Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical advice on growing food and flowers, improving soil, and making the most of small spaces. Start anywhere — the garden will meet you.
(Hepalica Hepatica; H. triloba of Gray) Crowfoot family Flowers - Blue, lavender, purple, pinkish, or white; occasionally, not always, fragrant; 6 to 12 petal-like, colored sepals (not petals, as they...
(Peramium repens; Goodyera repens of Gray) Orchid family Flowers - Small, greenish white, the lip pocket-shaped, borne on one side of a bracted spike 5 to 10 in. high, from a fleshy, thick fibrous roo...
(Iris versicolor) Iris family Flowers - Several, 2 to 3 in. long, violet-blue variegated with yellow, green, or white, and purple veined. Six divisions of the perianth: 3 outer ones spreading, recurve...
(Gerardia purpurea) Figwort family Flowers - Bright purplish pink, deep magenta, or pale to whitish, about 1 in. long and broad, growing along the rigid, spreading branches. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla f...
(Corallorhiza multiflora) Orchid family Flowers - Dull brownish purple, about 1/2 in. high; 10 to 30 borne in a raceme 2 to 8 in. long. Petals about the length of sepals, and somewhat united at the ba...
(Myosotis Palustris) Borage family Flowers - Pure blue, pinkish, or white, with yellow eye; flat, 5-lobed, borne in many-flowered, long, often 1-sided racemes. Calyx 5-cleft; the lobes narrow, spreadi...
(Euphorbia corollata) Spurge family Flowers - (Apparently) white, small, borne in forked, long-stalked umbels, subtended by green bracts; but the true flowers are minute, and situated within the white...
(Cornus florida) Dogwood family Flowers - (Apparently) large, white or pinkish, the four conspicuous parts simulating petals, notched at the top, being really bracts of an involucre below the true flo...
(Cypripedium hirsutum; C. pubescens of Gray) Orchid family Flower - Solitary, large, showy, borne at the top of a leafy stem to 2 ft. high. Sepals 3, 2 of them united, greenish or yellowish, striped w...
(Potentilla Canadensis) Rose family Flowers - Yellow, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, growing singly on long peduncles from the leaf axils. Five petals longer than the 5 acute calyx lobes with 5 linear bracts...
(Silene Virginica) Pink family Flowers - Scarlet or crimson, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, a few on slender pedicels from the upper leaf-axils. Calyx sticky, tubular, bell-shaped, 5-cleft, enlarged in frui...