It’s official and I have the pictures to prove it. For the first time since I started this blog, I won’t be repeating myself on bloom day. The usual cast of mid-May characters are blooming now! Which isn’t to say that some won’t still be blooming on the 15th – but by then a whole new group will probably be showing off in front of my camera.

I don’t usually pay much attention to rose buds at this time of year but I might guess from the looks of these, they might not wait until June to open…

It’s interesting to see the exuberance of the heat-triggered bloomers and fully leafed out trees in contrast with the plants that take their cue from day length. The temperature sensitive ones are the gamblers willing to take a chance on frost and the timing of pollinators for the pay off of a possibly longer season. But “late” ones strike me as the smart ones. It’s as if they know something everyone else doesn’t.

We gardeners are left to wonder and speculate about the rest of the season. Do early blooms signify a longer season or will winter come two weeks sooner? (I can’t believe I just said that.) Will we sail through the North Garden’s May gap on June flowers or will there be a lingering bloom delay after the tulips are well and truly done? Should we take our cues from the gamblers and risk planting annuals ahead of our usual schedule or should we play it safe and wait?

We’ll actually do a bit of both here. May’s full moon – our usual cue for getting the annuals in the ground – is as late this year as everything else is early. So we’ll just watch the weather. Because the tulips in the Rose Garden have gone by, we’ll start there. We’ll take them out and in their place plant the cold-hardiest of the annuals/tender perennials first. The North Garden tulips are still looking stunning so we’ll wait one more week at least before taking them out by which time we’ll be right on our usual track in that garden – ready to plant by the last week in May.

I’ve noticed that some garden centers already have a few annuals out for sale. Will you wait or take a chance on planting now?

I promised a post on the decade’s best plants and after making an enormous list with Gail’s help, realized that it was too hard to narrow down our favorites to a mere ten. So, because our favorite perennials and shrubs are essentially permanent fixtures in the gardens (if I haven’t talked about them all already, you can be sure I will), and we’re heading into full-on propagation season, I thought it would be much better to give you a list of plants that we actively choose to grow every year. Below is a probably very familiar looking gallery of 10 of our favorite seed annuals and tender perennials that will follow us into the decade. Gail and I can’t imagine the gardens without them. (I know I’ve already talked about a lot of these guys too so I’ll try to be brief…)

5 favorite seed annuals: Nicotiana (sylvestris, mutabilis, ‘Tinkerbell’, ‘Lime Green’…) I love them all and don’t mind doing a little editing whenever they seed themselves around. Asclepias physocarpa ‘Oscar’ (a.k.a. Gomphocarpus physocarpus ‘Hairy Balls’ – Swan plant) I’ve already gone on and on about this one – sturdy, 6′ tall with delicate flowers and weird puff ball seed pods. Pennisetum ruppelianum a.k.a. Pennisetum setaceum – Fountain grass – we love it because it’s a good looking grass that grows into a large graceful clump by August. Gomphrena - globe amaranth. I heart polka-dots and these are just the best cut flower. Zinnia. No garden should be without zinnias. They’re too easy (7 weeks from seed to bloom) and too beautiful. We especially love the Benary series (for tall) and Profusion (for short).

5 favorite tender perennials: Stachytarpheta - Porterweed. On a fast-growing to 3′ plant, inconspicuous flowers climb a green stem spike. Weird = love. Plectranthus fruticosus – we grow it for matte green foliage with purple undersides and love it for the very late (Sept/Oct) luminescent flowers. African blue basil – you already know why I love this plant – scent + bee-magnet blooms + vigor = love. Salvia guaranitica – It’s Gail’s and the hummingbirds’ very favorite and I’m sorry I didn’t take a decent picture of it this year! And Cupheas, which are also high on Gail’s list. – We’ll take any we can get our paws on but especially love ‘David Verity’ because it’s never not blooming.

What annuals and tender perennials can’t your garden grow without?

I’m having a really hard time doing my job today. Gail has set an all-moved-into-the-greenhouse deadline of October 15 and that means I need to get busy now digging up the tender plants and loading the cart with container plants and bringing them all inside. But those plants are still so beautiful outside that I can’t help but drag my feet and find everything else to do instead. But it must be done. If only there was a frost warning in the forecast, (thank the stars there isn’t!) I’m sure I’d move at steadily fast pace and feel justified in breaking up favorite combinations. But even though a lot of our tender plants can take the cold and even light frosts some of them, it’s less shocking to their little systems to come inside before we turn on the heat. The same goes for houseplants – especially any that won’t have a relatively humid greenhouse to live in over the winter. If you haven’t brought your plants in yet, consider doing it soon so that they can begin to acclimatize to life on the inside.

I have to admit that there is a part of me that likes this particular transition in one way and I’m even secretly glad to have the time to do it right. There’s almost nothing I love better than grooming plants and potting them up. Taking care of the container plants doesn’t even feel like work. Truth be told, I have a slightly perverse tendency to put that off to do something else that might feel more important simply because it is less enjoyable somehow. But potting up and grooming plants before or as they come in for the winter is really important no matter how Zen blissful. Take the time now to clean off dead leaves, prune and shape, weed, check for critters, and give your plants a mildly soapy bath if they’re like mine at home and covered in scale and sooty mold. And re-pot them now to save making a mess of scattered potting soil inside later. As for fertilizing, (a very rare treat for my plants at home, alas) the rule of thumb is to quit feeding by Halloween and resume when the days get appreciably longer triggering new a new growth cycle – usually February or March.

Have you moved your houseplants and and/or tender stock plants back inside yet? Do you have any tips to share?

Positive visualization is a skill we gardeners get a lot of practice in. I think for any of us, whether we’re planting one or two things or designing beds, visualization goes way beyond garden-variety optimism to a creative knack for soothsaying. We totally have ESP. Gail, Lilah and I placed “the big empty” yesterday for the volunteers to help plant today and we talked about how we can actually see in our minds’ eyes what it will look like in August. Never mind that the plants that will grow the tallest, widest, burliest are the wee-est, spindliest specks now. We can see them in their ginormous glory.

I have heard that there are people in the world willing to pay an arm and a leg for an instant garden – and I freely admit to having a gracious plenty of impatience for a gardener – but would gardening be as gratifying if there wasn’t a process from dream to fruition? In any case, for us this was a really exciting part of the process. It’s one thing to have the plants on lists of paper and randomly scattered throughout the greenhouse and quite another to see how they’re all going to fit together in a big showy – soon to be purple-centric – bed. And if there are surprises and changes along the way, so much the better. (The gardener’s mind’s eye must always allow for some unpredictability.) I know I’ll talk more about our lavender/purple experiment as the garden grows but I can tell already (because I can read the future) that I’m going to love it.

We can see the future too in caterpillars munching on their favorite butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) and we can predict that Fred and Dan’s new creation in the container garden will be one of the visitors’ favorite spots. Lilah has dubbed it “The Tanning Bench”.

Do you foresee your garden’s glory as you design and plant it?

We’re bracing for a chilly visitor coming this week from the Great Lakes and although we’re not exactly rolling out the red carpet for her, we’re stocking the cupboards and making sure there’s plenty of cocoa on hand.  When we’re told that the temperatures are going to dip into the single digits with forecasts of windchill in the negative 20′s my anxiety gene kicks on.  I start worrying like I’m told my great grandfather did, over the fate of our precious plants.

The greenhouse has a sophisticated system of furnaces that keeps the temperature of the houses within a very reliable range and the structure is as solid and tight as anything made mostly of glass and aluminum can be.  The only thing we’re lacking is the assurance of a good back up heating system in the worst-case-scenario of the power going out.  What we do have is a temperature sensor hooked up through the phones lines and set up to call us at home if the greenhouse temperature plunges.  And there’s a heater or two ready to go that will probably send out enough heat to keep the houses from falling below freezing.  What would be more reassuring of course is having a generator that could power the furnaces – but that’s a pie in the sky for another budget year.  For now, we’ll bundle up, crank the heat and cross our fingers and toes that our arctic visitor goes back to Canada without stealing any of our stuff for souvenirs.  And since our “stuff” is a large priceless part of what makes the Blithewold gardens the Blithewold gardens and represents hours, days, months, years, decades of work, it’s no wonder that Gail and I get nervous about the worst case scenario.

How do you prepare for cold weather?  Do you worry excessively (like me)?  Do you have a backup plan?