Gardening : Seed Catalogue a Harbinger of Spring
The new seed catalogues have begun to arrive, continuing a tradition, going back 100 years or more, of tempting snowbound gardeners in the middle of winter with luscious pictures of flowers and vegetables. Of course, we’re not snowbound here in Southern California (though a few of us have come pretty close recently), but that doesn’t seem to make the arrival of these glossy harbingers of spring any less exciting.
The W. Atlee Burpee catalogue (Warminster, Pa. 18974) has been completely redone for 1989 and reads and looks more like a book.
The big news from Burpee is on the cover: its new coreopsis named Early Sunrise, which won the two most coveted awards in horticulture, the All-America Selections Gold Medal and the European Fleuroselect Gold Medal. This tough perennial is said to grow about 2 feet high and a bit wider, and if it’s anything like the last coreopsis bred to grow from seed, Sunray, it will be a winner, because Sunray was one of the easiest, longest flowering and brightest flowers I’ve ever grown. It too won a Fleuroselect medal.
Seed can be planted as early as the end of February, and plants will bloom by late spring or early summer and not quit until December.
Pictured just inside the cover are plans for flower beds. You can order all the seeds or plants necessary for one package price, which is a common way of selling plants in England--by the bed, so to speak. It’s an intriguing idea, though I think most gardeners could do as well on their own, shopping for plants at local nurseries. The price of plants in these packages works out to be a little more than a dollar each, but then these are very small plants. The collections of seeds needed to make a cutting garden or a garden of annual everlastings sounds fun and would make a clever gift.
There is no shortage of new flowers or vegetables from Burpee, including a white marigold named Snowdrift that looks (in the photographs) to be quite handsome, and a new early tomato named Good ‘n’ Early. Early tomatoes can be started indoors in January in California and planted out in February for a crop as early as late April, according to vegetable expert Bill Sidnam.
A genuine hit in Southern California is Burpee’s Madness strain of petunias, which seem to bloom all summer and don’t suffer in the smog or heat. Some can be found as bedding plants at nurseries, but until I got this catalogue, I had no idea how many there were--a total of 10, including one named Sugar Madness and a handsome Sheer Madness. A mix is sold as Total Madness.
Madness petunias grow but a foot tall and can spread to almost 2 feet across, and you will see little foliage between the mass of flowers. They are great in containers. Seeds should be sown in March or April, and they are best started in small pots or flats, then transplanted.
Other plants in the Burpee catalogue worthy of note include a greatly expanded listing of everlastings or “strawflowers,” a whole bunch of new ageratums (including one named Bavaria that grows to 20 inches tall, which lets it be planted farther back in the flower bed), a bunch of new clarkias (which are native to California), a neat chart that shows the height of all the various marigolds (useful for planning the summer garden) and, well, there’s a lot of stuff in the ’89 catalogue.
Park Seed Co.’s new catalogue (Cokesbury Road, Greenwood, S.C. 29647-0001) is nearly as full of treasures, though a new dwarf sunflower intrigued me most. Named Sunspot, it looks just like a full-size sunflower but reportedly grows only 2 feet tall. I can easily picture this standing lazily behind all the other summer flowers, heads nodding but slowly following the sun (sunflowers track the sun like radar dishes).
I’ve already sent in my order for a Lychnis coronaria named Angel Blush. This lychnis is one of the best perennials in my garden, staying neat and tidy (never dying down) year after year. The foliage is a crisp, felty gray (about 9 inches tall by 2 feet around) and the flowers are small but on graceful stems to 2 feet, and usually are white but, in this case, are a delicate petunia-pink. A packet contains a hundred seeds, so you could grow enough for every gardener you know and end up beloved by all.
Another potential hit from Park is an impatiens from the Super Elfin series, named Blue Pearl, that appears to be a very cool lilac-blue (though catalogue photos usually exaggerate color). This would be delightful in the shade. And, for the other extreme--the hottest, sunniest spot in the garden--they have a new vinca named Pink Panther, which must be the brightest pink yet in vincas.
On the vegetable front, they have two new seedless watermelons, Honey Red and Honey Yellow, and they also have a new flowering kale, which is a vegetable but is grown to look at, not eat. It’s named “Peacock White” and the leaves look like feathers or snowflakes. This one should be grown in fall and winter so seed will have to be saved a season or two if you order now.
That’s a sampling of what the two big seed companies offer, but there are others worth ordering for more unusual fare. My Thompson & Morgan catalogue (P.O. Box 1308, Jackson, N.J. 08527) hasn’t arrived yet, but this English firm’s offerings are always interesting. The Country Garden (Route 2, Box 455A, Crivitz, Wis. 54114) is operated by a former Californian and is one of my favorites, because its catalogue is full of great cut flowers. La Marche Seeds International (Box 190, Dixon, Calif. 95620) has all sorts of exotic vegetables and offers a new low-growing cardoon that is not only edible but perhaps the most striking plant you can grow in the garden, if the huge cardoons at the Huntington Botanical Garden’s herb plot are any example.
And, if you can’t find it anywhere else, try J. L. Hudson, Seedsman (P.O. Box 1058, Redwood City, Calif. 94064), who seem to sell seed for just about every plant that can be grown from seed, including Nicotiana sylvestris , an elegant tall perennial that also impressed me at the Huntington’s herb garden but eluded all my efforts to procure it.
But that’s what seed catalogues are for--places to find the new and unusual.
