SprottHaus: A Gardener's Journey

No matter how many long I have known and grown  Lycoris  (surprise lily), I am always surprised and delighted when the first bloom scape shoots out of the ground.  I'm on the lookout for them in early July, as soon as peak daylily season begins to wane.  On my several walks through the garden each day, I eagerly check every spot where I know they're planted.   For me, the surprise lily season normally begins the first or second week in July with the cheerfully sunny  Lycoris chinensis .  Its flowers are the most delicious warm yellow, somewhere between Lemon Yellow and Buttercup Yellow of the British Colour Council's Horticultural Colour Chart  (#nerdalert).*  This bulb has been with me since 2020, thanks to a very generous fellow Lycoris-o-phile friend who grows it--and many others--in Maryland.  Everything I had read about yellow types (mostly referencing  L. aurea , which can be tricky in this section) did not instill much h...

Over the years, I've grown several Epimedium (commonly known as barrenwort or fairy wings), but none has captured my attention like Epimedium sp. 'The Giant'.  And I'm here to tell you, the name absolutely fits.   Tower of (Ethereal) Power:  Epimedium sp. 'The Giant' rises (delicately) far above the rest! I actually purchased this in 2016 as a sort of challenge.  When I read the Edelweiss Perennials catalog description for an Epimedium bloom that reached "5 feet tall," I thought, FIVE FEET TALL???  Seriously??  And then I thought, Let's see about that.   I mean, even if it underwhelmed at half that height, it would still be impressive as heck, right?  How could I NOT buy it? Over the years, I've planted 20 different kinds of Epimedium .  I've killed half... some of them more than once.  (Don't judge me; I'm stubborn AND I'm a real gardener.)  The problem came from what I kept reading and hearing at. the time: that they were...

Today, November 11, marks the Feast of St. Martin.  This sort of date is hardly ever on my radar, but came racing to my attention as I read from Elizabeth Lawrence's Gardens in Winter this morning. "Winter begins with the Feast of St. Martin, the eleventh of November.  About that time in Charlotte we have our first killing frost, which is often followed by golden days, called St. Martin's summer because flowers then bloom out of season as they did when St. Martin died and the boat that bore his body wafted up the Loire without sails or oars, while trees on either side burst into bloom." Winter... beginning today ?!  Ha!  In the days leading up to yesterday, it was more like summer.  I was sweating as I worked outside, in my garden and Lindie Wilson's garden.  (For the record, I do NOT enjoy sweating in November.) What I found interesting, reading on in Gardens in Winter , was the next paragraph: "In America the halcyon days came to be known as Indian sum...

Every year I eagerly await the first bloom scape of Lycoris , yet I am inevitably taken by surprise when it appears.  It is so appropriate that the common name for this genus is "surprise lily".  I have several types and varieties of Lycoris planted throughout our garden.  This may or may not be because they are pretty well dead easy to grow: average garden soil in part sun to part shade, in a place where they don't completely bake or get bone dry.  The season starts in early July with L. x squamigera .  (I know, it's a mouthful.  I say it "lye-KORR-is skwah-MIG-er-uh.") L. x squamigera begins the season of Lycoris . Up to November 2010, I knew nothing of this troupe of fascinating amaryllids.  That's when I entered Elizabeth (Libba) Lawrence's world, and she began teaching me (through her writings and her garden) that I had a LOT more to learn about plants.  This was especially true of bulbs.  In 2011, when I picked up her classic The Lit...