Think of early January as early spring. Signs of hope await gardeners willing to look closely. Snowdrop bulbs and crocus are either just pushing out of the soil or waiting patiently under the surface. Buds on early-flowering branches are ready for snipping, bringing indoors and forcing into bloom.
Plus the days are getting longer – time to celebrate all the winter-blooming beauties that make the Pacific Northwest a great place for year round gardening.
WAKE UP WINTER WITH HELLEBORES: THE ALARM CLOCKS OF SPRING
There’s a new collection of hellebores – A heavenly plant, now newly improved. Sometimes you can fight Mother Nature. Hellebores are tough perennials that not only return year after year in Western Washington gardens but they also reseed on their own, thrive in our dry summers and wet winters and most important of all – hellebores are slug and deer resistant. (Okay one winter the buds were eaten off one of my Corsican hellebores, but that was just a browsing deer taste-testing as it walked around the garden.)
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