Today is the official start of summer (Happy Solstice!) but we have been celebrating the season for weeks now. Everybody around here calls it summer when sailboats fill the harbor and beaches start charging for parking, but we gardeners are also tipped off by the summer annuals blooming their heads off. Some early annuals, like the oxeye daisies, have already started to go by but they’re really a transitional flower along with silene and Minoan lace (Orlaya grandiflora).The true summer daisies are chamomile, feverfew and tansy. (Don’t get me started on the differences between the different Tanacetums or my head might explode. I’m pretty sure the one in the picture – below, left- is feverfew or Tanacetum parthenium.)

Larkspur (Consolida ambigua) should be blooming out by now but ours are still only budded. If they get a chance to seed themselves around without us gardening them right back out of the soil, they’ll be more timely next year. Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), which started blooming weeks ago, never looks more fabulous than when its blooms arrive beneath thickets of seedheads. I can only hope they’ll keep on trucking into mid-summer but since they’ve just about completed their task of making seeds for next year’s show, the flowers will probably quit soon. At least we can keep their court-jester seedheads as reminders. 

We also know it’s truly summer when we plant the last of the dahlias and the large potted tender perennials we kept for cuttings all winter. Yesterday while I was wedging dahlia tubers into tight spaces in the Cutting Garden I was nearly knocked over by the scent of the sweet peas. Their moment starts now and for us only lasts a few weeks into summer.

The same is true of blue honeywort (Cerinthe major subsp. purpurescens). I’m not sure as many visitors will notice them — their shrimp-ish purple dangles are plenty weird but in a subtle sort of way. Like the sweet peas, they appreciate rich soil. In fact, the healthiest clump I’ve ever seen planted itself next to a compost pile. I’ve heard that in some gardens they’ll sow themselves into a summer-long succession of blooms. Fingers crossed.

We also call it summer when the first heatwave hits. It’s perfectly timed this year (today is already a sultry 91; tomorrow is forecast to be 99…) and might shatter our gorgeous stands of pink peony poppies. No matter. They’ll go to seed; we’ll save millions because we can’t help ourselves, and something else will take their place by mid-summer.

What annuals help you celebrate the start of summer?

I have heard that there are gardeners in the world who don’t love roses and I think I can almost understand why. For starters, they’re pretty common and might not appeal to gardeners who prefer oddities and rarities. To that I’ll just show one of my annual portraits of Rosa chinensis ‘Viridiflora’ (below left). That plant definitely satisfies my lust for the weird. There are even roses for gardeners who prefer native plants to exotic ones. (Alas I have no picture of R. virginiana because we don’t have that yet.)

I know some gardeners don’t like roses because they’re high maintenance. No argument there unless you consider a rose like redleaf rose (Rosa rubrifolia/R. glauca – above right), which only needs to be cut back hard in early spring and then left alone to bloom once and make gorgeous orange hips. But I happen to enjoy maintaining roses. There’s nothing like deadheading in June when the dropping petals are silky soft and full of perfume. I could spend whole days happily deadheading (and have the thorn scars to prove it). And I Zen out raking black-spotty leaves, which in recent years we haven’t had to do as much of because the roses are so healthy.

But I’ve come to the crux of it. Roses are notoriously sickly and difficult to keep healthy and pest-free without spraying toxic chemicals in all directions. Thank goodness most of us have become too health and environment-conscious to be willing to do that anymore. Rather than chuck all the roses, which isn’t an option in our book, we concentrated on making them healthier from the ground up. Our efforts (replacing sick roses with disease resistant varieties; compost for the healthy, fertile soil they require; 3 applications of organic fertilizer through the season as they break and bloom; and a generously donated irrigation system to keep them from drying out and becoming stressed and vulnerable to insects and disease) have paid off in non-stop blooms and deep-green leaves. We also think roses look their best when they’re used in a mixed garden, planted with a wide variety of companions. Packing them into a garden might not give them the airflow they like but they bloom away just as happily and other plants can help disguise any unhappy foliage and naked stems.

I wouldn’t want to try to convince anyone who doesn’t love roses to give them a chance but I can’t help thinking that for anyone on the fence, our Rose Garden presents an argument in their favor – living proof that they can be healthy, relatively easy to care for, and even a bit out of the ordinary. Do you like roses? Have you given up growing them or found a way to enjoy them?

… but most spring flowers don’t. It hasn’t yet reached the temperature that was forecast for today (82!) but it’s definitely warmer than most things want to be so early in spring. As much as I hate to have to say it, the daffodils are now officially past their peak. Not to worry though because the tulips have taken over the show. Of course, warm temperatures this week might make some of them a passing  fancy too. But then, that’s what spring is all about. This is definitely the week to take a day off to sit under the cherry trees as they snow, breathe in the heavy scent of winter hazel, listen to the frogs sing, take a photo essay of faded flowers, and celebrate the preciousness of life. Since every day is bloom day from now on, here’s a small sample of passing fancies for a hot and sunny Monday.

To see what else is blooming (and passing by) all over the country and the world, visit May Dreams Gardens.

Yesterday was the kind of day that made me feel very sorry for anyone stuck indoors. High 60s, sunny blue sky, birds singing, bees buzzing: Exactly the kind of short-sleeves day we all desperately crave when it’s hot as blazes or when it’s bone-chilling cold out. Exactly the kind of day best spent soaking up the warmth of the sun, sucking up the scent of the fragrant honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), and getting the garden cut back, and roses pruned and transplanted. Which is exactly how Gail, Tricia — our new garden intern, and I spent our day.

Your employer should thank me for suggesting that the very next time a day like that is forecast for a work day (tomorrow by the looks of it), you call in well and get your body outside. Disregard the calendar, quit worrying too much about the pendulum swinging, and cut back the buddleia, lespedeza and caryopteris. Go for it. It’s time and it will do you good to get out and enjoy it.

So what will you do on the next blue day? I’ll feel better if you tell me you’ll at least be able to open the windows, and will try to invent excuses, like a friend of mine did yesterday, to take some mini-walks around the neighborhood…

I also think it would be good for you — and good for your garden — to plan on taking another day off on Thursday, April 5 to attend a day of lectures on Planting for the Future by Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, and Warren Leach, brilliant landscape designer and co-owner of Tranquil Lake Nursery. I have heard both of them speak several times and they always keep me at the edge of my seat: Doug with his fervent call to arm our gardens with certain native plants in order to recreate a working ecosystem; and Warren with inspirational design ideas that show that environmentally friendly gardens can still be highly ornamental and sublimely lovely. Please come if you possibly can.

Gardeners are reputed to be an optimistic group but I think we might just be stubborn. Most of us at least are prone to occasional – usually weather related – bouts of pessimism, gloom-and-doom opinion competitions, and worry. But no matter how dire we guess things will be, giving up is never an option. (And doesn’t the garden always surprise us by being beautiful beyond our wildest dreams?)

Never mind that wild temperature swings have caused the marginally hardy trumpet spur flower’s (Rabdosia longituba) pipes to burst. We should have left the stalks standing as protection… and I’m mentally preparing myself to replace the plants if they die. An unusually warm December caused the quince’s (Chaenomeles speciosa ‘Contorta’) flower buds to swell and open just in time to be blasted by an arctic freeze. The buds on Cornus mas are perilously fat too and it looks like the acorn-deprived squirrels have eaten most of the tulips. Will spring still be lovely? (After Tropical Storm Irene blew the color out of the leaves last August, I worried that we’d have a lousy fall. It wasn’t lousy by a long shot.)

In any case there’s absolutely nothing we can do but wait and see and enjoy what we have in the meantime. In honor of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (yesterday) hosted as always by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, here are a few indoor distractions. Who cares what it’s doing outside when the sweet olive is scenting the whole house? Our Brugmansia should have gone into dormancy down cellar ages ago but I won’t deny it or myself one last bloom. If we can’t grow Camellias outside, might as well have them in. And the razzleberry has just pulled ahead of its witch hazel cousin (running fast this year – what if they’ve finished before Valentine’s Day?!) in the race to bloom.

Are you worried about spring or are you distracting yourself with an abundance of blooms inside?