Crocus chrysanthus 'Blue Pearl'

This year, the first flowers in our garden are these snow crocuses (crocus du printemps), strategically planted up against the foundation on the south side of the house. Their cousins, Crocus chrysanthus 'Romance', aren't even in bud yet, probably because they are about 50 cm away from the foundation. Kathy Purdy at Cold Climate Gardening has a smart suggestion: keep records of where the snow melts first in your garden, so next fall you know where to plant these early-blooming bulbs.

Monarda fistulosa seeds

I was enchanted to see wild bergamot (monarde fistuleuse) blooming in High Park last summer, so when I saw this packet of seeds from the High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program at Seedy Saturday in Scarborough, I snatched them up!

Gardening influences

Today, Teza asks, "Who Has Made The Greatest Influence On Your Garden Career? As I wrote my reply, I realized that it was getting far too long for his comments page, so I'm posting it here.

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I first started gardening a few years ago when, in early spring, I was feeling homesick for the hepaticas which were the first flowers of spring in the forest surrounding my childhood home. Looking at the library for wildflower books, I discovered Lorraine Johnson's 100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants. It had never even occured to me that people in the city could grow my beloved wildflowers; I somehow had got the idea that in the city people had to grow "city plants" like the ubiquitous petunias that filled all the city planters (or so it seemed) when I was a kid. Johnson's passionate writing got me excited about gardening with native plants.

More recently, Sara Stein's Noah's Garden inspires me with her moving account of how she and her husband inadvertently drove away the wildlife from their property in the course of creating their conventional garden, and then using the magic of native plants lured them back! Having grown up in the country I really miss the huge variety of songbirds, butterflies, frogs, snakes, dragonflies, and many more that made our landscape gloriously beautiful and full of life all year round. Stein gives me hope that I can recreate a bit of that in my present life.

Regular readers of this blog will know how fond I am of Douglas Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home. An entomologist, Tallamy makes a compelling case for the importance of native plants as habitat for insects and the animals who depend on them.

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On March 1, my mother passed away, and I have been reflecting on the influence both my late parents have had on my life.

My father, a city boy from Australia, had no attachment to the native plants of his adopted Canadian home. But he did have a passionate love of gardens, spending hours poring over his collection of gardening books (some of which I am lucky to have inherited) and ordering dozens of varieties from the Stokes and Park's seed catalogues every year. Dad designed and with my mother built our house, which had scads of large windows filling the rooms with abundant sunlight all year round. Our living room hosted a collection of dozens of plants (pruned by our two pet budgies!); the highlight was a gorgeous bougainvillea. Although my choices of garden plants are often different from what Dad would have chosen, I share with him a love for reading, learning, and imagining the potential beauty of the garden.

My mother, on the other hand, was a true nature lover who would have been content to leave the property completely wild. It was she who took my sister and me for walks in the woods and taught us the names of the flowers, the butterflies, and the birds. She established an annual tradition of hand-rearing a monarch caterpillar to butterflyhood (a tradition I long to reanact with my son, but I haven't been able to find any monarch caterpillars here in Toronto); she would rescue the birds who crashed into our masses of windows (and donate those who didn't survive to the museum in Ottawa). As a child I didn't understand why, although the gardens weren't really her idea, she would spend hours each night weeding, but now I do the same thing. I think for her, like me, this time in the garden was a time to slow down and be immersed in the beauty of nature.

First snowdrops of the year!

Once again, the snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis, perce-neiges) are the first flowers in bloom in my neighbourhood, and once again, there are none in my garden (these are in a neighbour's yard). But I planted some last fall! I don't know where I put them, but I don't see any sign of them. Where did I go wrong?

Matthiola incana 'Vintage White' seedlings: growing like weeds!

I had to leave town suddenly for two weeks, but these babies did fine without me! (Covered with cling film to prevent drying out). It was great to come home to brand new healthy seedlings (although now that they're not covered I see the cats are pruning them). I'm not sure if I should prick them out now or wait until they have true leaves. Thoughts, anyone?

Maybe one of these is a Zizia aurea seedling?

Well, the gardeners at the Dave's Garden Plant Identification Forum confirmed my suspicion that the first crop of seedlings that came up in the pot I planted my golden Alexanders (zizias d'oré) in were actually Oxalis. Looks like I didn't clean the pot out properly before planting in it.

So I weeded out the oxalis, and ended up with these three plants. There seem to be two species—the plant on the left has smoother narrower leaves than the other two.

Could either of these be Zizia?

Primula hybrida, colourful harbingers of spring

As we head in to spring, stores all over Toronto are carrying brightly coloured Primula hybrida (primroses, primevère)—these were photographed at Natural Florist, 1852 Danforth Ave.. I am a bit ambivalent about these hybrids; in a way they're pretty, but most of them look so unnatural, which I find a bit disturbing somehow.

Primula is a large genus of 400-500 species native to the northern hemisphere, mostly Eurasia. PLANTS lists four species native to Ontario (P. egaliksensis, P. laurentiana, P. mistassinika, and P. stricta), though I don't know if their natural range extends this far south. I do find the wild types prettier than the technicolour hybrids that one usually sees (click links for pretty pictures from the photo gallery at Primula World by Canadian photographer Pam Eveleigh).

Of course, those primulas at the top of the post must be greenhouse grown, because the primroses that overwintered in Toronto gardens are nowhere near blooming, though last year's leaves stayed green and there's already fresh growth.

By the way, the English name "primrose" has nothing to do with the English word "prim". It comes from the Old French primerose, which in turn came from the Latin prima rosa, i.e. "first rose", because it blooms early in spring, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary.