April 2010 — spring ahead!

GREEN SCENE GOTTI KELLEY

‘Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination.” C.W. Earle, 1897. True words, and still valid today.

Combing out the tangles of winter in your lawn, raking is an act of faith to awaken the grass to warmth and light. Now you must review the arsenal of granules, pellets and powders to eradicate whatever needs to be eradicated. Just keep in mind, each plant of crabgrass has some 10,000 seeds. That has to be the first to go. Rumor persists that healthy grass can crowd out the weeds in it, but this seems to be an eternal battle.

Have you encountered the sickening feeling of inadequacy when looking at your garden and comparing it with those in magazines? Don’t let it get to you! No matter how hard you worked or how knowledgeable you are, anticipate that something can go against you. Lots of reasons lurking out there that could have contributed. But, you can always blame the weather for anything that goes wrong and bury your mistakes in the compost pile.

A plant that should not disappoint you is the Incrediball hydrangea, the “Annabelle on steroids.” It has the biggest flowers and the strongest stems of any of the Annabelle cultivars. The explosive blooms open to a pale shade of green and mature to a pure white. When the warm summer weather is here, Annabelle begins blooming and continues to bloom into the autumn months. This hydrangea is compact, standing 4-5 feet tall fully grown, and thrives in sun to part shade and in many types of soil conditions.

One of my favored plant groups is allium; a summer garden without them is like a cake without frosting. Alliums are super-easy bulbs just made to pop up in a shrub border or on the patio. The flowers are charming, be they 3-inch globes packed with up to 50 starry florets or my favored Allium Schuberti with an outstanding 12-inch starburst of amethystand emerald-colored stars. You will enjoy watching them turn from little green nubs to brilliant outstretched fireworks. I saw them once in a unique display garden, in autumn, spray-painted hot pink and limegreen, looking so believable that I was almost fooled. Bizarre ideas appear more successful than boring ones.

And if you think daffodils are easy, just wait until you grow alliums.

A noteworthy summer flower is the pale-yellow cosmos, different from the pink or white ones we are familiar with. If you deadhead the spent flowers, they will bloom all summer. Like a vampire, they are tough to kill; unlike a vampire, they love full sun and a wooden stake for support — otherwise, they will topple in heavy winds.

Another pretty little flower is the nasturtium. Very, very easy to grow, blooming all summer with smiling orange-andyellow faces, trailing and meandering over

walls. The flowers and green leaves are edible, imparting a strong peppery flavor to your salad.

One more thing as we say goodbye to the golden yellow blossoms of forsythia, much under-appreciated for what they are.

Talk about a carefree plant, diseasefree, very drought tolerant, displaying a reliable bloom year after year, unpretentious, but not very fashionable. Still, plant some forsythia, the timeless arbiter of spring, and spread its joy. We really want those yellow sprays to propel us out of our winter doom.

What to do now:

When applying granular fertilizer, make sure it does not contact plant foliage; it will burn the leaves.

Start your annual and perennial seeds now.

Prune roses when the buds begin to swell.

Cut back red twig dogwood almost to ground level.

Set out supports where needed before the plants get too large.

Happy spring!

Gotti Kelley, past president of the Navesink Garden Club, is on the board of the Garden Club of New Jersey.