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Yesterday I wrote that I’d given my husband a four-foot white lilac for his birthday, but that wasn’t to be the end of it. At his birthday lunch yesterday two of his friends showed up with two four-foot viburnums…
This means that I now have almost an entire hedgerow in my sitting room window, and no idea how I will transport these plants up to the garden by public transport. I suspect I may have to rent a car if I want to bring it all up in one go…
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Another present was a small bag of mixed tigridia pavonia bulbs. Now, I can’t help thinking these flowers are perhaps a bit too gaudy for the borders in the garden, but they might look stunning in a pot in the courtyard where their exuberant personalities might be allowed to shine without looking out-of-place. After all, gaudy or not they are beautiful and can bring a wonderful splash of vibrant colour to the courtyard.
He was also given 10 kg of all-purpose fertilizer, which I’m not really sure what to do with. I think our soil is rich enough as it is, and with added compost I think we can keep most plants happy, but I guess it can be used in the pots in the courtyard…
This morning as I went to the supermarket to get us some breakfast I noticed that spring must – surely – be on its way, at least from a commercial point of view. The supermarket has started carrying not only spring flowers and bulbs, but also tubers and rhizomes of peonies, dahlias and other summer blooms.
Obviously I was unable to resist… My husband changes his mind about lots of things related to the garden, but he keeps saying he likes peonies. Well, I salvaged some peony tubers back in September, and that is a purple, full cultivar that I don’t know the name of, so now I’ve bought a Shirley Temple (white, and though the picture shows it being completely white I seem to recall that they normally have a faint pink hue to them) and a Karl Rosenfield (red). And should the husband ever change his mind about liking peonies, at least I know for a fact that I have loved them since I was a little boy, so they’re definitely welcome in our garden.
Now, I know supermarkets aren’t the ideal place to buy any sort of plants, but since I don’t have a car I really cannot go to nurseries all that often, and given the cheap price of the plants you buy in supermarkets (and the fact that they are from a company that I’ve had good experiences with last summer) I think it can still be worth picking up a few plants along the way. If they fail, they will have cost me very little and if they thrive I shall not care about the price. Also, the peony tubers look very healthy, with 3-4 shoots on each tuber, so I feel confident that they will be all right.
And now the husband is sitting on a flight back to Aberdeen, and I’m sitting in a small apartment surrounded by bushes. He won’t be back in Denmark again before April, but at least we can look forward to having 5 days together over Easter and then 10 days together in May, both times with a few days together in the summer house and the garden.
>Peonies are my favorite garden flower. It may be because that are so fleeting in our climate, but I love them none the less. They have such garden presence.
>They are just wonderful flowers, and I'm quite in love with the deep dark green of their foliage as well. And their so wonderfully low-maintenance, in spite of looking rather primadonna-like.
>I think buying plants at the supermarket is a dirty secret all gardeners share. You can't go wrong with a few more peonies ( I am thinking tree peonies now and am wondering where could I possibly put one).
>Soren, I didn't think there was anything that you wouldn't take on public transport, so I'm interested to find that even you draw the line at a traveling hedgerow. You could always take them up one at a time and triple the loveliness for the other riders. 🙂 -Jean
>Patty: While the quality might not be as good as when buying from a nursery, I think the low prices and the easy accessibility sort of make up for it… After all, if a 5$ peony tuber fails, no great damage has been done to my wallet…Jean: If it was just one, then sure I would do it. After all, I brought the lilac home on the metro… But I can only take one at a time, and since I only go up to the garden every other weekend, this would take me 6 weeks before all three shrubs were up there. And I have a distinct feeling that these shrubs would rather be outside than in my sitting room, at least once the frost is gone.