Focus on Flowers

Before long now, some of the earliest flowers to bloom will be stirring in our gardens.  
Many of them are ephemeral, a descriptor that means “short lived” or transitory. In garden-speak, this means that these cold-hardy little plants bloom early and then die down leaving no trace until they return the following year. 
Most grow in woodland settings, where the soil is moist from late snows under deciduous trees and there is weak sunlight, as the trees have not yet leafed out. Some bloom even before al the snow has melted. Their early flowers can be picked and taken into the house for tiny vases. 
When the blooms fade, the plants set seed and then go dormant. They are at their best planted where they are not disturbed after they die down, though they co-exist well with low growing plants that grow up over the bulbs and shade them in the hot dry summers. 
The sunshine-yellow winter aconite is usually the first to bloom, followed by the snow-white snowdrops (Galanthus spp., zones 3-9), hardy cyclamen (Cyclamen coum, zones 5-9), bloodroot (Sanguinaria Canadensis ‘multiplex’, zones 3-9), Dutchmen’s breeches (Dicentra culcullaria, zones 3-7), Virginia bluebells (Mertensia Virginica, zones 3-8), and European wood anemones (Anemone nemorosa, zones 5-8).
Later the red trillium (Trillium erectum, zones 4-9), and Japanese woodland primrose (Primula Sieboldii, zones 3-8) light up our gardens. 
The best way to get these early bloomers in your garden is to acquire starts from another gardener during the early spring, or you can find them listed in catalogs. Their dense root systems help them persist and colonize.
Notes: Source material from Amanda’s Garden, Dansville, New York.

In 1785 William Cowper wrote:
Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.
 Unconscious of a less propitious clime
 There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug
 While winds whistle and the snows descend.
In 1974 Maya Angelou said, 
"Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says ‘I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I’m going to snow anyway’."
And there is a Chinese proverb that makes many of us smile:
If you would be happy for a day, get drunk.
 If you would be happy for a week, take a wife.
 If you would be happy for a month, kill your pig.
 But if you would be happy all your life, plant a garden.
And Jude Patterson wrote, “In winter, when roots and seeds sleep under the crusted snow, the gardener is an artist hatching ideas for the coming season.”  
But my personal advice to you in January is to be careful of all of those tempting offers that arrive in catalogs in the mail this month, as well as all of the seductive offers to order plants online. We are all so eager to have flowers on our gardens again, that we are susceptible to all of the plant offers that bombard us. But it really is too early to start ordering plants—January is too soon!—so try, if possible, to exercise some restraint.

During the middle ages, the Christmas season lasted for 12 days and reached a climax on Jan 6, which is called Twelfth Night. 
 We often wait, nowadays, until Twelfth Night to take down the Christmas tree and holiday decorations. Once everything is put away the house seems suddenly quite bereft, and we long for something natural and fresh. 
 January, of course, is a difficult month for garden flowers. Sometimes, however, one can unearth some long stems of ivy in the winter garden. In the summer, I am always trying to pull it out and get rid of it, but I am glad to see any green leaves in winter. 
 If you ever find any, cut some pieces and hammer the stems and submerge them in a sink of cold water overnight. Next morning, shake the water off and pat them dry with a towel before placing them in a vase. 
 With this background for an arrangement in place, you may be able to find a few other bits and pieces in the garden, for example, bare branches, berries, Bergenia leaves or even a Christmas rose (Helleborus), to add to the ivy. Otherwise, buy a few blooms to combine with the ivy and rationalize the purchase as absolutely necessary food for the soul.  
Buy any color flower but red, as after the holidays red seems passé and our eyes have become tired of it.

Norah Lindsay (1866-1948) lived in the Manor House at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire, England. She was admired for the way that she combined herbaceous perennials in borders, which were so popular during the Edwardian time in England. 
In her obituary in 1948 in the London Times it was described how she would trace out a plan for a whole garden in the dirt with the tip of her umbrella. She was known as one of the first amateur, but not quite professional, garden designers who were active in the years before and after World War I.
Strongly influenced by Italian gardens, she was famous for her parterres. One that she planned is still maintained by the National Trust in England today. It was a formal planting using low plants and repetition of colors around a central fountain. Clipped yews and a Doric Temple in the distance added to its feeling of formality and structure. 
Norah Lindsay was born in Ireland but always admired the classical gardens of Florence and Rome. She created large-scale double borders that stretched down hillsides to create breath-taking vistas. 
Her husband, Harry Lindsay, was a flying hero during World War I, and she was so well-connected that she even advised the Prince of Wales on his gardens at Fort Belvedere. 
Lindsay was the Grande Dame of gardening in a time when ladies did not have professional careers.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a poem about the garden at the end of the year. This seems to be an appropriate time to share it with you.
 A spirit haunts the year’s last hours
 Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
 To himself he talks:
 But at eventide, listening earnestly,
 At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
 In the walks;
 Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
 Of mouldering flowers:
 Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
 Over its grave in the earth so chilly;
 Heavily hangs the holly hock,
 Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.
 The air is damp and hushed and close,
 As a sick man’s room where he taketh repose
 An hour before death;
 My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
 At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves
 And the breath
 Of the fading edges of box beneath,
 And the year’s last rose.
 Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
 Over its grave in the earth so chilly;
 Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
 Heavily hangs the tiger lily.