Emailed March 15. To subscribe, click here.
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Friends of Old Bulbs Gazette

Old House Gardens, 536 Third St., Ann Arbor, MI 48103, (734) 995-1486

        March comes in with an adder's head and goes out with a peacock's tail.
        -- old English saying (Feel free to translate this to January, February, or April, depending on your climate!)

Spring Shipping Starts April 2, and Now Is a Great Time to Order!

        Up here in Michigan the temperatures dip below freezing most nights until April, and we don't want your tender bulbs to get frost-damaged on their way to you. Your patience will be rewarded!
        Forgot to order? It's not too late to add some heirloom excitement to your summer with our fragrant tuberoses, fabulous dahlias, unusual glads, pastel cannas, tiny rain lilies, purple elephant ears, and St. Joseph's amaryllis.

        William Woys Weaver, author of the acclaimed Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, is a great fan of our dahlias. Recently he surprised us with this tidbit: "Did you know that the tubers of your 'Yellow Gem' dahlia are delicious? Better than jicama. Better than yacon."

California Here I Come!

        One week from today Scott will be making a rare West Coast trip to lecture at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show and the National Trust's fabulous Filoli.
        "I'd love to see you there," he says, "and bring your friends!" Fresh from lecturing at the Philadelphia Flower Show, Scott will be showing his glorious slides of four seasons of heirloom bulbs with an emphasis on those that thrive in California.
        His San Francisco Flower Show lecture is Friday, March 23, at 1:45 PM (right before Great Dixter's Fergus Garrett!) and his Filoli lecture is Saturday, March 24, at 11:30 AM (with a docent-led bulb walk earlier that morning). For more information, visit our Lectures page at http://oldhousegardens.com/lectures.asp or www.gardenshow.com/sf/theshow/ and www.filoli.org/education.html#heirloom.

Web-Only Specials: 'Little Mo' Glad and 'Willo Violet' Dahlia

        More and more gardeners are re-discovering the virtues of glads, especially the small-flowered ones that blend easily into mixed borders. Here's one more we can finally share with you -- if you move fast, because we have just 50 corms! From the psychedelic 1960s, 'Little Mo' is a zippy, small-flowered cutie of vivid coral-orange. Plant it this spring in your garden or pots for a happy little jolt of energy.
        Also pint-sized and charming is 'Willo Violet' dahlia with smaller-than-usual, pompon blooms that are often no bigger than a quarter. Introduced from Australia in 1937, it's rich purple, "perfectly formed," and "still the best," according to Gareth Rowlands. We have only 50 tubers of it, too, so don't delay!
And don't forget our three rare web-only cannas: apricot 'Alberich', blazing 'Assaut', and Rubenesque 'Liberation'.

That's Not a Weed, It's a Historic Daffodil!

        Last weekend our friend Russell Studebaker led his annual tour of historic daffodils that survive at old cemeteries and other relic sites in rural Oklahoma. He writes:
        "I thought that you might be interested in a comment from Saturday's tour. We had stopped at the site where there are so many 'Butter and Eggs', and a lady who had taken last year's tour with her father told me that after he saw those last year and learned their name and heritage, he stopped digging them up and throwing them away from his garden!"

Bulb Cake: A Fun Family Tradition

        A Bulb Cake is a fun, easy way to get your kids or grandkids involved in the pleasures of gardening. Here's all you need to know about planting one, from the creative mother who invented it, our good customer, Debra Anker of Fredericksburg, Virginia. She even sent us photos! Take a look at www.oldhousegardens.com/BulbCake.asp.
        "When my son was three and my daughter one, we moved from Fresno back to Ashland, Oregon, and rented a house there for a year and a half. I was happy to get back into a climate that could sustain crocus and tulips, but since we were renting I didn't want to plant anything in the ground. So I bought a redwood window-box planter, potting soil, and about twelve Crocus tommasinianus, and one afternoon in October Aaron and I made a "bulb cake" together. I think I came up with that name as I was trying to explain to him how we were planting the crocuses: first we put in a layer of soil, then he placed the bulbs, and then we covered them up, like layers in a cake.
        "When we eventually bought a house, the Bulb Cake moved with us. It was always the first thing to bloom in the spring, we never watered it all summer, and it increased steadily. A couple of years ago we moved to Virginia and my parents drove the Bulb Cake out to us. Aaron, who is now twelve, re-potted it last fall with fresh dirt and some more tommies, although many from the original planting are still in there as well.
        "The Bulb Cake is a fun project to do with little kids, but its real benefit is the lasting interest our kids have shown toward plants and the environment in general. Bulbs are easier than seeds, because of their size. There are no stems to break, their shapes, feel, and the magic of slowly growing out of the ground make them a wonderful teaching tool. Now when it's bulb planting time in the garden, I always get help!"

Cannas for Colonial Gardens

        Though cannas may seem flamboyantly modern, these New World natives were pictured in John Gerard's Herbal of 1597, and in 1735 Peter Collinson of London wrote to his friend and fellow plant-collector John Custis of colonial Williamsburg:
        "The seed you Call Indian frill Wee call Cana Indica or Wild Plaintain or Bonana from some Resemblance in the Leafe. With us it is perannuall by secureing the Roots from the Frost & Comes up Ev'ry Spring."

Books of the Month: Reynolda, Shaw's Garden, and the LALH

        We know you're busy with spring, but here are a couple of books to enjoy while you're resting those newly sore muscles.
        Reynolda Gardens in Winston-Salem is one of the South's most beautiful and historic landscapes. In A World of Her Own Making, landscape historian Catherine Howett tells the story of Katharine Smith Reynolds, the remarkable "new woman of the New South" who created the gardens in the early 1900s as part of a visionary, 1000-acre estate and model farm.
        The Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis is internationally celebrated, and I'm an even bigger fan of the adjoining Tower Grove Park which is one of America's most distinctive Victorian parks. In Henry Shaw's Victorian Landscapes, historian Carol Grove tells the story of these two special landscapes and the frontier millionaire and plant-lover who created them.
        Both of these richly illustrated books are published by the Library of American Landscape History, a small but terrific non-profit that produces books and traveling exhibitions about American landscape history. Visit their website at www.lalh.org.

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