This past winter was a rough one for honey bees. Word is, across the country about a third of the population didn’t make it though. Blithewold’s beekeeper, Brendan Kennedy lost most of his hives including the two at Blithewold. When he opened our hives for their first spring inspection in April, there was still honey in the frames but it looked like the bees were unable to reach it (that can happen especially during cold winters) and evidently died of starvation. It was such a bummer that when we got a call here at the greenhouse a couple of weeks later about a swarm of bees in someone’s yard, I got all kinds of excited. A swarm is such good news especially after a winter like this one! It’s a sign of a colony that is healthy enough to split into a second colony. While beekeepers generally try to prevent their own hives from swarming (if given plenty of room to grow, an un-split colony will produce more honey than they can use) they also really appreciate a swarm. They’re free bees! So Brendan took advantage of the good news, picked up that swarm, and brought it back to Blithewold.

If swarms of bees make you as nervous as they once made me, let me reassure you that they’re not as scary as they look. Despite a chaotic-looking swirl of thousands of stinging insects and a massive clot of squirmy bees hanging on a branch end, they are at their most docile during a swarm. That’s because they gorge on honey before leaving the hive. They’re simply too full to put up a fight. (Same is true when beekeepers smoke a hive before inspection. Thinking their house is on fire, bees tank up in case they need to evacuate.) When a colony is preparing to swarm, they build swarm cells with potential new queens inside. When those cells are capped, a large part of the population takes off with the old queen. After she finds a place to land (often in a tree) her workers cluster around her and send out scouts to look for a new home. It could take anywhere from hours to days for them to find one. Brendan brought a hive body with him to the swarm site and dropped them in. (Sometimes, if presented with a hive body full of comb, they’ll walk themselves right in.)

A couple of weeks ago, when Brendan inspected his/Blithewold’s hive, he let me — and you — have peek too. He found an active colony with cells already full of honey and pollen and at least one frame in which the queen had laid brood in a regular and healthy looking pattern. Huzzah! We also noticed that some of the foragers had bright red pollen in the pollen packs on their legs. Any guesses what flower that might be from? (Honey bees – and maybe native bees too? – are specific foragers, visiting the same type of flower on each trip out of the hive.) I’m putting my wager on horse chestnut… (Hover over pictures for the captions and/or click on for a larger look.)

Have you ever seen – or hived – a swarm of honey bees?

It’s a lucky visitor whose gaze turns east along the path between the mansion and the Enclosed Garden, instead of west across the blooming North Garden and Great Lawn to Narragansett Bay. The western view is a compelling one to be sure and even I am caught up short by it every time I walk by. But right now to the east there’s an even more spectacular view. If slightly more subtle. The Davidia involucrata, otherwise known as the dove tree, handkerchief tree, ghost tree or laundry tree (I would never call it that) is in full bloom.

Blithewold’s dove tree was given to Marjorie Lyon in 1973 for her 90th birthday (along with several other trees including the Stewartia pseudocamellia that died in this past winter’s blizzard). It was a particularly interesting gift because it was unlikely that she’d live long enough to see its flowers. And in fact, she didn’t. (They usually take about 10 years to come into bloom.) But like so many of the trees at Blithewold, it was planted and cherished for its promise to provide future generations with an eyeful of gorgeousness. So we are the recipients of that gift — a generous one this year because it seems more loaded with flowers than ever.

I always try to remember to walk over to the tree in late-April/May because a few days before it becomes showy enough to catch anyone’s eyes from the path, the flowers emerge along the branches like teeny-tiny burgundy-black buttons flanked by teeny-tiny green bracts. They’re totally adorable. And almost fast enough to watch, the bracts grow into dangling tissues that remind me of homemade Halloween ghosts, and the flowers expand into fuzzy greyish spheres. Right now it’s as beautiful — and strange — from a distance as it is close-up.

Although the dove tree would seem to deserve a more front-and-center placement, it was tucked back against a windbreak of rhododendron and chamaecyparis for protection because with a zone rating of 6-8, it’s considered marginally hardy here (we’re Zone 6b/7). It hails from central China and wants full sun to partial shade and the ideal garden combination of organically rich, moist, well-drained soil. It will stay in the 20-40′ range and has a pyramidal habit. So pretty.

Do you have a dove tree or have you seen one in bloom? What did you think of it?

I have bad news and good news. The bad news is there’s a fungus among us. Impatiens downy mildew (Plasmopara obducens), the mysterious ailment that denuded and killed almost every busy Lizzie (Impatiens walleriana) back in July or August of last year, is here to stay. It’s in our soil now and unlike other downy mildews that attack other species of plants, this one is happy to overwinter here in the soil. Add to that, our native woodland wildflower and poison ivy remedy, jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), obligingly harbors it without dying or even becoming particularly disfigured by it.

This coming summer impatiens downy mildew will spread by spores that germinate in humid conditions, just as it did last year. Four hours of standing water (a sprinkler system or a good soaking rain) is all it needs to move from soil to plant where it then becomes airborne. And there is no fungicide that will control it once lesions form on the leaves. Despite that, some growers are determined to keep selling the species that has been their bread and butter ever since petunias fell from favor. But their impatiens will have to be pumped full of expensive systemic fungicide in order to ensure a mere six weeks of immunity in your garden. It’s a heavy price to pay for what has been one of the least expensive and longest blooming bedding plants. Expect that cost to be passed along. Other growers are boldly refusing to propagate an ill-fated best seller and will be offering healthy and more sustainable alternatives instead. And meanwhile, breeders are working to create downy-mildew-resistant impatiens. But don’t hold your breath. They’re still years away.

The good news is it’s time for a change. Monocultures of impatiens have been planted in industrial parks, corporate and private landscapes, urban and suburban yards for quite long enough. In fact, being planted so exclusively and densely sped their demise, first in the UK back in 2003, then in greenhouses, Florida, up the Eastern Seaboard, and all the way across the more humid portions of the country in the last couple of years. And I, for one, am looking forward to seeing a little more variety in yards, gardens, and landscapes in the years to come. But then, I have never been impatiens’ biggest fan.

I understand that a flat of Impatiens walleriana was wicked cheap to buy. But didn’t those starts need water and fertilizer all summer long? I understand that, if given those things, impatiens bloomed non-stop, and in the shade no less. But did you ever see a bee work the blossoms? And didn’t you get a little bored with them by August? I have never planted them in my own garden and we don’t use them at Blithewold because—and this, really, is the good news—there are so many other gorgeous plants in the world. Some are just as, if not more, colorful; a few might bring out the gardener in non-gardeners; others will be much easier to care for. That’s the truth.

My advice to hardcore impatiens devotees: If you can’t live without them, try them in hanging baskets. And for your garden beds, rather than choosing one alternative stand-in from a long list of shade-loving bedding annuals that includes (and is by no means limited to) New Guinea impatiens (those noisy cousins are immune), begonias, torenia, lobelia, coleus, browallia, oxalis, and nicotiana, plant a kaleidoscope. Variety isn’t just the spice of life, it’s more sustainable. Celebrate all the months of summer — and treat yourself to late season surprises too — by planting tender perennials like spurflower (Plectranthus ciliatus) and fuchsias that bloom into fall and can even be overwintered indoors. And then why not add in a few perennials with fabulous foliage like heuchera, hosta, lady’s mantle, brunnera, pulmonaria, and lamium? Nowadays they don’t cost much more than annuals and, more often than not, live to brighten your beds and borders for years. Please don’t just take my word for it. Ask at your favorite local nursery for suggestions. (No doubt, they will be more sympathetic than I.) And take the good news over the bad.

Apologies to any of you who might have already read this. — It was first published last week by East Bay, RI and South Coast, MA newspapers for my column, Down to Earth.

I can’t imagine any other plant that embodies the abundance and exuberant excess of the holidays quite like a Schlumbergera. Blithewold’s recently gifted Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus in particular maybe — though I did hear that it was a good year for Schlumbergera all around. My two at home bloomed their little arms off too – but not like this one. It’s been going non-stop since our first Friday Sparkle right after Thanksgiving and shows no signs of quitting. And every Friday, as it stops visitors in their tracks, they’ve asked me and Gail the age-old questions of why theirs isn’t blooming/why it does some years and not others/why one plant will bloom while another doesn’t?

We all know they are day-length sensitive, needing a period of darkness to set their buds. But this does not mean they should be locked in a closet for weeks at a time. Bad idea, actually, to deprive them of daylight altogether like that. Better to give them natural nights, at least 13 hours long, unpolluted by lamplight. (I use that advice as a good excuse to go to bed at a reasonable hour.)

They also need cool nights in combination with long ones and that right there might be why some refuse to bloom. As soon as we turn the heat on in the house — unless we program the thermostat for night dips into the 50s — our modern, efficient, weather-sealed houses may be too evenly modulated to toggle the temperature trigger. Leaving plants outside at least until the forecast threatens dips into the 40s will probably give them the requisite weeks of cool, dark nights.

Although my favorite tropical plant reference book, the weighty Exotica by A. F. Graf, recommends temperatures that swing only down into the low 60s, we have used this Christmas cactus to decorate the “cold” end greenhouse where night temps dip into the 40s, and I would bet that’s partly why it has held its blooms so long. As if its been preserved in the refrigerator. By contrast, my plants at home, after the first and fast glorious bloom, dropped most of their follow-up buds. It could be they’re too warm but also maybe too wet. Although the soil shouldn’t be allowed to completely dry out, it shouldn’t stay overly moist either, especially through the winter.

The schlumbergera’s popularity among even non-gardeners belies their evident finickiness and difficulty as houseplants. If they didn’t bloom more often than not and survive for years to outgrow their holiday pedestals and mantels, they wouldn’t have become the passalong favorites that they are.

Can you count on yours to bloom for the holidays? Does it stay in bloom for ages too — or at least for the 12 days of Christmas? What’s your secret of success?

Why buy something when you can make it? Especially when you can make it so much more interesting and unique? Our wreath classes sell out every year to people who want to hang something on their front door that will be unlike anyone else’s. A handmade wreath is as special as a snowflake. And so much prettier than anything store-bought.

The greens this year came almost exclusively from Blithewold trees (all but the balsam) and were an unusual assortment that included Moss cypress (Chamaecyparis picifera ‘Squarrosa’), Hinoki cypress (C. obtusa), yew (Taxus baccata), and Japanese umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata). And the method we teach is easy – just wind a continuous loop of wire (we use 22 gauge florist wire) around the frame attaching small bundles of greens as you go. All in the same direction, covering the stems bundle by bundle until the last stems tuck under the first. Piece of cake!

The trick is finding greens. If you don’t have an interesting assortment in your own garden, you might consider that as you peruse the plant catalogs this winter and shop the nurseries next spring. In the meantime, do not be tempted to pick anything without permission, no matter where you are. Rhode Island actually has a Christmas Greens Law (State of R.I. & Providence Plantations, Chapter 15, General Laws 1956, 2-15-12 through 2-15-17) prohibiting picking anything on state property. (For a list of protected plants, click here.)  And for goodness sake, don’t use bittersweet berries because you’ll end up with that junk coming up in walkway and foundation cracks. If you or your generous neighbors don’t have evergreens in need of a trim, buy some from your favorite local nursery. (We always buy balsam for its Christmasy fragrance and because it’s stiff enough to use a backbone for each otherwise floppy bundle.) Even if you have to spend a little to make your wreath, it will be more amazing and special than anything mass produced by strangers. And if you’re like me and not particularly crafty on a daily basis, you might find that it’s also a great way to stretch your creative muscles and generate ideas for what else can be made for Christmas rather than bought.

Do you make your own wreaths or roping? How about Christmas gifts? Would you be willing to share your ideas and/or methods? (I’m still casting around for what to make this year as gifts – I can’t do terrariums again…)