Helleborus 'Cotton Candy' Photo: Terra Nova Nursery

I’m in love. The handsome specimen that’s caught my eye is perfect in every way. Long-lasting flowers that bloom in a rainbow of colours, evergreen foliage that looks good all year-round (it gets a bit tattered after our long winters, but what doesn’t?) and it’s perfectly happy growing in shade. Oh, you thought I was describing the love of my life?

Well, the current love of my garden is Helleborus x hybridus, commonly known as the Lenten rose, and it was chosen as the Perennial Plant of the Year in 2005, so obviously I’m not the only one smitten by its charms. The thousands of members of the Perennial Plant Association cast their ballots in favour of this gem which must meet the requirements of all perennial plants of the year, including: 1) suitable for a wide range of climates, 2) low maintenance requirements 3) easily propagated 4) comes true from seed or vegetative propagation, and 4) exhibits interest throughout the seasons.

If you were lucky enough to have visited this year’s Canada Blooms flower show, you would have seen Lenten roses growing in just about every feature garden. They are one of the first of the early spring perennials to bloom, and their flowers look good for up to two months! Well, I call them flowers, but to the horticultural cognoscenti, they’re sepals, but who’s splitting petals? Whatever they are, they’re beautiful – and they bloom in a wide range of colours from the purest of whites and the creamiest of creams to pale pinks, deep burgundies (nearly black ones too) and even a stunning green. Their nodding bell-shaped sepals form single, semi-double and fully doubles, and some are edged in a deeper colour known as picotee.

Because of the attractive, leathery foliage, Lenten roses look good right into the summer and fall months too. Over the winter, the leaves may get tatty, so cut these off to encourage new growth. And if deer are a problem in your garden (thankfully they haven’t become urban grazers – yet!), the leaves contain an alkaloid that keep marauding deer from munching them.

There’s more good news about these wonderful plants – they’re easy to grow. Lenten roses are happy in shade, part-shade or even in dappled sun as long as the soil remains cool and moist. They demand well-drained, humus-rich soil and once established, will tough it out during temporary periods of drought. Helleborus x hybridus is perfectly happy growing alongside other shade-loving plants, including ferns, flowering shrubs such as rhododendrons and hydrangeas and perennials like sweet woodruff, masterwort, bugbane and barrenwort.

Some new varieties of Helleborus x hybridus to look for in the nurseries this season include the Lady Series, a group of hybrids with cup-shaped, slightly upward-facing flowers that bloom in shades of pink, deep red, pink-rose and a deep, dark purple. The Royal Heritage strain of Lenten roses is also worth a second glance. These long-lived perennials produce large flowers and great foliage. Colours range from near black, purple and red to pink, green, yellow and white.

With such a rainbow of colours, handsome foliage and an easy going attitude, what’s not to love about Helleborus x hybridus?

1. Visit a Greenhouse

For an instant injection of spring, there’s nothing like taking a walk through a greenhouse. One of the loveliest is right here in the heart of the city at Allan Gardens Conservatory. You know – it’s that glasshouse you glance at as you whiz along Jarvis Street on the way to somewhere else. This winter, make it your destination. You’ll be amazing at the variety of tropical plants and desert-dwellers.

2. The second-best way to get ready for springtime is to take a gardening course. The Toronto Botanical Garden’s Spring Program Guide offers so many courses, from pruning workshops to armchair travel, you’ll fill your calendar in no time!

3. Take Stock

Winter is the perfect time to organize photos of your garden and take stock of which plants performed well and which ones were under performers. During the growing season, it’s easy to be so awed by a colourful clump of perennials that you turn a blind eye to a sulky plant or a difficult corner of the garden. Looking at your garden through photographs gives you a truer picture of what needs to be done, so sort through those photos and starting making your spring to-do list!

4. Take a Walk

At some point, you’ll have to brave the wintry outdoors. The Toronto Field Naturalists make it easy for you to experience nature up-close. Throughout the winter, the volunteer organization hosts walks led by various members who share their expertise by identifying birds and trees along the trails. Upcoming walks include High Park, Humber Bay East and Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.

5. Watch a movie

On a snowy evening, curl up in front of the flickering television and watch a gardening movie. From films with a gardening theme – my favourites include Saving Grace and A New Leaf – and armchair tours of some of the best gardens around the world (Audrey Hepburn’s classic series, Gardens of the World, comes to mind) to more serious fare such as the pesticides ban documentary A Chemical Reaction, there’s enough to declare one night a week gardening night in Canada.

6. Listen In

With access to so much online content, it’s easy to listen in to gardening shows from anywhere in the world. Some of the best are from the United Kingdom, where lucky gardeners watch daffodils bloom in February. BBC hosts several call-in shows (Gardener’s Question Time is often a hoot), which are available through podcasts at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer and you can even watch hunky Matthew Wilson, a.k.a. Landscape Man, on Channel 4.

7. Learn a Lesson

At one time, watching amateur how-to videos was at best comical and often misleading. But a quick Google search turns up some surprisingly instructive videos created by landscape experts. Some of the best include Patti Moreno’s Gardening Girl TV, PBS’s Garden Smart and Gardening Australia.

8. Read a Book or Magazine

During the gardening season, magazines and new books pile up on a table in my office, patiently waiting for winter when, I swear, they know I’ll finally have time to open and read them. At the top of the pile are the November issue of the Royal Horticulture Society’s The Garden and the spring issue of GardenMaking magazine. The View from Great Dixter and Growing tasty tropical plants heads the stack of books, as well as a pre-publication copy of Serving Up…No-Guff Vegetable Gardening by Donna Balzer and Steven Biggs.

9. Tend a Houseplant

Although I admit to being the worst indoor gardener ever, I know there are those among you who have a real knack for growing houseplants – and I envy your talents. Walk through the indoor plant department of any nursery this winter and take home whatever catches your eye – from traditional favourites like African violets to exotic tropicals such as clivias, you’re sure to find a charmer.

10. See Canada Blooms

An annual harbinger of spring, the Canada Blooms Flower and Garden Festival gives me hope that winter is coming to an end. Teamed with the National Home Show, this year Canada Blooms runs for 10 glorious days, from March 16 to 25 at the Direct Energy Building on the grounds of the CNE. It can’t come too soon.

Helleborus Vancouver Medallion

What better way to welcome athletes and visitors to the Winter Olympics than with drifts of  this gorgeous Vancouver Medallion hellebore?  Thanks to the advance planning of the Garden Club of Vancouver and Heritage Perennials, 750 of these specially named hellebores (the cultivar name is ‘Candy Love’ — appropriate for upcoming Valentine’s Day, too) have been planted in Stanley Park and arranged in sweeping curves resembling the ski runs on the mountains where Olympic contenders will vie for gold medals. Hmm, I could go for a little hellebore gold in my un-Olympic-sized garden, too!

If our patience is to be rewarded, we’d better make sure the floral display is worth the wait. Few can match the ones at Keukenhof in the Netherlands where landscape designer Jacqueline van der Kloet is in charge of planting more than six million hardy bulbs on 70 acres of parkland every autumn.

“The bottom line with bulbs”, she says, “is that they have so few technical requirements (almost everything you need to know is on the packaging) that they leave you free to let your creativity run wild, as you choose from hundreds of colours and thousands of varieties and flower types.”

Even if you’re not planting up 70 acres, van der Kloet’s tips will help you create a display of bulbs that will welcome spring with flare.

Colour blocking
Forget onesy-twosy planting schemes; small clusters of bulbs sticking up at intervals throughout the flowerbed look like the sole survivors of a harsh winter. To make an impact, plant en masse and keep the colour palette simple. Plant a solid drift of red tulips behind a swathe of yellow, or choose red and pink or orange and purple combinations. Another clever design tip is to echo the colours in a two-toned tulip such as the ivory and pink ‘Garden Party’ with a drift of solid-coloured ones such as pink or cream tulips.

Double-decker plantings
Maximize your space by planting layers of bulbs that bloom at the same time. For example, smaller bulbs such as crocus and muscari will form a carpet for larger bulbs like early-flowering tulips. Dig a hole and plant the bulbs that require deeper planting (e.g tulips) at 20 centimetres (eight inches) deep, partially fill in the hole and pop in the smaller bulbs (e.g., muscari and crocus) at about 13 centimetres (five inches) deep.

Interplanting
There’s nothing worse in springtime than looking at a naked shrub. The space surrounding these deciduous shrubs make perfect planting grounds for bulbs. A drift of daffodils will brighten a bed of dormant roses and delicate bulbous irises (blue reticulata and yellow danfordiae are two of my favourites) make a cheery sight peeking out from under the airy branches of spirea or weigela.

Whichever design scheme you choose, it’s not too late to plant bulbs, especially tulips which can be planted right up until the ground freezes. Yes, it’s best to plant hardy spring bulbs as soon as soil temperatures drop to 13ºC, but if you’re left holding a bag of bulbs that should have gone into the ground before now, plant them as soon as you can – chances are good that they’ll come up in the spring.

Photos: Courtesy the Netherlands Flowerbulb Information Center

Allium 'Purple Sensation'

Think spring now! To ignore the coming season is to court horticultural disaster – a naked garden devoid of tulips, crocuses and daffodils when across the street your neighbours flaunt their vernal finery. Fall is the time to plant these colourful spring flower bulbs.For gardeners, the bins of bulbs that line the aisles of garden centres at this time of the year can be as appealing as candy to a child. We are helpless to control our impulses to select the brightest colours and the prettiest flowers. What we rarely think about, though, is how to select a collection of bulbs that will bloom from early to mid- and late spring. Here’s how to plan a succession of colourful bulbs to dress up the garden from early spring through summer.

Crocus

Among the first flower bulbs to bloom in the early spring are snowdrops, crocuses and grape hyacinths. These are the small gems that signal the end of winter and welcome the beginning of spring. Because of their size, planting only one or two won’t make much of a splash in the garden – these diminutive bulbs have impact when planted in large drifts. Imagine woodland slopes covered with the nodding petals of hundreds of snowdrops or fields of yellow and purple crocuses and you’ve got the picture.

Tulipa tarda

We rarely consider tulips as early bloomers, but many of them flower at the same time as crocuses. Among the earliest are the Greigii, Kaufmanniana and Fosteriana types. Unlike more traditional tulips, many of these produce multiple flowers from a single stem and are generally shorter and more compact which makes them good choices for rock gardens or for edging pathways and borders. In addition to brightly coloured flowers, Greigii tulips have attractive, purple striped or mottled leaves. The Kaufmanniana tulips are sometimes called the water lily tulip because the petals open outward like a water lily. This species tulip comes in a rainbow of colours, with some bi-coloured flowers too. Taller than most early tulips are the Fosteriana types which grow between 12 and 18 inches. Among these are the Purissima and Emperor hybrids with their classically elegant flowers.

Jetfire

Daffodils mark the change from early to mid-season in the flower bulb garden. Like most bulbs, they look their best when planted in groups rather than lined up in rows. Unlike many hybrid tulips, daffodils “perennialize”, returning each year and multiplying into increasingly larger clumps. There are so many varieties to choose from that you could grow an entire garden of daffodils alone.

But, why would you when there are such wonderful Darwin and Triumph tulips that bloom at the same time? Darwins stand tall in the garden, growing to about 30 inches. They flaunt large, brightly coloured flowers in primary shades of red, orange and yellow as well as pink. And, if you can’t find a Triumph tulip that you like then you’re not a tulip lover. These popular hybrids come in one of the widest ranges of colours imaginable. Shorter than Darwins, Triumphs bear cup-shaped flowers that bloom on sturdy stems that grow to about 12 or 16 inches tall.

Tulipa 'Queen of the Night'

The late season garden is one of the easiest to fill with flower bulbs. Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides) look like giant grape hyacinths. I’ve recently discovered these gems and plan to add more to my garden this year. Along with these, there is a bevy of late tulips – doubles, fringed, lily-flowering, and Rembrandt types are irresistible. But remember, the later they bloom the longer their browning leaves will linger in the garden. So plan for plenty of leafy perennials to grow up and camouflage the dying foliage.

Allium 'Purple Sensation'

Alliums or ornamental onions are the closing glory of the spring flower bulb garden. Tall and towering or short and plump, these bulbs deserve a place in even the smallest of gardens. From the large spheres of purple or white classics such as Globemaster, Purple Sensation or Mount Everest to the nodding bells of Cowanii and Bulgaricum (also sold as Nectarscodium siculum – what are they thinking?), alliums create the perfect transition from the splashes of bulbs that colour the spring garden to the elegant lilies that grace the summer garden.

Chefs harvest herbs from the Fairmont Royal York's rooftop garden

Fall is in the air and you probably think it’s time I started writing about fall bulbs. Well, although I promise to do it soon, I’m not quite ready.That’s because I’ve just been re-introduced to the herb garden, which reminded me that fall is also a time for harvesting and preserving culinary herbs such as rosemary, oregano, garlic chives and lemon balm.

My re-awakening took place about 18 storeys up, on the roof of the Fairmont Royal York hotel where chef and “herban” gardener Jean-Charles Dupoire grows enough fresh herbs to season the dishes on the menu at the hotel’s elegant dining room, EPIC.

Herbs have been used in cooking for centuries, not only lending their distinctive flavours to foods, but their preservative qualities too. (According to herb expert Conrad Richter of Richters Herbs in Goodwood, Ontario, thyme was valued for its essential oil called thymol, and was used to preserve meats before the advent of refrigeration.)

You might not think so, but fall is a perfect time to plant a herb garden. Hardy perennial herbs such as oregano, parsley, thyme, chives and garlic chives as well as lavender, lemon balm and mint can be planted now for a head start on spring. Says Conrad Richter, “By next May, you’ll be able to use your herbs instead of waiting for the end of summer” when spring-planted herbs would normally be ready to harvest.

If you already grow herbs, now is the time to harvest them to make herb vinegars and oils. At the Royal York’s EPIC, Chef Dupoire recommends making an oregano oil to drizzle over Greek salads, or rosemary salt as an aromatic rub for lamb or lavender sugar to use in delectable pastries – mmm…yum.

To extend the season by a month or three, you can also bring potted herbs indoors – but be careful not to bring insect pests with them. Richter recommends washing the plants with an insecticidal soap first. To do this, turn the plants upside down (I usually wrap a plastic bag around the pot to keep the soil from falling out), and swish them around in a bucket of water and insecticidal soap. Rinse, and repeat the soapy wash one or two times, and they’re ready for life inside your house.

Be warned that your herbs won’t be happy growing indoors unless you can provide them with enough artificial light to supplement their need for at least four hours of direct sunlight a day. The best way to do this, says Richter, is to place them in the brightest (and coolest) window in the house. (Cool temperatures slow down the growth of herbs to compensate for reduced light levels – the combination of heat and low light spells death for most herbs.) Then install a gro-light, or a high-intensity lamp (be sure to shield this bright light from your eyes), to give the plants the boost they need.

Check the soil daily, and when dry to the touch, water thoroughly until it drains through the bottom of the pot. Occasional, but thorough watering is much better for the plants than frequent, light watering.

Given all this coddling, herbs may last for a scant month, or right through to spring. (My rosemary usually bites the dust just as the first birds of spring start chirping – argh!) In some European countries, says Richter, gardeners bring clumps of chives indoors after the first killing frost nips their leaves. Because the roots are still alive, within a few weeks, the plant will send up succulent, new green shoots that can be harvested indoors for about a month.

So, fall is not just for bulbs – it’s for herbs too!

Naked Ladies

Are there naked ladies in your garden? Calm down, I’m not talking about nude gardening; I’m referring to flower bulbs that bloom in the fall.Naked ladies, also called autumn crocus and known botanically as Colchicum, are bulbs that can be planted right now that will bloom this fall – unlike other hardy bulbs, such as tulips and daffodils, there’s no need to wait through the winter until next spring to see them flower.

These fall bloomers are called naked ladies because they flower without their leaves, which are produced in the spring instead of the fall. (When you see their strappy looking leaves next spring, don’t cut them down; they’re collecting energy for fall blooms.)

Autumn crocuses are very easy to grow and their waterlily-like flowers often burst from their bulbs before you can get them into the ground. Colchicums bloom in shades of lilac and pink, and there’s a white one too.

These ground-huggers look good edging a sidewalk or border where they can be admired up close. They provide a splash of fall colour under green-foliaged shrubs, such as forsythias and rhododendrons, which finish flowering in spring. Autumn crocuses also make great container plants – pop them into a pot of fading summer annuals for a fresh fall look.

But naked ladies aren’t the only bulbs that will bloom in autumn. Fall crocuses (not to be confused with autumn crocuses) provide as welcome a shot of colour as their vernal sisters. There are several different kinds to watch for in garden centres and nurseries right now, including the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) – it’s the one harvested for its stamens used in cooking – which has lovely violet-coloured flowers that contrast beautifully with its orange stamens. Another fall-blooming species is Crocus speciosus, which grows slightly taller than the saffron crocus, topping out at about 15 centimetres, and flowering with bright blue petals. There’s also a pure white form that looks great planted in drifts around shrubs. One of the hardiest of the fall crocuses is Crocus kotschyanus (also known as zonatus), which forms a carpet of lilac-lavender flowers when planted en masse.

Like all bulbs, fall bloomers require well-drained soil and they prefer lots of sunshine. Plant fall crocuses five centimetres deep; autumn crocuses (Colchicum) should sit 10 centimetres below the soil surface; and winter daffodils should be deeply planted at about 15 centimetres.