Bonjour Beaune

Bonjour family and friends. We arrived in Paris on Thursday after a pretty easy direct flight. After picking up our much too large car, we headed toward Burgundy. Note: if you want an automatic transmission in Europe, they will often give you a large car. 

We started driving and made a stop at Vaux le vicomte. It's a palace estate with some typically French gardens. 

 

 

From there, we finished our drive to Beaune, our base of operations in Burgundy. We checked in, got dinner and crashed. We slept about 12 hours.

Saturday, we visited the city market. It was a big market with lots of produce, meats, cheeses, olives, and a lot of handicrafts as well. It started raining, so we paid a visit to the Hôtel Dieu. It is a medieval hospital that was built to give the poor a place to receive free care. It was built​ in the 15th century and was in use as a hospital until a new modem hospital was built a few decades ago.

On Sunday, we started our day with a drive to some of the nearby wine villages, and the Rochepot Castle. It was built in the 15th century and then destroyed during the French revolution. It was later purchased by a former president and gifted to his son.  The family restored it.

Sunday afternoon we took a wine tour to several wineries in different villages. It was interesting to taste the same two grapes (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) at each tasting and comparing the effects of different areas, even only a few hundred meters apart. The variety of flavor was remarkable.

 

 

There's Always Room for More Bulbs

I'm finalizing my bulb order at Brent and Becky's. Since I've been ordering daffodils and tulips every year, I've decided to take a break from those and focus on more minor bulbs, including Eranthis cilicia (winter aconite) and Chionodoxa forbesii. They're both early spring and I'm hoping they naturalize under some of my smaller trees.

I'm also trying a couple less common bulbs including Triteleia 'Rudy' and Leucojum aestivum 'Gravetye Giant.' They're also fairly early spring.

The Spring Garden

The more years I've been gardening, the larger my bulb collection and the better the spring display. I still have a lot to learn about how to plant things with different bloom times for a constant show, but if nothing else, I am making progress in this area by sheer numbers of bulbs I plant each fall. Here are some of the things blooming now.
Daffodil 'Tahiti' - I absolutely love this flower in my tropical garden. The flowers are showy and long-lasting. They're not the most floriferous, but well worth planting. And of course, daffodils are of high value for their pest resistance.

This is a Trillium erectum that isn't quite flowering. Underneath it is an epimedium that I bought at a plant sale and later couldn't read my own writing as to the variety.  But it has a cute little orange flower.

Here's the front yard. The pink is Phlox subulata 'Red Wings'. It seems to be fool-proof and a good way to add bright spring color. I seem to recall it reblooming last year too. 

Here's the tropical garden with our Karl's Favorite pear blooming. The red tulips on the right (Tulipa 'Orange Shogun') have interesting speckled foliage.

And here is one of my bloodroot beds with  Magnolia 'Ann' in the middle, just about to bloom. 

My Favorite Time of Year

This is the time of year when I crouch down low to the ground every day, scouring the ground for signs of green shoots poking through. After a long, Wisconsin winter, I'm desperate for something green and fresh. My hard work each fall of planting hundreds of bulbs pays for itself in the spring when first a sea of crocuses appears in the lawn and beds (though shortly afterwards it's usually eaten by bunnies), then the dwarf irises (Iris reticulata 'Pixie' and 'Pauline'), then hyacinths and daffodils. The first hyacinths and daffodils just opened yesterday, the nicest day we've had this spring. I'm not counting the strangely warm days we had in February. And the blood root opened its first blossoms over the weekend as well. The birds are chirping, the lawn is getting green, and it's a joy to be alive.

Favorite Nurseries

The winter is when I look through all the nursery catalogs that come in the mail, read gardening books for inspiration, and make my lists of plants I want to purchase. Thus far I haven't ordered many plants by mail (bulbs being a notable exception). I like to visit nurseries in person in order to see the actual plants to make sure I actually like them, pick the healthiest ones, save on shipping costs, and have the opportunity to talk to nursery staff. Here are my favorite nurseries:

Perennials: The Flower Factory
This nursery has reasonable prices and an amazing selection of herbaceous perennials. In fact, that's all they sell. It's a quick drive down Hwy 14 from Madison. Their catalog is very organized (though it has no pictures), as are their plants.

Dwarf conifers and other interesting trees: Stonewall Nursery
This nursery is just past the turnoff to Flower Factory. It's a little hard to find anything or know what they have, but if you're just looking for something interesting, it's a wonderful place to browse and the owner is highly knowledgeable.

Annuals: Klein's
Located at the intersection of East Wash and Stoughton Rd, it's a bit of a hike from my house. But I go there at least once a year to buy many of my annuals. They have a wonderful selection of coleus, lantana, alyssum, snap dragons, and other annuals. They also have a decent selection of common shrubs, with a list posted on their website. I think their perennials are pricey and nothing special.

Bare root trees: Jung Garden Center
I get very excited when Jung's bare root room opens in about late March. I've been known to make an impulse fruit tree purchase here. I make my list from looking at their colorful catalog, though the garden center doesn't always get everything that the catalog lists. If you go and they're out of the tree you wanted, come back at a later date to check again because they do restock to some extent.

Seeds: Jung Garden Center
Go early to make sure they don't sell out of something you really wanted. I also buy a fair number of seeds from Seed Savers Exchange. You can either order from them by mail or buy from nurseries that sell them, such as Bruce Company. They also have a store at their farm in Iowa.

Bulbs: Brent & Becky's
I buy just about all my bulbs from this mail-order catalog. They do have a store and beautiful show gardens, but it's in Virginia so I probably won't ever make it there. You get a discount if you order early (by about July for fall-planted bulbs and by about March for spring-planted) and let them charge your credit card at the time of ordering. Daffodils are their first love and Brent wrote a lovely book about them.

Vegetable seedlings: The Dane County Farmers Market
I start most of our tomato, pepper, and eggplant plants under grow lights in our basement now, but before I did this we bought most of our vegetable seedlings from various farmers market vendors. You can find interesting heirloom varieties there that a nursery like Jung doesn't carry. And you're supporting local farmers.

The Last Flower Standing

Each year I look forward to the very last perennial that blooms in my yard: Chrysanthemum rubellum 'Venus'. It doesn't bloom until October and then stays in bloom until after frost. It starts out light pink and then gets darker as it ages. It responds well to cutting it back by a third in June (though that probably makes it bloom even a little later). It is a slowly-spreading clump that gets about 24" tall.

This year we've really only had one light frost and it's already mid-November. My zinnias are still alive and while the dahlias weren't quite dead, today I finally pulled them because the blooms didn't look great anymore. There's certainly more fall cleanup I can do, but for one thing I have a baby whose naps are of unpredictable length and for another, my compost bin is already overflowing. :)

Fall-Planted Bulbs

Each July or so I order my bulbs from Brent & Becky's to plant in October. Their pictures and descriptions are so enticing and it's so easy that I usually order quite a few. Click, click, click. And then the box arrives in October and I'm overwhelmed by the work of actually planting them. It's such a relief when I finish that task. It's worth it in the spring when green things poke out of the snow. Here's what I planted this year:
Narcissus 'Kiss Me' and 'Tripartite:'

Tulip humilis 'Lilliput' and 'Persian Pearl:' I'm not a huge fan of growing tulips in my yard because first of all, they're attractive to rabbits and there's nothing worse than watching your work and money go to waste when the rabbits mow your bulbs to the ground. And second, the foliage on most tulips is unattractive after the flowers are done and takes a long time to die so I can clean it up. But these tulips are super tiny and I thought they might be worth a shot. The Lilliput bulbs were about the size of a large pea.

Muscari aucheri 'Blue Magic:' I haven't grown grape hyacinth before because I thought the standard purple variety is too common. But this variety is an interesting blue color. Hopefully I don't regret planting these as I hear grape hyacinth can spread like crazy.

Crocus chrysanthus 'Goldilocks,' 'Cream Beauty,' and a bag of mixed varieties: I love growing crocuses because they're the first thing that starts growing in my garden in the spring. But most crocuses are rabbit candy. However, I've had pretty good luck with the chrysanthus species. And I figure that since they're cheap and fairly easy to plant, if I keep adding more each year I'll just overwhelm the rabbits with volume. I already have some of the 'Goldilocks' and I planted this new batch among my dwarf irises ('Pauline' and 'Pixie') because they bloom at the same time. I like how the purple and yellow look together.

Eremurus 'Orange Marmalade': I haven't grown any foxtail lilies before, but I thought they would be a good perennial addition to my tropical bed. The catalog says they get 4-5' tall. I'm not going to plant castor beans next year because the beans are highly poisonous and look like candy, so I put these at the back of the tropical bed to be the backdrop instead. We'll see if it works. I've found heights listed in catalogs to be unreliable.

One note from my spring-planted bulbs this year - all the 'Karma' series dahlias seem to grow 5-6' in my garden, not the 2-3' listed in the Brent & Becky's catalog. They're beautiful flowers and grow well, but are way taller than listed.