Early May 1999

“Some fellers love to Tip-Toe Through the Tulips,”

-Ira Gershwin: ‘Bidin’My Time’ from Girl Crazy (1930)

Some despise tulips, many adore them.  One of the latter was the English writer Walter Savage Landor.  Like many of his countrymen in the early nineteenth century, he found living in Florence, Italy preferable to his natal land.  Perhaps the fact that for three decades this enabled him to make his own wine had something to do with it.  Or it was possibly his enthusiasm for gardening, although like George Bernard Shaw, he did not want his flowers to be picked.  Landor  was also known for his short temper.  One spring his cook made the error of serving a singularly poor meal.  Landor lived up to his middle name by throwing the cook out of the window, only to remember, too late, what lay below.  “My God, I forgot!” he cried, “Our best tulip bed is under that window”. 

As the tulips finish blooming, dead head the dying flowers, retaining the foliage to feed the bulb for next year’s display.  Gardeners, as always, have to think ahead.  This also holds true with the Plant of the Year selected by the Perennial Plant Association.  The Pincushion Plant –Scabiosa- was an old garden favourite that seemed in recent years to have slipped in popularity.  Better selections have been made and we are now presented with S.columbaria: ‘Butterfly Blue’.  These very hardy, pest-and-disease-free perennials flourish in a sunny border where their attractive blue blooms do, indeed, attract butterflies.  The professional Perennial Plant Association offers more information at their website: www.perennial.org.  Incidentally, the same professionals here in Ontario can obtain more information on nursery and landscape plants from an Ontario Government service, but –being of a bureaucratic bent- you had best be prepared to really use your computer’s keyboard.  The address is: http://www.gov.on.ca/omafra/english/crops/hort/crops/hort/nursery.html.

Planting annuals and perennials with memories of past weedy seasons?  “Weed Barrier” by Quest Plastics lives up to its claim to stop weed growth.  Cultivate the bed, apply a granular fertilizer such as So-Green Annual or Perennial food, then spread the sheet, cut ‘X’s in it to plant through and the problem is solved.  Unlike the highly objectionable old-fashioned sheeting, this is pervious to water and air but stops the weeds.  Attractive enough on its own but can be covered with any mulch if desired, it comes in 3’ x 50’ rolls in garden centres and outlets such as Canadian Tire.

One gets a certain feeling that another new product will meet a certain resistance amongst retailers.  The Japanese Konaide-nekochan or “kitties please don’t come here”, from the Matsushita Electric Works will repel cats from your garden with “supersonic waves”.  These are said to be almost inaudible to gardeners’ ears.  The EC800G (to use the formal name) comes in at ¥13800, the equivalent of around $200.

French rose fancier Henri-Desire Landru may have been nothing to look at, but he knew how to cultivate his favourite blooms.  In May -if you’ve not already taken care of it- fertilize the bushes with any granulated brand of fertilizer and then mulch with three or more inches of cattle or sheep manure.  Hillview’s “MooPoo” comes readily to mind for the former, but strangely, they have declined to furnish some similar witty name to manure contributed by sheep.  M. Landru, alas, never had the chance to use either of these, as he kept a date in February 1922 with Madame Guillotine.  He had dispatched 10 rich widows for their money in the years 1915-19.  He is remembered not for his roses, but instead as the infamous “Bluebeard”.  Of course, most rosarians are perfectly normal people and not prone to such murderous manners.

If it’s a typical Canadian spring and the chores brought on by the garden seem too much, head south and west to Monterey, California.  There, in the somewhat unfortunately-named Castroville, over our Victoria Day weekend, they will celebrate their Annual Artichoke Festival.  The very first Artichoke Queen was none other than Marilyn Monroe just over four decades ago.  California has retained its reputation for female pulchritude, and for those with no interest in such things, well, they can gorge themselves silly on the other pride of the locale.