Burgundy Hellebores

These burgundy hybrid hellebores popped up and started blooming almost overnight.

Burgundy Hellebores

How appropriate to be featuring this lovely perennial on this last day of winter. Burgundy hybrid hellebores, also referred to as Lenten roses because they tend to bloom around Lent, are one of the last winter-blooming flowers. These literally just popped up in my garden this past week.

The actual flower is inside the burgundy-colored sepals surrounding the center.

The flowers of hybrid hellebores are actually the long, slender yellow filament-looking segments inside the burgundy-colored sepals. As the sepals mature, they loose some of their color but not their shape. This year I am going to try to save the sepals at the end of the season and see if I can dry them for my wreaths.

The one challenge in enjoying these lovely plants is that the flowers on the plants actually droop. To be able to see, and photograph, the flowers, I have to lean over and try to catch the flowers from a less than comfortable angle.

This is how the hybrid hellebores appear in the flower bed, with the sepals hanging down.

Even without being able to see the droopy flowers I can spot the plant in the flower bed when it is in bloom. Sometimes it's the only green showing up in the whole area!

Sometimes its easy to overlook hybrid hellebores in a garden bed.

Farewell winter, it was a long, snowy one!

Charlotte

Dried Orange Slice Christmas Tree Garland

Dried orange slices strung as a garland through a Christmas tree.

Dried Orange Slice Christmas Tree Garland

Did you ever string popcorn for Christmas tree garland? 

I did many years ago. I decorated a small outside cedar only to watch wild turkeys dragging the strung popcorn off as a treat the next morning.

I thought about those wild turkeys when I saw this lovely dried orange slice garland on a Christmas tree at the Henry Shaw country house at Missouri's Botanical Garden, St. Louis.

With Christmas trees staying up all year, or being transformed into Easter home decor, these dried oranges add nice color.

Oranges are a favorite treat of one of my favorite summer garden bird visitors. Luckily Baltimore Orioles have migrated by December or those dried orange slice Christmas tree garlands - or whenever they are used through the year - wouldn't have a chance!

Charlotte

Birds Everywhere

Fun to see how birds seem to be flying all over the place, isn't it!

Birds Everywhere

Birds are very much a part of my garden. In addition to being welcomed to nest in a variety of bird houses throughout the hillside property, they are part of my bug patrol, helping to keep unwelcome bugs in check and adding a wonderful dimension to my certified wildlife refuge,

I wasn't thinking about that when I decorated this Christmas tree this year but there was a tribute to my outside helpers in the white artificial doves I added.

It wasn't until I took this picture that I realized they looked like they were flying in from the outside, so appropriate for my house since right now my potted plants are wintering over inside,  giving my house a decidedly wild jungle theme. 

From my very green house to yours, may you have a very Merry Christmas!

Charlotte

Happy Poinsettia Day!

December 12 is officially Poinsettia Day, so designated by the US House of Representatives. July 2002, the House of Representatives approved a resolution honoring Paul Ecke Junior, who is considered the father of the commercial North American Poinsettia industry.

I remember growing up in Mexico City, Mexico and having Poinsettia trees in our backyard. Paul Ecke developed a technique that causes Poinsettia seedlings to branch, making what are trees in their original habitat more manageable potted bushes. The Ecke's technique remained a secret until the 1990s when a researcher published the formula.

Poinsettias are part of the Christmas holiday tradition. Poinsettias are the favorite Christmas flower in both the US and Canada. Their red bracts are actually leaves that have been turned red by being deprived of light.

Aren't they beautiful? Now imagine them the size of dogwood trees!

Charlotte

Welcome New Year 2015

"The merry year is born
Like the bright berry from the naked thorn."
~Hartley Coleridge

So much about life we can learn in our gardens. From the joy of the different seasons to what challenges us, a garden teaches patience, perseverance, determination and compassion. We are rewarded for efforts but not always in the way we expect. Garden flowers add beauty, and sometimes sustenance, and having a helping hand from another gardener makes the journey more enjoyable.

Here's to a new year in your garden being interesting, productive and fruitful. Happy New Year!

What are you hoping to learn this year?

Charlotte

Christmas Memories

"Like snowflakes, my Christmas memories gather and dance - each beautiful, unique and too soon gone."  ~Deborah Whipp

What are your favorite memories of this holiday season?

Charlotte

Dear Santa

So which was it this year, will Santa say you were naughty or nice?

Charlotte

Garden Vine Tree Trimming

There are many decorations unique to Christmas but none as iconic as the Christmas tree.

One of the more interesting, and simple, Christmas tree trimming ideas is to use dried garden vines. This Christmas tree is wrapped in wild grapevines:

 Nice in combination with a bough-covered barnwood garden bench.

What have you used from your garden to trim your Christmas tree?

Charlotte

Garden Bench Boughs

There are simple ways we can use what is already growing in our own gardens besides putting up a Christmas tree. 

In this handmade bench bough, three different locally-growing cedar branches were woven together, giving the bough different textures. The bough was woven with a beige wired ribbon then attached to the top of this barnwood garden bench:

These should last a week to 10 days before the needles dry. Once removed, compost or pile in a garden corner for winter wildlife cover.

Simple, clean and elegant way to quickly give your garden benches a little hint of the holidays.

Charlotte

Painted Santa Gourds

If you still have fall and Thanksgiving gourds around, here is a sweet way to recycle them for the holidays as table decorations and gifts: paint them as Santas.

These should be long-necked gourds, or gourds with at least a separation between a head and body. Here is my favorite to give you inspiration, starting with the tip of Santa's hat!

 

 Here's the painted gooseneck gourd's gloved hands and back:

Show us your painted Santa gourds, have you tried to paint one?

Charlotte

Plantable Wrapping Paper

Between tissue-filled gift bags to brown paper bag wrapping with jute cord, decorating gifts is almost as much of an art form as the gifts, and well wishes, themselves.

In the US, annual trash fro gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons, according to Use Less Stuff. Half of the paper America consumes is used to wrap and decorate consumer products, an approximate 25% increase in household waste from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.

One solution, plantable wrapping paper. I didn't get around to making any so I bought this package from bloomingbulb.com.

The paper sheets have flower seeds sandwiched in between. After decorating a gift, and the danger of frost is past in your planting area, the wrapping paper can literally be buried to grow flowers, either in a bed or a pot. Instructions included on each gift tag.

 Now that's a gift that keeps on giving!