Cool Flowers. Lisa Mason Ziegler

EightFinishing Touches for Easy KeepingNineAnd Now…the Rewards!TenGetting the Most and Letting Go

Appendix A:	USDA Hardiness Zone Map
Appendix B:	Index of Flowers, Zones and Seed Starting Information
Appendix C:	Resources

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

      Introduction

      A SURPRISING DISCOVERY

      Spring has never been the same since my first season full of snapdragons, bells of Ireland, sweet peas, sweet Williams, and many other beauties. These familiar names may be some of the most admired garden flowers, but, sadly, few people are successfully growing them in their own gardens today. It doesn’t have to be that way.

      In this book, I share the most surprising discovery I made while pursuing my career as a cut-flower farmer: planting cool-season hardy annuals in the fall and very early spring produces the easiest and earliest-blooming garden ever.

      Cool Flowers is all about how and when to plant such flowers – called hardy annuals – so that spring in the garden will be nothing short of sensational. The key is to allow them to get established during cool weather. Plant them in the right spot at the right time, nestle their roots deep into rich organic soil, and stand back. These hardy annuals need little intervention other than having someone gaze on their beauty, or perhaps cut a few for the kitchen table. Once their basic needs are met, this diverse yet easy group of flowers will change spring in your garden forever.

      Early summer harvests of hardy annuals.

      Success with Hardy Annuals

      Hardy annuals are those plants that typically only survive or produce a suitable crop of flowers for one year and are hardy enough to survive cold temperatures of winter. For many regions, these flowers can be planted in the fall to winter-over and bloom in spring – with a repeat planting in very early spring, if desired, to extend the blooming season well into summer.

      For the northernmost regions of the country, these are the flowers to plant on the very earliest spring days, long before the last frost date has arrived. These are the flowers you can plant when the gardening bug is itching the most – when the seed catalogs are arriving daily and all you want to do is to get out there and plant something.

      The truth is, nature stacks the cards for a hardy annual garden (and gardener) to succeed. In fall, winter and early spring, the temperatures are not soaring, so the garden worker is more likely to enjoy the task at hand. The plants are equally happy with the cooler temperatures, which means less stress on the plants. The soil does not dry out as fast, which means fewer watering chores – the rain and snow of fall and winter do the watering for you. Even better, pests and disease are not as active at this time of year.

      All of this means success for your garden. Flowers planted during cool weather will become well established and grow a strong root system long before they are expected to begin performing. These healthy plants will stand on a sturdy foundation that will carry them through spring and into summer, taking on heat, disease, pests and drought with little problem.

      Join in on the best-kept secret of gardening – fall, winter, and early spring planting of hardy annuals – for the best garden ever. It will restore your gardening hope and bring spring and summer blooms like you’ve never seen before.

       Lisa

      One

      HOW FLOWERS CHANGED MY LIFE

      My journey to flower farming reads almost like a gardening love story. Growing flowers and living what I consider “the good life” of faith, family and farming leaves little on my want list. It all started because I got the guy and he came with a big garden. Actually, it was far more than just a garden – it was a family homestead that also came with a strong tradition and history of gardening. I was totally smitten from the start by him and this way of life.

      Growing up, gardening experiences at my house were all about shady conditions. Our yard came alive with bed after bed of beautiful azaleas and rhododendrons. I remember my dad bringing home the many coffee cans, each with a little baby azalea started by a friend, and our family spending a Saturday planting them until dark. There wasn’t much tending required afterwards, just the annual mulching with pine straw that made itself available falling from our pine trees. Easter egg hunts and spring family birthday parties always went hand in hand with the white, pink, red and purple blossoms of azaleas in the background.

      As an adult, weekly visits to my grandma’s home began to spark my interest in gardening. She shared little bits and pieces of her garden with me, and that led me to the library to explore garden books and magazines. I never dreamed I would be so moved and stirred by all the possibilities that a garden could hold. I was wooed by the beautiful photos and wanted a garden of my own.

      Steve and Lisa live in Newport News, Virginia, on the Ziegler family homestead with their Golden Retriever, Babs.

      While exploring my newfound hobby of gardening, I met Steve and asked him out. My interest in him at this point was based solely on his good looks and a friend’s suggestion that he was a good one. Little did I know the treasure I would find in both him and his garden.

      During our first dinner date, it didn’t take long for our conversation to come around to gardening. Living as I was under a deep canopy of oak trees, my little experience had been strictly in shade gardening. Turned out he was quite the vegetable grower. So after our second lunch date, we went by his house to see what he was growing.

      Eureka! His little spot of paradise was sitting right smack dab in full sun! I mean no shade in sight – to someone like me who had been searching for a ray of sunshine in her garden, this was incredible. His home was definitely a bachelor’s pad, but the garden, oh my goodness – paradise. Most of the property was in beautiful vegetable garden, and there were many plantings around that his grandmother and other family members had started over the years. I just wanted to explore and see what was growing.

      Just imagine discovering this spot while living in a city of 180,000 that had little if any undeveloped open land. Steve’s home had belonged to his grandparents. It was one of the homes built in the 1930s in what is known as “The Colony” in the Mennonite community located in Newport News,