witch hazel
Recently I lamented not finding any witch hazels in the nabe, but I was wrong. The wise landscape designers of Green Lake Park’s grounds composed a lovely February-centric collage on the lake path just south of the Bathhouse Theater. The planting is anchored by yellow-flowered witch hazels skirted with plum and ivory hellebores and cyclamen. I’m guessing the witch hazel is likely the popular Hammamelis mollis cultivar “Arnold’s Promise.”
While the vignette is a little skimpy and sparse now, in a few years it will come into its own as the hellebores fill in the gaps. The white-flowered hellebores face perkily upward, while the plum ones nod demurely, requiring closer inspection to appreciate. I just got an upscale spring clothing catalog in the mail headed “Bloom Through the Gloom,” which, while I can’t really see the word ‘gloom’ motivating buyers, sums up the need for winter color in your garden neatly. Finding room in your landscape for a mini-winterscape like this will brighten your Februaries for years to come.
hellebore
A little further north still on the west side of the Green Lake Park path you can see a fine Cornus mas, or Cornelian cherry – not a cherry, but actually a dogwood with long oval fruits going by the unappealing scientific name “drupes.” It also develops nice patchy peeling bark – undesirable on humans’ outer layers, but prized by gardeners for winter interest.This time of year it’s claim to fame is knobby lemon flower clusters knotted so tight they look like a nursery full of tiny infant fists raised at the end of each branch (“Baby Power!”).
Cornus mas
Both of these easy-care largish shrubs have airy open growth pattern with delicate, size-challenged flowers, so if you plant some at home, you might plant them with a large evergreen or dark wall in the background to show them off.
Meanwhile, all around Green Lake, mounds of brown earth are cropping up, as if the giant worms of “Tremors” oozed by for a visit. The somewhat more likely explanation is that landscapers are getting a jump on the growing season. It may feel counter-intuitive when we still feel like bundling up with hot cocoa by the fire, but with (relatively) mild temperatures, and the likelihood of nighttime frost receding, this is a great time to plant bare-root shrubs and trees, including berries. Nurseries are even having sales to convince us.
Other ways you can jump start your garden’s season now are: indoor grow-lights for seeds of long-season annuals like tomatoes and sunflowers, pansies and primroses in containers or to fill in bare spots in the border (Fred Meyer has scads), and picking out cold-loving seeds to plant in March of climbing sweet peas, lettuces, nasturtium and calendula. If you have spring flowering trees and shrubs, you can cut a few branches of forsythia and cherry tree to “force” in warm water to bloom several weeks early.
Chez Streetwise, an ornamental pepper inexplicably doted upon by my husband is hogging all the plant-y attention. Blissfully self-sufficient and bloomful in summer, this is the second winter we’ve spent fighting with the spider mites who appear magically the moment the pot arrives indoors. We spray with soapy water, then the secondary strike of neem oil, and my husband threatens his spinal disks bouncing the large pot outside to catch the sun and then back in at dusk. Not sure if it’s worth it. There’s a lot to be said for survival of the fittest, after all.
