November in the windy City

I just got back from 4 days in chicago for an incredibly awsome conference on Darwin (on the off chance that any of you are evolutionary biology nerds, I'll just say Richard Lewontin, Ronald Numbers, Marc Hauser, Doug Schemske, Jerry Coyne and Daniel Dennett, and let you drool all over your key boards)

While there, of course, I had to visit them amazing Lurie Garden in Millennium park, designed by the great Piet Oudolf. It is a revelation -- now I have absolutely no excuse for letting my garden break down into nothingness by November. I've always been skeptical about ornamental seed heads and such, but no longer. The browns of the grasses, almost black rudbeckia seed heads, and rich yellow amsonia... amazing.

Who knew November could be so lovely?

Illustrated guide to Gardener's Quantities

I, like many others, was laughing out loud when I visited May Dreams Gardens yesterday and read Carol's "Gardeners guide to quantities" So I decided to create some drawings to illustrate the principles Carol set forth so clearly.

First a little drawing to illustrate the meaning of the word "Couple" to a gardener:

Next A drawing illustrating the fact that for gardeners, the smallest quantity of plants we're capable of thinking of is 3. 1 and 2 just don't exist for us.

Check out my other garden drawings here

Flowers without forcing?

I potted up some daffodils and hyacinths a week or so ago, and popped them in the fridge to get their requisite cold period so I could pull them out and have lovely, fragrant flowers come February. I can never remember just how long they need to be in there, so (of course) I went to google, and up popped a website giving me the information I needed -- about 12 weeks of cold.
But then I read down farther and saw they stated that Iris reticulata and Scilla require no cold period to flower.

Wait -- what? You can just pop them in a pot like paperwhites and they'll flower? I looked for confirmation and found this fact sheet from University of Rhode Island confirming that Iris reticulata needs no cold period. Haven't been able to confirm the Scilla -- this page from the University of Wisconsian says they need 6 weeks of cold, and I'm inclined to believe them. Perhaps the first page was refering to the tropical Scilla peruviana.

So now I'm going to have to try it -- incase you've never grown it, Iris reticulata is one of the loveliest bulbs in the universe (as you can see in this photo I nabbed from wikipedia) -- Tiny, intricate, delicate blooms with a light fragrance... I've long considered them as essential as crocus for the early spring garden... but if I can just pop some in a pot and have them flowering all winter... Time to make yet another run out to buy bulbs.