Flowers: 2016

Although I prefer to tend vegetables, I do supply my wife with hundreds of flowers in pots that she plants in her raised beds and borders. She saves some seeds from the showiest varieties but orders quite a few packets of new ones every year. Along with our vegetable seeds, I start her flowers in flats and then transplant single plants in their own pots, most often yoghurt cups. When the threat of frost is over, I often prepare her soil and distribute mulch while she plants. She chooses where each variety goes and avoids planting annuals where they grew the year before.

Russian Iris

Yellow Iris, Blue Spiderwort and Red Peony, with White Peony in Background

Hollyhocks

Black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia fulgida, with Smooth Leaves

Black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta, with Hairy Leaves

Pink Phlox, Red Zinnias and Orange Day Lilies with Yellow Black-Eyed Susan in the Background

Because so many of our flowers are perennials or sprout in the beds and paths from seed all by themselves, managing beds is much more haphazard than planting vegetables. Many of our base flowers have been growing in the same places for decades: phlox, peonies, lavender, bleeding heart, lilies, tulips, bee balm, butterfly weed, lilies of the valley, spiderwort and hostas. Some of these like to expand their territory and have to be kept in check. Others readily volunteer and often have to be moved, given away or discarded: violets, lupine, marigold, black-eyed Susan, forget-me-nots and hollyhocks. Over the years, colors sometimes fade  and we start over. 

Wild Blue Lupine: Food for Karner Blue Butterfly

Bleeding Heart

Foxglove

Cultivated Lupine Comes in Many, Many Color Combinations

Marigold

Yellow and Red Snapdragons on Left, Black-Eyed Susan on Right

Purple Statice for Dried Flower Arrangements

Day Lilies

Evening Primrose

Indoor Flower Arrangement: Destination for Many Blooms

Very Dark Red Sunflowers