That’s my answer for anyone who might wonder why I haven’t posted in a few days. 4000 bulbs, give or take. Planted. Mostly. Still planting… Over the last couple of weeks, Gail and Tricia and I have tried hard to get all 3686 bulbs that we ordered along with the few hundred tulips we saved from last spring placed and in the ground before we let the volunteers take a much deserved winter break. We’re also trying to stay a step ahead of the weather – something wicked this way comes next week, according to forecasters… One of the hardest parts of rushing to get the bulbs in is having to make way for them by taking out plants that are still blooming. (We plant tulips in the same slots as our annuals.) In a perfect scenario, frost would have done the dirty work for us. But this year there are still bees and butterflies working the African blue basil, dahlias and zinnias. Every plant that came out broke our hearts a tiny bit so we left as much as we could, especially in the Rose Garden.

The physical act of planting is also not easy (except wherever the ground was loosened by taking annuals out). The volunteers did the lion’s share, down on all fours in the bulb hunchback – my least favorite yoga pose. And we have all cheered ourselves up as we stretched and arched our backs back into proper alignment that the promise of a spectacular spring is worth a  few hours of discomfort. I watched everyone get the same glazed look on their face as they cast ahead to the days when tulips like Blue Spectacle, Golden Artist, and Akebono bloom in concert. When unearthly earthy Fritillaria persica dangle deep purple-black bells on 2′ stems in the Rose Garden, and Allium Pinball Wizard lights up the North Garden. We planted more varieties of muscari and scilla, endless crocus, and are trying brodiaea, pushkinia, and a tiny oxalis that hasn’t been gone in yet because we can’t make up our minds where we’d love to see it more – the Rock Garden or the Rose?

Bulb planting takes a kind of blind faith and strong constitution that I believe must be unique to gardeners as a species. Bulbs are the ultimate in delayed gratification, dormant proof of gardeners’ collective optimism because they give absolutely no hint of what’s to come. We can only hope as they go in that they’ll spring out again in some more fabulous form. And our fingers have to stay crossed that this year that the squirrels and deer find plenty of other things to eat…

Have you started planting bulbs in your garden yet? Are you pinning your hopes for spring on anything new?

Even after so many years gardening (how many? I’m much too young to say 20+) it still feels counter intuitive to transplant in the fall. Maybe it’s because I love the fall garden and don’t want to disrupt it. It’s also so full and lush that it isn’t always obvious where one plant ends and another begins. Where to dig? The only plants I don’t have to question and won’t miss in the fall display are peonies. (And come to think of it, maybe iris and every other spring bloomer…) Peony foliage always looks especially terrible by now though (that said, the new intersectional peonies still look great) and I’m all for cutting it back even if that means leaving a gaping hole. And I certainly can’t imagine moving them in the spring when their new foliage unfurls like fragile baby chicken fingers. They’d survive transplant then – they’re made of tough stuff after all, but they’d resent it and so would I. Now’s the time.

The peonies in the Rose Garden, planted only 3 years ago, were enormous this year – too big for hoops. And no one but me loved the scraggly weirdo, ‘Alley Cat’ so we put transplanting them on the fall to-do list and got down to it last Thursday.

Anyway, out they came and in they went into the Cutting Garden peony row where I will still be able to enjoy old ‘Alley Cat’ and maybe no one else will notice them and ask with a curled lip, “Is that what it’s supposed to look like?!” I’ll miss that question because it always made me laugh… And they’re all ready to go for next year. Their eyes have formed and we made sure to plant them within 1-2″ of the surface so they’ll bloom away come spring. (Eyes down too deep won’t bother bud up.)

I think it was a perfect way to start the fall planting season. I seem to need to ease into it unlike in spring when I’m raring to go. But we won’t actually start playing musical perennials until after the mansion closes Columbus Day weekend, and the last wedding is held, and we’ll shoot to be done by the end of the month because then we’ll have a few hundred bulbs to plant.

Have you started transplanting yet? Did you, or will you move peonies now too?

This week we had every intention of planting another big batch of seed annuals in the Display Garden but the weather had other things in mind for us. It insisted that we take the time to really think about where we wanted to place everything: it gave us the chance, in between downpours, to take out more forget-me-nots (which incidentally none of us will ever forget because their seedheads became one with our shirtsleeves and sweater-fronts) to open up even more spaces for summer bloomers. If it weren’t for rain-sogged ground, we might not have had time to weed and mulch the Rose Garden corners, and the tulips might still be sitting wet and funky on the floor behind my chair instead of drying and tidy on greenhouse benches. And we might not have made time to walk through the new tall-grass meadow or remembered to pay attention to how beautiful the gardens are as they burst into bloom – and to catch them right before. Gail, Tricia and I were especially taken with buds in the cutting garden, poised to open. They’re almost prettier now than when they’re fully open.

And even though we waited so patiently for the ground to dry out a little before planting (wet soil is too easily compacted and damaged), today we just couldn’t take it any more. We had to pick our battle – the choice was to leave plants over a hot weekend in pots they’re growing out of, or compact the soil here and there. We opted for the latter and a few willing volunteers came in for an extra shift and very gingerly tucked another few hundred plants in the Display Garden beds.

Have you been fast-forwarded through a rain delay too? Are you getting things done or noticing anything that you might not have otherwise?

It’s game time here at Blithewold. Even though we’ve been planting steadily since … March (!) the biggest push starts now that we’re well past frost and are desperate to get everything moved out of the greenhouse. What we call “planting week” usually spans a month or more and starts with marathon planting sessions in each garden that never take as long as we imagine it will. We were set back by rain earlier in the week but a powerful crew of volunteers adjusted their schedules to work today and along with the Florabundas yesterday they got us over the first of several humps.

A good 400 annuals and tender perennials including dahlias, salvias, ageratum, helichrysum, zinnias and agastache went in the North Garden yesterday; Dan planted at least 40 tomatoes; and almost 600 cutting garden annuals like tassel flower, amaranth, and lisianthus, and tender perennials and perennials such as lavender, butterfly weed and “Rhody Native” mountain mint went into the cutting garden, herb garden and pollinator bed today. Today’s planting session was completed just in time for a drenching downpour – a half an inch in what couldn’t have been much longer that a half an hour – that watered everything right in.

We try to make the job as easy as possible. Gail, Tricia and I place everything the day before so that no one has to wait while we make up our minds about where it all goes. And mostly the planting is easy – the soil is soft, fluffy cake mix wherever we took tulips out and wherever we evict forget-me-nots and teasel seedlings that have fulfilled their duties as space holders/weed barriers. But it’s still a big manicure-wrecking job that’s hard on the knees and the back and we couldn’t possibly have gotten even a fraction of it done in the time it took without our amazing volunteers.

The more we plant the more space we have under the arbor for hardening off plants as they come out of the greenhouse. I’ll spare you uninteresting shots of empty benches but to Gail and me they are almost as thrilling as seeing our plants go in the ground one by one by one.

Will you spend any part of this long weekend planting? I hope you have perfect weather for it and well-timed downpours – at night of course after the cookout – to help settle it all in. Happy planting!

Now that the heat of April is behind us, we’re taking full advantage of the coolness and rain of May. The weather is a little backwards but we’ll take what we can get when it comes to planting weather. With a few days of rain in the forecast we were really thrilled to have a dry day today and a good crew to start putting in some of our cool-season annuals. We planted tassel flower (Emilia javanica) in what promises to be a stunning combination with annual campion (Viscaria occulata ‘Blue Angel’). We also planted calendula, Salvia claryssa (a diminutive clary sage), some pretty tough looking bee’s friend (Phacelia tanacetifolia), golden feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium ‘Aureum’), Virginia stock (Malcolmia maritima), ornamental kale ‘Sunset’, and honeywort (Cerinthe major var. purpurescens ‘Kiwi Blue’) among other various and sundry things I’ve already forgotten.

In some places we had to elbow a few volunteers out of the way – volunteer reseeders, that is. You might this this sea of teasel seedlings is horrific but I like to think of them as a really excellent weed barrier. Nothing can penetrate that mat but it was quick work to delete a few to make room for a new little border of clary sage. And with any luck that will seed itself around too.

All of the garden’s newest tenants will be happy to have cloudy skies and plenty of rain (fingers crossed) to help them settle in. And now we have more room under the arbor for “hardening off” the next batch of plants to come out of the greenhouse. Tender perennials like Mexican anise hyssop (Agastache spp.), salvias, porterweed (Stachytarpheta spp.), and geraniums (Pelargonium) are next on the list — although all of those might prefer to wait to go out after the rain has stopped. That’s alright because it’s also time to move out some of our container specimen like the camellias, coprosmas, farfugium, and sweet olive (Osmanthus fragrans). The shift is on.

Have you started to plant cool-season annuals yet?