Helleborus orientalis

Buds of Helleborus ‘Pink Frost’

Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, Mother Nature blessed us with another few inches of snow. Just what we wanted! However, hope is in the air. In my front garden, I see some of the early bulbs like Galanthus (Snowdrops), Eranthis (Winter Aconite), and Crocus in bloom as well as the perennial Helleborus orientalis and one of the hybrid cultivars, ‘Pink Frost’. So, even though it’s still cold out there, I need to cut back the old hellebore foliage so that the new foliage and blooms appear at their best.

Cover of the Spring issue of The Designer

Even though many of you are not landscape designers, you are gardeners and there is a free, quarterly online magazine, The Designer, published by APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) that I think you would enjoy. I just had an article on Buffalo gardens published in it but there are many other articles and photos from which you can gain gardening tips. The link is https://issuu.com/apld/docs/spring2018apldthedesigner.

Last summer in Buffalo, at the Garden Writers Assocation conference, I met a woman named Donna Balzer, a Canadian horticulturist and author who specializes in vegetable gardening. She blogs about it on her website, www.donnabalzer.com and has a new book called the Three Year Gardener’s Gratitude Journal. As she describes it, it is part diary and part personal growing guide. You can learn more about it at https://donnabalzer.com/garden-journal/. I met Donna again when I was speaking at Canada Blooms in Toronto a few weeks ago. One of you subscribers can be the lucky recipient of a copy that she gave me. Just email me in the coming week and tell me why this book should be yours. I’ll identify the winner in my next post.

I’m finally finding time to start designing again. However, now I also have to think about sprucing up my own garden because it will be on the Shaker Heights Glorious Gardens tour on Father’s Day.

Scilla siberica and Narcissus between cut back grasses

If you haven’t cut down your ornamental grasses yet, it’s just about time to do, particularly if you planted bulbs in between them.