With strange weather comes odd flowers and bedfellows.

Check out this photo- a bouquet like those Dutch still life paintings where they painted slowly, over the year, so the bouquets were of impossible combinations.

Summer perennials jumping while spring bulbs flower. I had a June flowering, pink Crinum Cecil Houdyshel in flower with March flowering yellow tulips on Monday! Epimediums and Salvia Henry Duelburg flowering together. It’s like California, without seasons but with seasonal plants.

Perennials

Started the week setting the background for a perennial border; worked with a tree spade to move 4 massive hollies. The new border looks out onto a field of Black Angus (cows) and will consist of billowy masses of Copper Canyon Daisy and antique Chrysanthemum aka Mums mixed with gold leaf Rami which I think is better called Perennial Coleus (see photo & learn more about it below)

Mid-week is back to the new garden installation of the lady who wears poodle skirts. This is a piece of art– a very strong, conceptual vision. She doesnt ask me to change or deviate. Even though no less than a dozen neighbors stop by to say awful things about it. Masses of Sweet Grass, Spartina and Blue Dune Grass with just a few Echo Mango Kniphofia and Crinum asiaticum Alans White mixed in.

Grasses

Normally, it’s not grass planting time quite yet. But it is this year. I only plant grasses from little pots– those put in two weeks ago have doubled in size. Before we plant anything, we soak it, literally soak it in a huge bucket of very lightly mixed liquid fertilizer.

The other thing, the easy thing to do this week is to help out all your evergreens, the back drop and anchors of a perennial garden, the boxwoods, camellias, palms and such. Help them look great quickly, with this simple trick. Go to the Piggly Wiggly and get some epson salts, sprinkle that around the base of your shrubs – just two big handfuls around a 6 or 8 tall camellia. This adds a quick release of Magnesium and Sulphur and a quick color flush for your odd flowers. Remember, it’s quick, it flushes away with water, it does nothing for long term, slow release fertility.