January 2024 Newsletter: Seeding Dreams of Spring

Sowing Seeds of Thought

Maybe I don’t have enough seeds. What if we run out and I can’t grow the special darling that always graces the herb garden, or maybe I should try that new cultivar that is so enticing.

So what seeds am I most excited about this year? Here are six that are on my must sow list. You may notice that there is a decidedly pinky purple theme to my choices this month; I will show you another six next month.

1. California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica ‘Dusty Rose’) from Renee’s Garden. These lovely poppy relatives have delightful pink cup-shaped flowers that the back of the packet describes as “iridescent” paired with glaucous green ferny foliage. These annual seeds grow best when sown directly where there is no wood mulch, just poor soil covered with stones, gravel, or grit. Bloom time is summer. This is the same species as the vibrant orange flowers that flower in the wild in California. Once established they need no supplemental water in most climates.
2. Cerinthe or Honeywort (Cerinthe major) from Hudson Valley Seeds is a cool-season annual with greeny-gray foliage and nodding purply-blue-green flowers that droop from the ends of the stems. The common name of Honeywort lets you know that bees are attracted to the flowers. This easy-to-grow flower can be grown in flower beds or containers. Start the seeds indoors or direct sow.
3. Blazing Star (Liatris spicata) from Truelove Seeds is a native American perennial that I love. I am excited to grow more in the garden for their upright, purple wands of flowers that are loved by pollinators. Sow this in winter milk jugs (see previous blog and reel on Instagram), or direct sow on gravel. The first year it will grow tufts of grass-like foliage and it will bloom the next year and every year after. Sprinkle the seed around the garden to get more plants.
4. Zinnia (Zinnia elegans ‘Lilac Empress’) from Select Seeds. I don’t know whether I will love this one a lot or just a bit. The color is right, and the crazy bad-hairdo petals might be great. I will let you know later in the year. Easy-to-sow, half-hardy zinnia seeds are large and can be started indoors a few weeks before last frost or planted directly after the soil has warmed up (the same time as warm-season vegetables). The seeds sown directly into the garden often do best but flower later than the ones from inside. We use both methods so that we get a succession of blooms.
5. Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena globosa) from Seed Savers Exchange. This half-hardy annual is a staple of our late summer garden where its round flowers contrast well with the many daisy-shaped ones that bloom at the same time. Sow the seed inside for early bloom and then directly sow a few into the garden after frost. We grow it in our raised farm troughs to use as a mixer and mingler in the bed and to cut for fresh or dried arrangements. (Hang them upside down in small bundles held with an elastic band.) This packet contains a mix of five to seven colors—white, magenta, pink, lilac, and others.
6. Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus ‘Cherries Jubilee’) from Renee’s Garden has flowers that are described on the packet as “lipstick-colored.” I like them already. Sow the seeds into individual pots for easy planting out—I use halves of old toilet paper inners filled with potting soil—or plant them directly into containers or the garden. This is a mounding one that I am excited to put into my herb garden for me to eat the leaves and for hummingbirds to enjoy the flowers.

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Great Gardens to Visit

Since December is not a wonderful month for garden visiting, I am dipping into past photos to share some pictures of Vita Sackville-West’s Garden at Sissinghurst. It is a garden that I am very familiar with, since it is in the southeast county of Kent, England, where I grew up. Check out my Before You Garden blog by clicking on the link to see more images and to learn a little more about this garden.

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In Case You Were Gardening…

You can always read and download preview newsletters here! If that is not enough to keep you going through spring, here are some of my favorite winter blog posts:

2023 Garden Book Roundup
Winter Sowing in Milk Jugs
Self Sown Flowers

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Plant of the Month: Stinking Hellebores

This rather underused plant is a wonderful filler in the winter and spring garden. It is the sort of plant that you take for granted until someone points it out and asks about it, as a garden visitor walking around at Northview did a couple of weeks ago. He asked what it was, and I was happy to wax lyrically about it.

The benefit of these Hellebores is that they have evergreen foliage and flowers that lend a good winter presence in the garden. Their leaves are highly divided with a hand-like shape. In cold weather, their glossy, deep-green color is tinged with red. In late winter a cluster of slightly nodding, tubular, greenish-to-chartreuse flowers emerge.

I received my first Stinking Hellebores during a dinner party. My delightful hostess took me out into her garden in the dark after the meal. We were both wearing nice clothes and heels. Down a steep bank we went to see this plant and she proceeded to dig some up to give to me. All of my many Stinking Hellebores are babies from these initial gifts. Thank you, Susan.

This plant has some strange common names. The most regularly used name is Stinking Hellebore, which would suggest that they smell bad. The flowers don’t seem to have any fragrance. If anything, it is the roots that are malodorous. I have heard the name Bear’s Foot Hellebore, which I don’t use, and then there is Setterwort, which I had never heard.

I got my modern copy of Gerard’s Herbal (1636, reprinted in 1964, Spring Books, London) from the bookshelf, and it coincidentally fell open at page 233, the Hellebore page! Gerard says that this Hellebore was used as a treatment for cows—”Settering of cattell helpeth the disease of the lungs, the cough, and wheezing.” (Definition of “settering”: Inserting setons (of this Hellebore) into the dewlaps of cattle—no, I was none the wiser either but it was meant to cure them.) Whether it helped the cattle or not, I would not recommend its use today as a medicinal plant but just as an ornamental.

Vita says (on page 21) that this hellebore is found growing as a “wild plant in the chalky soil of the South Downland country.” This tells me that they will do well in slightly alkaline soil and that a little lime would not go amiss for my plants. For those that don’t know the term “Downs,” this refers to the hills in Kent and Sussex called the North and South Downs. These are both chalky and alkaline and have unique flora such as rare orchids. (When we were young, we used to walk along the Pilgrim’s Way on the North Downs. This is the path of the pilgrims making their way to the cathedral that was written about by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales.)

Stinking Hellebores need virtually no attention all year. They are drought tolerant, and they grow in sun or shade. Do not cut off the foliage of these hellebores in winter, unlike the usual maintenance method for hybrid Helleborus x hybridus. For hybrid Hellebores we do cut off the old leaves in winter to make room for new leaves and to be able to see the early spring flowers emerging.

They seed themselves gently around my garden but not to the point of obnoxiousness. The flowers do not develop until the plant is a couple of years old. The small plants are simple to move around the garden or give to other gardeners, even during a party. I too, like Susan, have given away many baby Stinking Hellebores over the years.

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Book of the Month: 
In Your Garden Again

V. Sackville-West, 1955, Michael Joseph Ltd.

Vita was an influential garden writer in England in the middle of the twentieth century. She wrote a weekly gardening column for the Observer newspaper that set trends in garden making, from reinforcing the interest in white gardens to renewing an obsession for herb growing. She wrote about unusual plants, gardens she had visited, and, like Gertrude Jekyll, plants that she saw growing in local gardens. She was observant and curious and corresponded with other gardeners both in Britain and America.

Another quote that I love is on page 38: “Children have a gift for asking apparently simple questions to which there is no real answer. I was asked: ‘What is your favorite flower?’ The answer seemed almost to suggest itself: ‘Any flower, turn by turn, which happens to be in season at the moment.’ ”

Robin has this to say about Vita’s writings that I would agree with: “They are an incitement to use the imagination … to give a garden an air of happy accident and apparently natural romance.”

Cheers to “happy accidents and apparently natural romance” as we begin another year of adventures in gardening.

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