The easiest, cheeriest thing you can do is plant violas in early spring. They like sun and cool weather and will bloom profusely till the summer gets hot. Their good points:
1) The individual flowers are cute as can be, held neatly above the leaves and borne abundantly.
2) They are fragrant, faintly but definitely, of violets.
3) Lovely blues, yellows, purples and bicolors. Gardeners who love blue have no comparable bedding plant.
4) And then there’s black: the variety called Bowles Black is a deep satiny purple black with a tiny yellow eye. As black as any flower.
5) You can eat them. They don’t taste like much, but a salad strewn with black violas sets a certain tone.
6) They can take spring weather. In this they are far better than pansies, which are like violas, only larger, and get weather beaten. (A general point: plants that bear smaller flowers in profusion are usually more garden worthy than plants with fewer but larger flowers.)
7) No fuss. No need to deadhead. Spring rains being what they are, there’s hardly a need to water. Just let the violas weave through emerging perennials or push them aside to plant summer bedding plants.
8) Their stems are just long enough to cut. A single rose with a couple of violas in a tiny vase is all anyone really needs.
9) When the summer gets hot violas get lanky and peter out. Pull them up. At that time of year a bit of clean up feels good.
1) The individual flowers are cute as can be, held neatly above the leaves and borne abundantly.
2) They are fragrant, faintly but definitely, of violets.
3) Lovely blues, yellows, purples and bicolors. Gardeners who love blue have no comparable bedding plant.
4) And then there’s black: the variety called Bowles Black is a deep satiny purple black with a tiny yellow eye. As black as any flower.
5) You can eat them. They don’t taste like much, but a salad strewn with black violas sets a certain tone.
6) They can take spring weather. In this they are far better than pansies, which are like violas, only larger, and get weather beaten. (A general point: plants that bear smaller flowers in profusion are usually more garden worthy than plants with fewer but larger flowers.)
7) No fuss. No need to deadhead. Spring rains being what they are, there’s hardly a need to water. Just let the violas weave through emerging perennials or push them aside to plant summer bedding plants.
8) Their stems are just long enough to cut. A single rose with a couple of violas in a tiny vase is all anyone really needs.
9) When the summer gets hot violas get lanky and peter out. Pull them up. At that time of year a bit of clean up feels good.
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