February Blooms in the Garden

If you hate February because it is wintery, dark, snowy and cold consider moving to southern California where the weather is always perfect and flowers bloom year round.

As I stroll the neighborhood, I see "winter bedding" flowers: pansies and snapdragons in full bloom alongside colorful primroses and stock, here and there a bed of florist cyclamen or sweet alyssum or even fibrous rooted begonias.

There are camellias in full bloom and deciduous magnolias, too. Here and there I'll see a stray rose bush blooming happily, though a bit straggly and in need of its annual trim. Rose pruning is done in midwinter here, which means January, although the temperatures are not those of a *real* winter at all.

Spring is really beginning here now with iris and the lovely ethereal nudicale poppies in those amazing glowing pastel shades. My neighbor's snowdrops, densely planted all in a wide band of a row, have just started to open. On my way to class on the UCLA campus, I often pass by a bed filled with perfect, pink flowered pigsqueak (that would be Bergenia for the purists among us) in full bloom. The foliage looks terrific here since it doesn't get battered and fungal during the "winter." Finally, I understand why it is so popular in certain garden books.

Just the other day I saw a lovely, if precocious, purple flowered azalea in full bloom and a few feet away from that eye popper there was a bird of paradise blooming in all its outrageous orange splendor. That's when I was sure I wasn't in the northeast, let alone Kansas, anymore. But golly, what's not to love about a bird of paradise in full bloom!

Did you know there is a real life bird that looks incredibly like this flower? I saw the namesake bird of paradise bird at the San Diego Zoo not too long ago. Someone had thoughtfully planted some of the flowers next to its aviary. That made me laugh out loud. Living proof. The San Diego Zoo folks even have the plant on their web site.

But still, it messes with my mind when I see something like that azalea/bird of paradise combination. I lose all sense of place and feel uneasy, perplexed, unsettled really, and not at all because of the color. After all, orange is the new pink, or so I've been telling myself for years, I like orange just fine. So it's not the color. When I see one of these oddball combinations I tell myself it is "edgy" and to embrace it, but ... sometimes I miss the spring flowers that really do follow snow and do things in order at the right time of year like they should and when spring flowers bloom along with the spring blooming, winter hardy woodies.... then I know everything is right with the world, kind of like the native flowers blooming in the woods just as the trees begin to leaf out. They work together -- and not just for show.

Do odd combinations bother you?

Happy Gardening! MORE FLOWER GARDENS ARTICLES and FLOWER GARDENS BLOGS Copyright February 6 2007 Barbara Martin All Rights Reserved