The Wildflower Wand and the February Fake-Out:

My gardening friend John Whittlesey, of Canyon Creek Nursery outside of Oroville, is working on a landscape design job in the Stonyford area. He wrote to me in mid-February describing his experience of driving to work one morning and not seeing a wildflower in sight, then coming home that same afternoon and “like a magic wand had proclaimed flowers, there were masses of the white popcorn flower and a hillside with flows of the yellow buttercup among the purple shooting star. I swear they weren’t there this morning.” The handful of warm days indeed waved like a magic wand over even the mountain areas of the North State mid-February bringing out Manzanita and almonds, fiddlenecks and blue dix. This stretch of mid-winter warmth is not an uncommon seasonal event – gardeners often refer to it as the February planting window.

Funnily enough, this past weekend, I was talking to a non-gardener who referred to the spring-like days as the February Fake-out – just a teasing taste of what will not be here for another month and a half or so. Still, it’s a nice illustration of how gardener’s world views are all about finding opportunity. Looking back at my garden journal from last year, March is indeed full of erratic temperatures, rain and continued snow and frost. But it inevitably marches us on to the real spring that will arrive in April and May. (more…)

“I like to think they are shy,” David Walther, co-owner with his wife Cathy, of Spring Fever Nursery in Yankee Hill tells me, speaking of his beloved hellebores. “Many varieties of hellebores have flowers that face downward because as winter bloomers they are trying to protect their pollen from wind and rain and snow until pollination takes place. But the difference between the back of a hellebore’s so-called bloom, and its wide - often surprisingly beautiful - face can be a night and day difference.” Photo: A bowl of floating hellebore blooms plucked from the array at Spring Fever Nursery - included are Helleborus orientalis, Helleborus niger and many Hellborus x hyrbidus in single, semi-double and fully double forms.
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It’s mid- February and even in the colder sections of the North State the time is now for planning and even planting your spring and summer vegetable seeds and starts – inside and out. On Monday evening February 15th, I hosted a special edition of I-5 LIVE on Northstate Public Radio (91.7 fm KCHO in Chico and 88.9 fm in Redding) from 8 to 9 pm to chat about edible gardening and getting ready for the spring vegetable garden.

My guests for the evening were David Grau, owner of Valley Oak Tool, former market gardener and organizer of the Chico Organic Gardening Series; also, Wayne Kessler, co-owner with his wife Laurel, of Shambani Organics, a specialty herb and vegetable start grower based in Shingletown, California.
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The Gateway Science Museum is opening to the public on Saturday February 27th – with a ribbon cutting at 10:00 am and grand opening celebration activities for adults and children alike throughout the day - throughout the whole museum. Photo: The Gateway Science Museum’s logo is derived from the skylight at the top of the front tower of the new building’s entrance. That tower represents a volcano - such as the historic Mt. Yana or Lassen Peak or Mt. Shasta, which have been ‘wayfinders’, or directional markers, for people in the North State for 1000s of years.
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Age in a garden is a wonderful thing – worthy of celebrating. Age in a gardening publication in my mind is to be celebrated equally because it is through gardening publications that the ephemera of gardens and gardeners live on in perpetuity. Pacific Horticulture, one of the preeminent publications for gardeners in the West Coast states, turns 35 this year. And as with good gardens and gardeners generally, this gardening publication just gets better with age. Photo: Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ on the cover of the first 2010 issue of Pacific Horticulture, which sports the magazine’s bold new type face.
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