-- Anais Nin, 1903-1977, French-born American author

Spring Shipping Starts April 4

        We're eager to start, but Mother Nature insists we wait. It's still freezing here in Michigan, and we don't want your tender bulbs to get frost-damaged on their way to you. We DO ship to the warmest zones first, and we appreciate your patience.

One Week Only: Save 10% on ALL of Our Amazing Dahlias!

        We hate to say it, but our spring sales have been so sluggish we're getting a little worried. To help inspire you to order (or order more!) we're discounting ALL of our dahlias -- but only for ONE WEEK. That's right, for the next seven days you'll save 10% on our:
        most expensive dahlias ('Sellwood Glory', 'Jane Cowl'),
        best-selling dahlias ('Thomas Edison', 'Prince Noir'),
        oldest dahlias (atropurpurea, 'White Aster'),
        first-time dahlias ('Popular Guest', 'Promise', 'Red Kaiser'),
        dahlia samplers,
        and all the rest of our easy, time-tested, bouquet-licious dahlias -- from now till midnight Wednesday, March 9.
        Go ahead and share the good news with your friends and neighbors (we'd be grateful!). But don't forget the clock is ticking, and our rarest dahlias will sell out quickly -- so order soon!

And Don't Miss Our Other Summer-Blooming Treasures

        Enjoy a cornucopia of heirloom beauty this summer with our perennial daylilies and iris, fragrant tuberoses, small-flowered glads, graceful crocosmias, pixie rain lilies, hardy St. Joe's amaryllis, classic milk-and-wine lily, and one absolutely stunning canna.
        Can't decide? Try our easy spring-planted samplers, including our money-saving Intro to Heirlooms and Kelly's Pink Ribbon sampler. They're guaranteed to please!

2 New Web-Only Specials: Crimson King and Quaker Lady

        We're proud to announce that two of the first fruits of our urban micro-farming adventure are now available online:
        'Crimson King' -- a fragrant, reblooming, vigorously multiplying Victorian iris of deep claret-purple, and
        'Quaker Lady' -- a charming, profusely-flowering, Bungalow-era iris in an unforgettable blend of lavender, fawn, and gold.
        These classic iris have held their places in the hearts of American gardeners for a century or more – and they deserve a spot in yours!

Dahlias in Hollywood

        Megyn Price is not only a funny, talented actress (she stars in CBS's popular Rules of Engagement), she's an organic gardener and a recent dahlia convert. Here's an excerpt from Steve Aitken's interview with her in the April 2011 issue of one of our favorite magazines, Fine Gardening:
        Steve: "Does your love of gardening extend to the ornamental side of things?"
        Megan: "Not usually. But recently, I was on my way to an audition for a really big movie. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a garden center with this sign: 'Clearance -- Everything 75% Off.' So I hit the brakes, pulled over my little Toyota Prius, went in, and saw the most beautiful dahlias, in every color of the rainbow. I bought as many as I could, jammed them into my car, and went to the audition. I parked in this insanely expensive Beverly Hills parking lot just because it was shaded. So I had all my windows down and my dahlias in there. And the whole time waiting for my audition, I kept saying, 'Can we hurry it up?' And they said, 'Oh, do you have another meeting?' And I said, 'No. I have dahlias in my car!'"
        Steve: "Did you get the part?"
        Megan: "I did not get the part. I think maybe my focus was elsewhere. But I still have the dahlias."

A Master's Advice for Choosing Daylilies

        Christopher Lloyd grew thousands of plants in his world-famous gardens at Great Dixter, and he evaluated them all with the discriminating eye of an artist. For choosing daylilies that look great in your garden -- not just in a catalog close-up -- he offered this advice in Christopher Lloyd's Garden Flowers:
        "Don't be carried away by a single bloom seen out of context....
        "While being dazzled by large blooms, remember that small-flowered Hemerocallis are the most prolific. Furthermore, their individual flowers tend to die off discreetly, whereas large-flowered kinds really need dead-heading every morning, to prevent the colony from becoming slovenly....
        "As with so many 'improved' plants, enlarged flowers are often matched by an increase in leaf size and coarseness. Watch out for this. Then again, the naked flowering stem should present its blooms well above the foliage, this being the graceful effect that gives the flowers style...."
        To see exactly what he's recommending, try a couple of our graceful, prolific, Christopher-Lloyd-style daylilies in your garden this spring.

Better Blooming Rain Lilies in Pots

        "How can we get our rain lilies in pots to bloom en masse instead of a few at a time?" we asked our good customer and rain lily breeder John Hubstenberger of Jonesboro, Arkansas.
        "Almost all rain lilies bloom well in pots," John told us, "and most varieties will bloom repeatedly if the growing season is long enough. By stressing the bulbs, it is possible to synchronize their bloom cycles -- and 50 Zephyranthes in full bloom in a 10-inch pot are really a sight to see. However, in my experience maximum bloom occurs when the plants get lots of TLC, regular watering, and fertilizing when in active growth. I like to use Carl Pool's BR-61 with trace minerals for fertilizer. I think warm temperatures, lots of sun, and regular watering give more flowers in the long run than drought and flood. (Some varieties seem to benefit from a bit of chilling when dry and dormant, too.) Of course Mother Nature gives them drought and flood, but in a pot maximum bloom comes from consistent care."

Bomb-Sniffing Tulips: Coming Soon to a Garden Near You?

        "Could airport security gardens be the wave of the future?" asked a recent article in the New York Times. "How about a defensive line of bomb-sniffing tulips in Central Park … or lining the streets of Baghdad?" Though it may sound far-fetched, researchers at Colorado State University report that they've "created the platform for just such a plant-kingdom early warning system: plants that subtly change color" by draining chlorophyll from their leaves when exposed to air-borne particles of TNT. "Plants are uniquely suited by evolution to chemical analysis of their environment, in detecting pests, for example," the article explains. "When modified to sense TNT, the most commonly used explosive, [plants in the lab] reacted to levels one one-hundredth of anything a bomb-sniffing dog could muster." There's still work to be done "to make sure the plant's signal is clear enough and fast enough to be of use," but researchers hope to have response time down from hours to minutes within three years. Read more here.

Tiny Crocus Make it Big in Martha Stewart Living and Garden Gate

        Animal-resistant and happily multiplying in gardens from Vermont to Texas, Crocus tommasinianus has been in the spotlight recently.
        Martha Stewart Living opens its March 2011 issue with a full-page photo taken by Martha herself of tommies under the pin oak allée at her home in Bedford, NY. "Every autumn," she writes, "I plant spring-flowering bulbs -- tucking the small, seemingly lifeless objects along pathways, at the bases of trees, and amid perennials and shrubs in my garden. Every spring, I wait with anticipation for each of them to bloom, a sure indication that a new season has arrived, a new cycle of growth has started."
        And in Garden Gate, tommies are the April 2011 "Editor's Choice." There's a full-page photo, text that draws from our catalog and website, and a planting plan for an "Early Spring Surprise path-side combo" that includes tommies, snowdrops, Pulmonaria 'Bertram Anderson', and the narrow-leaved hosta 'Stiletto'.
        Tommies are wonderfully inexpensive, and if you order them (or any of our other fall-planted bulbs) NOW for delivery this fall, you'll get them at last fall's prices!

How to Love Gardening When Winter Drags On and On

        "February and March are my favorite gardening months," our good customer Carole Bolton wrote us last week -- from snowed-in Coldwater, Michigan, where temperatures were well below freezing and the sun hadn't been seen for days. Had she lost her mind? Quite the contrary! For years now, Carole has been forcing hyacinths indoors every winter -- lots of hyacinths -- and this year's "are especially beautiful," she wrote. "They're healthy, tall and fully flowered. They make the freezing rain and weather advisories bearable."
        To learn how to work magic like that yourself, see our Forcing How-To and our Forcing Newsletter Archives.

Did You Miss Our Last Newsletter? Read It Online

        February's articles included gardening in team colors, Byzantine glads in Prince Charles' garden, a $567 snowdrop, major library collects our "important" catalogs, Ryan Gainey's heirloom glads, discount garden books, and more. You can read all of our back-issues -- by date or by topic -- at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives.asp .

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