What We’re Working On Now
Spring doesn’t start in spring. It starts now — in the quiet months, in the mud and the cold frames, while the park rests and the days are short.
This is a look at the work of the season: what’s happening in the beds right now, and what should be happening as the months turn toward May. No two years are exactly alike — weather edits every plan — but this is the shape of it. This is how a spring gets built.
Happening Now
Fall: The Planting Season
Bulbs going in
Tulips, Dutch iris, and giant alliums are tucked into the soil now, while it’s still workable. They’ll root quietly all winter, asking for nothing, and arrive in spring like they were always there.
Waking up the spring stars
Ranunculus and anemone — the flowers that will carry Mother’s Day — are pre-sprouted and planted under cover. They like the cold more than anyone expects. So do we, a little.
Seed starting, cool and slow
Sweet peas, lupine, columbine, and foxglove are started now and grown on cool and slow — in cold frames and bright, chilly corners, never rushed. Slow seedlings make sturdy plants, and sturdy plants make May.
Sowing the cottage color
Hardy annuals — larkspur, nigella, poppies, calendula, and their friends — are sown straight into the beds to sleep in the soil through winter. They wake earlier than anything sown in spring, and they bloom like they mean it.
Planting for future springs
Peonies, lilac, and other perennials and shrubs go in now too. Some won’t truly show themselves for a few years. That’s alright. A garden is a promise you keep making.
Dahlia work
The season just ended, but the dahlias aren’t done with us. Tubers are lifted, divided, and stored away in the quiet — next summer’s color, sleeping in boxes until spring.
The Calendared Plan
From Fall Planting to Mother’s Day
October – November
The Big Planting
Almost everything for spring happens now. Bulbs go in, ranunculus and anemone are pre-sprouted and planted, sweet peas and hardy annuals are sown, and the slow seed starting begins. It’s muddy, hopeful work — the whole spring, planted in a few short weeks.
December – January
Growing On, Cool and Slow
The quietest stretch of the year. Young plants grow on in the cold, building roots instead of height. Sweet peas get pinched to grow bushy. Columbine seed is sown. Mostly, we watch, water sparingly, and wait — winter does the real work.
Late January – February
The Second Sowings
Snapdragons and stock are sown again, on the classic timing — the batch most likely to be perfect right on Mother’s Day. Insurance, and optimism, in seed trays.
March
Planting Out
As the soil wakes, the winter’s seedlings move outside: sweet peas to their fence, poppies and foxglove to their beds, ranunculus under frost cloth on cold nights. The park starts to look like a garden again.
April
First Color
Tulips open. Ranunculus and anemone begin. Lilac perfumes the paths. Every week something new — the season stretching and yawning its way awake.
May
Mother’s Day, and the Main Attractions
It all arrives. Mother’s Day — Sunday, May 9 — brings the cutting beds at their best, and then the park borders take over: Russell lupine, columbine, iris, and giant alliums, the main attractions of May. Everything planted in November, blooming at last.
What It’s All For
Why November Matters
Mother’s Day color
Bouquets gathered steps from where they grew — ranunculus, anemone, sweet peas, and the spring cutting beds, timed for the second Sunday of May.
May’s main attractions
Russell lupine, columbine, iris, and giant alliums in the park borders — tall, unhurried, and impossible to walk past quickly.
A fragrant welcome
Sweet peas at the entrance, so the first thing the park gives you is a scent — before the color, before the music, there’s that.
Follow along as it grows — What’s in Season keeps track of what’s blooming, all season long.
Hues Floral Park, A little world apart.