2003 Plant Delights Nursery March Newsletter

Spring is here! After a wet and cold winter, spring has finally arrived at Plant Delights. Because of the prolonged cold period, we seem to have escaped those nasty late spring frosts that often plague us. Our typical last frost date is April 10, but it looks like we are not going to freeze after March 15 this year. We have had the best magnolia flowering in memory, and have not had to spend time covering tender perennials that emerged too early. Spring is truly the savior for those of us that are severely afflicted with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and boy did we need it this year.

So far, we are still able to keep up with spring orders and get them out the door promptly. We are, however approaching the April bottleneck, where everyone wants to order and plant in the same week. Please be patient during that period, as we will process your order as quickly as possible.

It’s been great to meet many of you as I traveled around the country this spring. Our February trillium expedition to Louisiana was fabulous, although it was tough to watch hundreds of thousands of Trillium being bulldozed for road widening projects. We did manage to find four species, T. cuneatum, T. foetidissimum, T. ludovicianum, and T. gracile. In between the constant flooding, we did get to visit some great gardeners including the amazing octagarian nurserywoman Margie Jenkins of Amite, Mississippi and two fabulous native plant lovers Jack and Ella Price of Blanchard Louisiana.

On my second North Florida trip of the spring, I was fortunate to spend time with palm guru, Dr. Kyle Brown. Not only was Dr. Brown’s garden a truly amazing place to study an incredible array of hardy palms, but we spent one day in the field studying the palms of the region….again working around some very serious flooding.

The trip to Denver a week later was the first trip in many months that I didn’t see flooding…at least not from rain. I arrived the first day that the Denver airport was re-opened after their 90-year record 36″ snowfall. You could almost watch the rivers rise as we enjoyed three days in the 60’s. Denver had been under a severe drought with only 7 inches of rain during all of 2002. Fortunately, after participating in a lively panel discussion on invasive plants, I was able to fly out just before the next 12″ snowfall began. It’s always great to spend time with great plants people like Panayoti and Gwen Kelaidis. They even introduced me to a great new pastime…watching gardens thaw. If you haven’t been to the Denver Botanical Garden in a while, this is a must. I’ll admit it didn’t look its best under 3′ of snow, but this is one fine public garden.

There are some exciting happenings on our website www.plantdelights.com. We now have an opt-in mailing list that is used to notify you when something new has been added to the site. If you are interested, click this section on our homepage and find out more. We have also updated our nursery division section to show you photos of our growing operation. Enjoy! -tony

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