Spring is here and it feels fantastic to leave winter behind. Walking home with my son from Menchie’s- side trips we don’t tell mom about- I noticed my favorite Doronicum flowers by the liquor store. The yellow is very warm and happy. These are the earliest flowering daisies. They are herbaceous perennials growing from a rhizome (underground stem). I first discovered them as a municipal worker by Como Lake.
Cherries (Prunus) are everyone’s favorites even though they are bittersweet: they are beautiful but, like life, they don’t last very long. A side-note on cherries. When I lived in Japan, I got a chance to visit a revered old fuyu-zakura or winter cherry. I was blown away with the whole idea: winter flowering cherry? Really? It was true. There it stood in the middle of a snowy open field with its gorgeous flowers. Protective fencing ran around the drip line. We already know from an earlier blog what soil compaction does to trees.
This past week I discovered deep red colored Magnolias at a mall parking lot in White Rock. The effect is stunning. It’s impossible to miss the parking lot trees.
Camellia japonica flowers totally dominate gardens at the moment.
Tulips and Daffodils are perennial favorites. Tulips are good for one or two shows and then best replaced. Daffodils can be naturalized and they will keep on wowing you every spring. One such event happened in 2014 at Como Lake in Coquitlam, BC. Volunteers were recruited to plant bulbs in fall on the west side of the lake. Many were ESL students and recent immigrants; this was the first time they planted anything. I hope they got to see the result of their work.
Bulb planting tip: look at your bulb height, double it and plant it that deep. Keep the planting depth consistent, otherwise your bulbs will emerge unevenly.
What color have you noticed lately?
