Winter can certainly wreck havoc on a garden, especially an edible landscape. However, the best-designed gardens always have interesting bones that are revealed in winter. A perfect example is the new 12-acre Heartland Harvest Garden, an expansion of Powell Gardens, located in Kingsville, MO about thirty miles east of Kansas City. I recently visited the garden on a cold, icy day, and even without snow cover it was beautiful. The bones of the garden were exposed, laid out in geometric patterns with arbors and trellises that added to its winter interest. It is a young garden, only a few years old and as the trees, shrubs and vines mature it will a garden to visit again and again. There is much to learn from its orchard, vineyard, and vegetable gardens.

From atop the silo, next to the Missouri barn interpretive resource center, the Quilt Garden’s patterns are still visible. Thankfully the foliage was left to ripen over the winter months making it a garden for all seasons. Each of four three-quarter acre squares are planted in traditional “Old Missouri” and Kansas Star” quilt patterns.

An apple sculpture sits at the entrance to the garden.

The gates by the vineyard are decorated with grape leaves.

The pruners perched on the post of the vineyard gate is a humorous touch.

The 45-foot silo is a viewing tower for visitors to see the garden.

This year’s theme at the show was “Passport to the World” and it featured gardens from India, Brasil, China,the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United States. Here are some of my pictures from the show.

A floral rug was a hit at the India garden.

Quite rightly, the Netherlands showed a spring bulb garden in all its beauty.

The Singapore garden was wall to wall orchids.

At the African garden a metal giraffe was decorated with glass bottles of orchids.

Brazil displayed a lush jungle with floral flamingos.

The China exhibit showcased tree peony in full bloom.

For a fun and funny front door this winter copy Gina Norgard’s design for a snowman. She hung three plain fraser wreaths in three desending sizes and then dressed them with a scarf, mittens and hat.

Frosty the Snowman Wreath

The abundance and the beauty of the wildflowers in mid summer made our drive up into the mountains outside of Aspen a pleasure.  We saw red poppies, blue lupine, white daisies, and lots of thistles.

The views from the mountain side were glorious.

This blue flower was blooming everywhere but I never did get its name.

Our native blue lupines are a favorite of mine.

Red poppies and white daisies blooming together.

What a difference flowers make in beautifying a city street.  Aspen shop owners and city planners have created a town where strolling or sitting on a bench is a pleasant and uplifting experience. Globes of flowers hang from street lamps, clusters of containers are grouped on street corners and storefronts display window boxes. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful country if every village, city or town added flowers to their streets?

I just returned from a week in the romantic city of Venice, Italy. Unless you hire a water taxi, Venice is a walking city, uniquely situated on a group of 114 islands, some only large enough to hold a single home. There are over 400 foot-bridges connecting the islands. 

Italians are very innovative when it comes to gardening. There is very little  unpaved ground, consequently most plants, annuals, vines, perennials and even trees grow in pots. Here are some pictures of the  houses covered in vines, window boxes, containers and peek-a-boo gardens I saw.

The flowers match the docking poles.

The lilac and peony path

It would be hard to find a more congenial twosome than late- blooming lilacs and early- blooming peonies. They are compatible in color, fragrance and form. If their beauty doesn’t hold your attention, their perfume will. They bring out the best in each other.

In late May and early June, when the lilacs and peonies bloom together, strolling the short walk from the house to the vegetable garden takes a lot longer. Everyone lingers savoring the beauty and fragrance they lavish on those who passes-by.

Lilacs have a traveling scent, strong, yet never overpowering.  The common and the classic lilac, Syringa vulgaris, is the strongest scented species, blooming in mid lilac season; it typically blooms from 16 to 20 days. Every few years an early warm spell pushes the first peonies into bloom and their flowering overlaps with the common lilacs. It is worth waiting for, but can’t be counted on. As the classics wane, Preston lilacs, (Syringa X prestoniae) open their blooms.  They extend the lilac season for another few weeks into June and perfectly partner the peonies. Most of us can’t get enough of the lilac’s pervasive scent and am always left wanting more.

Preston flowers differ slightly from classic lilacs; they have long, narrower, tubular florets that hang in plumes rather than larger flared sprays. Their scent, like most late bloomers, is spicy, like Rhone wine. They prolong the lilac season for another few weeks letting us down slowly. And their long bloom means they can host mid- and late- blooming peonies as well. Popular cultivars include ‘James Macfarlane’, ‘Donald Wyman’, and ‘Miss Canada’.

Along the lilac and peony path

Peonies, too, have memorable perfume. Breeders classify three distinct scents—honey, rose, and an unpleasant odor reminiscent of bitter medicine. The medicinal scent is not a traveling one. Keep your nose out of the blooms, and you’ll never notice. It is usually in the pollen-bearing cultivars. Single red peonies are among the worst. However, there are exceptions—‘America’, a favorite for long bloom and glorious flowers, boasts a lightly sweet breath.

Fully double rose types generally have the strongest and sweetest scent.  A clump of ‘Festiva Maxima’, an antique beauty bred in 1851, blooms with blousy bowls of double white flowers splashed with flecks of red, making it easily identifiable.  This early bloomer’s scent reminds some people of old roses, others of sweet talcum powder.

Peonies are perfectly content whether they are ever divided or not. They know their place in the garden and remain there without squawking.  (While root cuttings of lilacs are variable, incidentally, divisions of peonies produce exact replicas.)

a robin's nest

I have trouble knitting a sweater using both of my hands and yet a bird can weave a nest with its beak. It is remarkable and worth taking the time to admire its handicraft. I found this nest in an ornamental cherry tree. What a wonderful place to be born. Flower petals dropped into the nest make a soft and colorful mattress. Woven into the nest were a paper towel, green string, fresh and dried grass and lots of dried plant stems and twigs. It was truly a work of art.

Now is the time to dig up the earliest bloomers and divide them to start new colonies in other parts of the garden. It is easy to see where they would add color next winter. One clump of snowdrops yielded a dozen blooms on a dozen bulbs. I washed off the bulbs and gently pulled them apart before replanting them so they could settle new areas of the garden.

Snowdrops waiting to be divided and replanted.

Winter aconite comes along usually in February, slightly after the snowdrops begin their bloom. I adore its golden chalices glistening above a ruffled collar of foliage. As the corms mature they send up more flowers. I dug up a clump of nine blooms planning to divide them, only to discover they were all coming from one walnut-sized corm. That’s one hard working guy. The blooms stay for a few weeks departing before the snowdrops, but their foliage sticks around growing larger and more beautiful for another month or two.

One small corm of winter aconite can send up nine blooms.