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Hello, again!
Every year about this time I think about sitting in a classroom my senior year at Wichita North High School. I recall gazing out onto the east lawn towards Rochester Street and noticing how the maple trees were starting to bud out. The first leaves of the year were starting to push and begin their one season of life keeping the silver maple growing another year. While I’m not sitting in a classroom anymore, I have still been noticing the first growth of spring starting to show. This week I’ve seen signs from the swelling of buds and my spring flowering bulbs starting to emerge to the hellebores pushing new foliage and flower buds swelling to be the first flowers in my garden this year.
A few projects on my list of to-do things in the landscape are to plant some of our cold-tolerant violas and pansies to add color in containers on the patio and in the ground around shrubs and perennial plants. You’ve met my ‘Big Brother’ Bill Jackel who has always reminded us to ‘grow ’em cold’ to have plants that will flourish in early spring. Andrew, our grower, has definitely grown our early flowering plants cold as well as our cole crops such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and spinach. We have pansies and violas in six-packs as well as color bowls and hanging baskets. Vegetable plants will arrive soon, as well as seed potatoes and onion sets and plants.
Our favorite violas for early spring color are the Sorbet Series. Sorbet violas are small, growing to about four to six inches tall and wide, but when planted in mass, they create a stunning floral blanket over the landscape. The colorful flowers sit above dark green foliage and are a sight to behold.
Andrew grows several pansy series. Colossus Series is impressive, with its four to five inch flowers with dark blotches in shades of blue, purple, violet, red, rose, yellow and white. Plants are uniform and stretch resistant, growing to five inches tall.
Our Cool Wave Series is a long-lasting, trailing pansy designed for cool-season color. This series offers vigorous growers that are ideal in pots, baskets and they also excel as a groundcover with changing colors as temperatures vary and seasons change.
Our Top Wave Series has the largest flowers of any spreading pansy series, and a more mounded shape; it beats the competition for visual appeal. Once established, the plants trail vigorously for lovely window boxes, baskets and as container spillers. It’s a perfect addition in cool-season gardens with low maintenance and long-lasting color. The plants are faster to fill in the landscape than standard pansies, too, providing a sea of colorful, big blooms.
Our Honeymoon Series of hellebores is from Walters Gardens' hybridizer Hans Hansen. In his breeding work, he selects plants with notable vigor and showy floral displays with large numbers of blossoms and rich flower colors. Colors in the mix include apricot, black, mauve purple, white, yellow, wine red and pink. Hellebores are harbingers of spring, blooming for six weeks or more beginning in late winter. They often flower during the Christian season of Lent, from which they get their common name, Lenten Rose.
Also from Walters Gardens is the Wedding Party Series of hellebores. The double-flowered series is also an effort of years of work from Hans Hansen. His mixture of color strains is custom blended at the plug level for a more evenly distributed mix. Colors in the mix include black, mauve purple, white, yellow and pink. With twelve varieties, there will certainly be a Lenten Rose for your garden that you will enjoy each early spring for years to come.
Your friend in the garden,
Marty Johnson
Owner - Johnson's Garden Centers
