Easter Garden Tour 2021

No ants this time. Just a quick garden tour. This was recorded the day before Easter. Additional Daffodils and Easter Lilies and Tulips were set out in the garden afterward. Several plants featured in the garden had to be replanted because squirrels had removed them, mostly hyacinths and pansies, over night. Not in the video was an Easter Egg hunt I arranged with my niece who had a great time finding them all among the flowers.

Wild Hyacinth

Wild Hyacinth, Camassia scilloides, is quickly becoming one of my favorite plants. At least it better be because I forgot I planted bulbs last years. I then ordered a flat of it on Prairie Moon Nursery... sometime during the winter lull, couldn't find it in my purchase history and saw it was no longer being offered in flats, so I assumed they canceled my order so I ordered another 32 bulbs. Planted the bulbs, had another 32 show up already growing in flats... and also the plants from last year came up and are flowering. So in theory I have 96 plants somewhere in the yard. 

The ones I had forgotten I planted last year are doing the best. I wasn't 100% sure where they'd do good in my yard though so they're occurring in scattered clumps, and I'm certain the rodents have eaten some. This is one of those loves being wet, but not soggy, but needs to be well drained, and can't freeze in the winter plants. So good loose garden soil ideally on a slope... where good loose garden soil likes to erode away.

The best patch I have is in a pit I dug and filled completely with sand. Everything I put in here is immediately shocked and stressed out looking, until they get enough of their roots pressed down into the layer of clay below. It's otherwise been a huge success of a garden. Pictured above and below is one that is growing along the edge of my meadow garden. The plants are hard to focus on as most of the foliage is grass-like down below with a single flowering stem standing erect on top.

What's really got my attention is the fact that the flowers all began opening as white, then something triggered them all to fade blue, so now the new ones that are opening are opening up as blue instead of white. And not all of them are doing this, some still open as white. So wherever they're growing in mass you get this neat effect of a light mixing of colors and transitioning. I also love their color directly next to some other natives such as Wild Geranium, Jacob's Ladder, Bluets, Waterleaf.

And of course what would a wildflower be in my garden without ants stealing nectar from the flowers. Growing in the background is a Wild Geranium which also has some color variance between old and new flowers.

A Wild Geranium for color comparison.

Assuming the ~96 Wild Hyacinth I planted all flower next year I should be in for a spectacular floral display. My only complaint with them so far is the individual flowers are short lived, so the smaller flowering stalks are almost finished flowering for the year already.

Bulbs at the Flower Show

I've decided to try and go to the Philadelphia International Flower Show on opening day. I'll let you know if that was a good idea or bad when it happens this Sunday. So I thought I'd share a video on what it takes to put on an exhibit at one of these shows.



Here is the Jacques Amand website if anyone is interested. They could use a web designer's help in my opinion but it's usable.

Philadelphia Flower Show 2011

This year's show in my opinion was awful. First and foremost I wasn't hit by that big overpowering burst of pollen the moment I entered the doors. Honestly in years past this was a huge problem. Cars featured at the show for you to win often had so much pollen coating them they emphasized every little finger print and flaw. So this year apparently they didn't bother using Hyacinths to their fullest potential. Or maybe someone changed the filter in the AC unit? Anyhow.

This year's theme was "Springtime in Paris," Now there are two major flaws with this title. The first being Springtime. So all you people expecting Grape Vines, Poppies, Lush Herb Gardens, boy are you wrong! The second being the word Paris, as in the city. So apparently this year's "Flower Show" consisted of Bulbs and Orchids, and for some reason Ferns.

All things considered, this year's theme could have easily been "The Moon Landing" and the exhibits would have made just as much sense.

Okay so right when you walk in you're greeted with this Eiffel Tower looking theme, that supposidly has web cams on it. Okay I'm getting it so far. We're supposed to be in France.

Umm... so behind that is a Marry-Go-Round. And they lost me. 

Oh here we go. This is really French, kind of a mix between new and the old. Though I have to say these are the most annoying bug zappers ever invented.

The centerpiece here is fantastic though. They get big points from me. My understanding is modern day France arose from the Roman Empire. So they got me with architecture with this one.

And we successfully end our French Theme here with this exhibit that actually had nothing to do with the main entrance way exhibits. Just about everything here is edible and herbs are what I think of when I think of the French.

Really what this show was lacking was a supermarket with fresh food in it. Seriously there are more note worthy greens in my local Walmart Food Section than in some of these exhibits.

To add to the French theme there were cooking demonstrations and wine tastings but these were events that only took place on certain days.

So how French was everything else? I'll let you be the judge.

Really nice I could see this as a wedding setting.

It's a sale boat, and a table with an unfinished chess game on it.

Blind fold the children and hand them baseball bats?

What's French about this? My neighbor has most of these plants.

I actually like this one.

However, it's like I'm looking at Siegfried and Roy's bed room. They just make the tigers jump through the gay hoops before going to bed.

Realistically I could see these pink ring flower planters suspended in a stair tower. So there could be a practical use for these. It's just hard not to joke about them in a bedroom setting.

Someone went a little nuts building bird houses.

This year's Koi Pond was fantastic! It was a lot more creative than the past three years. And I liked that they had the living wall gardens mimicking the trees. I really liked this one.

Another theme seemed to be the over use of copper in everything. This house display has a copper gutter system. If someone installed that in my neighborhood the scrap metal guys would ransack the house over night.

There were almost to many Orchids everywhere. I don't understand the appeal. Last year these were all over the South America and Africa exhibits.

A few Featured Plants that I really liked.

Fritillaria meleagris. These really caught my eye, and as it turns out they're native to the west coast. 

I am not even certain of what this is. It looks a lot like a member of the pea family, and I know we have native plants that look just like this, but the flowers are yellow.

These lilies were actually orange and black. The black though reflects as a magenta.

I believe this is a False Indigo. Not certain what one yet.  

Amsonia sp. Not the Daffodils, the spunky blue stuff in the middle.  

Mist Flower. A Eupatorium I recall. Not something I would ever consider blooming in spring time. I've always known it as a late summer bloomer.

Pitcher Plant.

So my prediction for next year's theme is A Funeral.

Philadelphia Flower Show 2010 (Nonnative Plants)

As the show was made up of 99% nonnative plants it's imposable to say I didn't enjoy some of them. Also bare in mind the show was pretty crowded and I usually had a brief window to snap a shot. Some of them are blurry but I feel I've edited them enough to keep the spirit of the photo alive. Lighting was awful in the place.


Most of the exhibits looked like this. Rhododendrons, flowering trees, and an assortment of bulbs with little of anything else. I call this lazy design. You see all these flowering plants being used will flower after a period of cold. Some do it faster than others so designing your patch of land boils down to knowing when to pull something out of the fridge.

The only real thing to appreciate is the slight variation in colors. It's actually fun pointing out a new cultivar. They're hidden among the designs like a Where's Waldo puzzle.

That said I actually enjoyed some of the exotic plants being displayed. They have to be native to somewhere after all.


Rhododendrons in these designs, though colorful, are quite boring. There aren't really any advances in color with them like there are with bulbs. I find designers who use them actually turn to telling a story in some way or include a hard scape for interest.


The story here is the man in the crooked house fell on hard times. He is now known as the man in the crooked shack and every day at 12 noon can be seen riding his unicycle down the ramp before falling flat on his face... at least that's what I got from this.


Tulips and Hyacinths. The blur I gave this shot (even with the 3 flesh-tone eye soars in the middle) did this display loads more justice than seeing it in person. Besides being a raised bed with a lawn I found it very boring. How would someone ever mow that!


This is probably what parts of Iceland and Holland, where most of our bulbs originate, look like in the spring. They grow a bit more wildly of course but it's pretty all the same.


I love the little patches of blue here. That's also how some bulbs spread over time. The flower usually fails to produce a seed but when it does usually it will create a stray plant somewhere. Probably the more prophetable way of spreading is from the bulb dividing underground over time. this is what makes the patch effect recreated here. They wouldn't be as even of course. Tulips like sandy soil and don't do well in the US. They slowly die out over time here.


Upon closer inspection of their Iris though I realized it's not a color I'm accustom to seeing. In fact I'd say this is a fairly new cultivar, at least to the US. (I noticed a few tulips like that too but didn't bother with pictures.)


The blue lines on the white petals almost suggest a gray color.


This plant was very eye catching. The tag reads "Bromeliad aechmea 'blue tang' " unfortunately I can't find anything on google about 'blue tang' so I would chalk this up as being an uncommon cultivar of that plant.


Monkey Puzzle Tree! I love the name of this plant. Someone has a seriously clever marketing department. The name is so exciting it makes me forget the plant is covered in fleshy spines, and easily broken branches. Seriously this tree, grows up tall but all the lower branches slowly fall off until you're left with something that looks like a palm tree. It's literally a tree you plant so you can say you have a Monkey Puzzle Tree. Doesn't make a whole lot of shade, doesn't flower at all, the branches break off easy (and naturally) and you end up with a palm. It's something you buy to make people scratch their head.


Orchids! Dozens and dozens of orchids. One exhibit was nothing but these and I got bored with them real fast, though I'm sure some were rare and exotic. The lighting wasn't great enough for any of my shots. There was actually a fake tree made up and had orchids planted all along the branches. It looked neat but the sea of dear old women heads was to great for my camera to handle.


Though this looks like a honeysuckle I want to say it's actually one of the more exotic relatives of the butterfly bush.


Passion Flower! Another good one to see. I love this one in particular because we have a native, Passiflora incarnata, that puts this nonnative import to shame. To be fair though this Passion flower might have simply been stressed or some pale cultivar I didn't recognize. I read the tag for it and it wasn't anything I recall being native anyhow.


One of the venders had their own Passion Flower on display. Again though probably not native. I seriously think some adventurer who knew nothing about plants explored the amazon and brought back what he though was the prettiest and exotic looking plants with him... only to find out we have a perfectly good and colorful native already well established here in the US. and in some cases is considered a noxious weed. I wonder how many times that's happened in history because it seems to occur a lot.

A lot of these plants you were able to buy in bulk. Bulbs especially were all over the place. Often times though they seemed over priced. They did have a lot of uncommon colors and varieties there though. Word of warning though. For the past two years I bought Fox Tail and not once did they grow.