If you can dream every square inch of a garden, every day of its year, and every flavor of its season, then you can make it happen.
— Monty Don
This webpage reviews plants, materials, and techniques used in a midwest garden located in Bloomington, Indiana. The gardener is a "transplant" from decades of gardening in Southern California, so this is a challenge dealing with new environments and microclimates. View the garden on a walk-though, May 2023.
By the way, what's up with the quote above? Who is Monty Don? He's a presenter at the BBC's weekly "Gardeners' World" TV show, and if you give him a chance he could become your gardening guru. Check him out at his website.
Somehow this cherry cultivar, Prunus 'Hally Jolivette,' leapt out among all the other plants at the local garden center and it seemed exactly the right plant for a bare spot in the front garden. Named for the hybridizer's wife in 1948, it's been given a rapturous review in Horticulture Magazine.
Several other Pieris varieties didn't make it through our frosty winter in south-central Indiana but 'Cavatine' is rated for USDA Zone 5. Here's hoping it likes it here. Smaller than other Pieris varieties, its flowers look like small pearls when it blooms in early spring.
Another plant named for the wife of the hybridizer...must be a thing. This rhododendron, cousin of azaleas, blasts its purple blooms in early to mid spring. Most sources say it blooms in May to June but here it opened up in late April, neatly avoiding heavier frosts.
I like 'Delnashaugh' daffodils because they're so different from the standard yellow blooms. This double-flowered variety has ivory-white petals surrounding a ruffled apricot-colored center. I start them in pots in a protected garage in November and they're ready to bloom first thing in April. White Flower Farm carries the bulbs.
First blossom
I'm not sure what its name is, but it's a standout among other typically orange colored clivia blossoms.
In our California garden it grew happily outdoors year-around, but here it's so tender that I grow it in the greenhouse only, and even there on really cold nights when the heater can't keep up, I cover it with a towel. So far it's survived.
Without regular feedings it thrives. It could use a dose of fish emulsion or seaweed fertilizer at least once a year, though.
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