulbs

        The Van Bourgondien family has been growing and selling flower bulbs for over a century, so we were saddened (and rattled) to read this news in the Plant Delights newsletter:
        "The world of mail order nurseries suffered another hit this month with the bankruptcy of K. Van Bourgondien, which first filed for Chapter 11 protection on January 26 along with its garden center division, Simple Pleasures Flowerbulbs, and its Canadian division, J. Onderwater. The combined companies listed assets of $500,000 and debts of 12 million dollars. . . . It remains unclear at this time if the company can find a way to remain viable. Fingers crossed."

Spring's First "Inexpressably Beautiful" Day

        Gardeners love spring more than anybody else, and no matter how mild your winter has been, we bet you'll know exactly what Sydney Eddison is talking about here in A Patchwork Garden (1990):
        "Every March, no matter how foul the weather has been for thirty of the thirty-one days, there is one day -- at least one -- so inexpressibly beautiful that you suddenly think you know what it's all about. If you had lived only for this one day, it would be enough. The feel and smell of the air are intoxicating. If you are very young, you want to throw away your jacket or sweater and roll on the damp ground. Your mother will have a fit and say, 'You'll catch your death of cold!' But of course you won't. You are never going to die of anything -- you're immortal. If you are old enough to know better, you forget it for the moment. This day in March is instantly recognizable. The sky is a special shade of blue so pale and translucent that it doesn't really seem to be there at all. And looking up, you understand the meaning of infinity. There are no clouds to set limits in the vastness. The sunlight has no color and seemingly no source or direction. It is just an immense radiance in the even more immense sky."

March 27 in Ann Arbor: The Pleasures of the Peony in Chinese Art

        The University of Michigan's historic Peony Garden is kicking off its 90th anniversary year with a lecture on peonies in Chinese art. Native to China, Paeonia lactiflora was revered there for centuries before being brought into American gardens in the early 1800s. Roslyn Hammers of Hong Kong University will discuss this "voluptuous floral temptress" in the arts of the Song dynasty in a free lecture, March 27, 7:00 pm, at the UM Museum of Art. We'll hope to see you there! Learn more.

Follow Us at Facebook

        Another 83 friends have "liked" our Facebook page, bringing our cozy group of gardeners there to 1422. Thank you all! If you haven't yet, please come take a look, join the fun, get occasional early-bird alerts, and help spread the word about the joys of heirloom bulbs.

Did You Miss Our Last Newsletter? Read It Online!

        February's articles included our Back Soon or Lost Forever bulbs, tuberoses in Indonesia, Rita says "I love crocosmia," Renoir's red dahlias, new USDA hardiness zones, and more. You can read all of our back-issues, by date or by topic, at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives.asp .

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