WHEN YOUR GARDEN'S IRREDEEMABLE

Leave, and visit someone else's.


My friends Peter Goldblatt and Len Porter -- classical music allies as well as hort support -- have a most charming home and species-rich garden that never fails to engage me when I see it. With nothing in my own garden that does the trick (with the exception of my white flowering native currant on the sidewalk), their place sparkles with every color you could long for except orange because Peter doesn't like it.

And it's not even April.

Among the happy primulas in their garden is a shimmering blue P.obconica caught right at that delicious twilight hour when it's possible (for me, anway) to get a reasonable facsimile of blue.

Here's the deep purple Croatian primula 'Wanda' that was cavorting in a spring bacchanalia near the foot of an Edgeworthia, my current favorite among late winter/early spring flowering shrubs, Z7.

Much like Peter's outrageously inventive cooking often made from easily accessible ingredients, his appetite for plants are just as democratic. Despite his credentials as one of the world's greatest iris experts with a list of books under his belt that do fill a shelf, he's no snob. His myriad of primula are a collection of straight species and straight off the shelf.

Here's a double-flowering red Peter picked up at the grocery store (is that right, Peter?). It's known as a hose-in-hose because one flower seems to be inserted right in the throat of the other.

I've got plenty of other pix (his little Hacquetia epipactus are adorable!) but I'm short on time. Stay tuned for more of Peter and Len's garden as the season rolls on...