Fall Shipping Starts Oct. 1 and Now is a Great Time to Order!

9 New Web-Onlys: Black 'Menelik', Variegated 'Rex', and More!

        History's blackest hyacinth, a mind-boggling tulip, and six more web-only treasures are now available online -- till our very limited supplies are gone.
        From the British National Collection of Hyacinths come 'Menelik' (named for the Victorian king of Ethiopia), 'Grace Darling', 'Grand Monarque', and 'Mulberry Rose'. Our friends at the Hortus are sending us 'Rex Rubrorum Bontlof' (don't miss it!), 'Papillon', 'White Hawk', and smoky 'La Remarquable'. And we even have a few bulbs of blue-ribbon-winning 'Folly' daffodil. Woo-hoo!

Gorgeous New Hortus Bulborum Notecards Debut

        You don't have to travel to the Netherlands to get the Hortus Bulborum's exciting new notecards. We've put together a set of five of our favorites for you.
        The cards feature dramatic close-ups of four of the Hortus's rarest tulips along with a shot of snowdrops that was just too beautiful to resist. The auteur behind them all is our friend Leslie Leijenhorst, the Hortus's one-man PR whirlwind. Bravo, Leslie! We helped a bit, too, and if you look closely you'll find our name on the back of each.
        As a bonus, we'll toss in one of the Hortus's 80th-anniversary bookmarks with every notecard order, while supplies last. To view the cards or to order, click here.

New York Times Interviews Scott, Praises Our Lilies

        Anne Raver of the New York Times is always worth reading, and we especially liked her recent column about lilies. She quotes Scott extensively and writes that "he sold me my first 'Black Beauty' bulbs years ago, and they have bloomed from mid-July to early August without fail ever since, in ever-widening clumps." She also credits us with introducing her to 'White Henryi', "the classic trumpet lily" of ivory and amber, and praises another half-dozen of our heirlooms including the wild Lilium superbum whose "iridescent green throats . . . guide their pollinators -- fritillaries and swallowtails -- to the nectar inside."
        To read it all (and find out what prompted Scott to tell her, "Don't print that!"), click here.

Wisconsin Garden Writer Falls in Love with 'Schoonoord'

        Although she "shied away from bulbs" and had never planted a single tulip before, garden writer Linda Brazill of Madison, Wisconsin, finally "took the plunge" and ordered several dozen from us last fall. She planted them "willy-nilly, purely as experiments," and the results were "so fragrant and so stunningly beautiful" that she's already ordered more.
        Writing in the Capital Times she raves about our 'Willem van Oranje', T. acuminata, and 'Generaal de Wet' ("I could smell it almost as soon as I stepped out the door"). "But the showstopper," she writes, "was 'Schoonoord'. . . . It's a flower that I never want to be without now that I've grown it. The green- and yellow-striped buds opened into lushly double white flowers touched with gold. Anyone who saw them in a vase thought they were peonies. 'Schoonoord' drew me out into the garden day after day in every light and weather to enjoy its changing beauty. Luckily, I ordered enough bulbs that I felt free to cut as many as I wanted to bring indoors."
        To read Linda's entire column, click here. She may inspire you to "take the plunge," too!

Blog of the Month: Henry's Lily, Snow-on-the-Mount, and Beetle Mania

        Blooming at over seven feet, Henry's lily was a hit in Marta McDowell's front yard this summer. "I have a particular fondness for this heirloom, so tall and gangly and so very orange," she writes. "I'd suggest Old House Gardens Heirloom Bulbs as an excellent source, and don't miss their electronic newsletter."
        Always fun to read, Marta blogs about "digging in the dirt, growing flowers and vegetables, garden history, horticulture and nature." Recent pieces have included surprise lilies in her Aunt Mary's garden (with snapshots from the 1960s), native snow-on-the-mountain (a favorite self-sower here that I got from my grandmother thirty years ago), and her "Top Ten Reasons Why I Hate Japanese Beetles." Read them all at martamcdowell.blogspot.com .

Easy Tips for Making Your Bulb Bouquets Last Longer

        We found the expert, down-to-earth advice in Garden to Vase: Growing and Using Your Own Cut Flowers so helpful that we asked author Linda Beutler if we could post excerpts from it at our website. She was glad to help (thank you, Linda!), so check out our new "Bulbs as Cut Flowers" page at oldhousegardens.com/bulbs-as-cut-flowers.asp . There you'll find both cut-flower fundamentals and bulb-by-bulb specifics ("harvest peonies in the 'soft marshmallow' stage," for example) for everything from Abyssinian glads to tulips.

North or South, Fall is for Planting Byzantine Glads

        More and more gardeners across the country are singing the praises of our true, hardy Byzantine gladiolus.
        In Long Island's Newsday, for example, Irene Virag wrote "I'm adding more Byzantine gladiolus from . . . Scott Kunst, the Indiana Jones of the bulb world. Scott saves heirloom bulbs on the verge of extinction and propagates them. Some go back as far as the 15th century. Byzantine gladiolus -- a 2- to 3-foot-tall perennial with deep magenta flowers that look like orchids -- was spectacular in my garden last spring."
        And a thousand miles away, Ruth Geraci of Summerdale, Alabama, wrote: "My Byzantine glads are so beautiful. The first year's glads multiplied, adding to the new ones I planted last fall. Everyone admires them! Thanks for having such beautiful and unusual plants for my hot southern Alabama climate."

Book of the Month: The Unknown Gertrude Jekyll

        Inspired by the traditional cottage gardens of England, Gertrude Jekyll in the early twentieth century became an enormously popular garden designer. Though her books have all been reprinted, most of her magazine and newspaper articles languished in obscurity -- until editor Martin Wood collected the best of them in this fine book.
        Though you may have heard that Jekyll's borders were filled exclusively with perennials and pastels, here's an excerpt to help correct that misconception (and maybe inspire your planting!). Note that she includes dahlias, cannas, and gladiolus in this border, too, as she often did.
        "The pale yellows in the border are followed by the deeper yellow of coreopsis, helenium and some . . . perennial sunflowers. Soon we come to the splendid deep orange of African marigolds and the rich mahogany browns of the French marigolds both tall and dwarf. Then come deep orange dahlias backing fiery clumps of kniphofia, passing on to the pure scarlet of dahlias and cannas, salvias, gladioli and bedding geraniums. The use of these grand summer plants is one reason why the border had better not be called hardy or herbaceous, for there are no hardy plants that will answer the same purpose. . . . Moreover it is certainly more important that the border shall be beautiful than that it should be either strictly hardy or herbaceous.
        "At the back of the mass of rich red is a group of towering hollyhocks, blood-red, with a few of a rich, dark claret color. The whole of the red region has also an interplanting of the red-leaved Atriplex hortensis, and, nearer the front, of a French form of annual amaranthus with dull red flowers of a pleasant quality and red-tinted leaves; a much better plant than the commoner form with magenta flowers."

Did You Miss Our August Newsletter? Read It Online!

        August's articles included Hortus bookmarks, blue-ribbon daffs, Blog of the Month, modernist rain lilies, our new Forcing Bulbs page with antique illustrations, and more. You can read all 76 of our back-issues -- by date or by topic -- at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives.asp .

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