Every year when the peonies bloom there is a rain storm that knocks the flowers to the ground. This has happened the last 23 years, since I first planted the peonies. I can't help but wonder if the flowers only open when they sense a storm is coming! Today the peonies were still kissing the ground after the rainstorm we had two nights ago. The first peonies I remember seeing bloomed one June in the middle of the lawn in the front yard of the farm in central Wisconsin we moved to in the mid-1950s when I was seven. I was so thrilled to see them but the blooms were gone after just a couple of weeks, though the plant was a lovely bush all summer. The peony is an old ornamental plant that can live and bloom for as long as 50 years! The only other flowers that were growing at the farm when we moved there were a large patch of lilies of the valley and a very long double lane of lilacs, each clump as wide as a small room. The lilacs were probably planted when the log house was built in 1860 and the perfume when they bloomed was fantastic!
When I first moved into my current home here in southern Wisconsin 23 years ago, the back yard was a plain lawn with a little border with roses on one side along the garage which occupies the entire length of one side of the back yard and another little border with roses and poppies along the fence between the neighbors and I on the other side. I dug up odd shaped flower beds throughout the little yard the first year I was here, leaving some lawn in between the beds, and planted many kinds of perennials in them, including seven peonies that are still doing well. I widened the existing flower beds and put in a collection of Irises I bought from the local Iris society. Previously I had been an avid vegetable gardener so I wanted to try something new and so grew mostly flowers. As an organic vegetable gardener I had utilized companion planting so thought I would try to do that with the flower gardens as well. I planted some garlic cloves I got at the grocery store around the roses to prevent aphids after reading a book called Roses Love Garlic. (Roses Love Garlic: Companion Planting and Other Secrets of Flowers by Louise Riotte.)
After about ten years of passionate gardening, I was busy with other things, lost interest in the garden, and let the garden go. Some perennials died off, some thrived in spite of the neglect. The peonies - some deep rose doubles, some pink doubles, and some white singles - all continued to produce flowers every year. The day lilies, sedum, bleeding hearts, ostrich ferns, violets, alium, species tulips and daffodils all thrive.
A few years ago I decided to put in a small vegetable garden again and in the process of turning the flower beds into vegetable beds, dug up hundreds of flower bulbs that had naturalized over the years. It was painful. I meant to find another home for them but didn't plant them and feel sad about that. The roses bloomed for many years but eventually they died off. The garlic I had planted by the roses, however, thrived! I didn't know that you should cut off the flowers to get bigger bulbs and thereby let them self-sow for twenty years. Each garlic flower turns into about a hundred small onion-like seeds called bulbils and as they grow bigger and heavier, the flower stalk bends to the ground and the little seeds start to grow. They all seem to survive, no matter how thick they grow. I also didn't know that you can eat the garlic scapes, the stalks of the flower heads, until a couple of years ago. I also never ate the young plant, called green garlic, until last year. I think there are a thousand garlic plants in the back yard now, though I have given away many, eaten many, and composted many. Use the food blog search link at the right to search other people's food blog posts for recipes for using garlic scapes. You'll find recipes for garlic scape pesto, scapes used in spreads, dips, stir frys, soups, eggs, salads, and more. What a great "new" vegetable I've added to the spring season from the garden. More information about growing garlic can be found here: http://www.garlicfarm.ca/growing-garlic.htm.
This fall I want to move the peonies to the side of the house. They should be moved in the fall only and they won't bloom for at least a year after being moved. Right now I grow vegetables around them but by moving them I will be able to have only edible plants in the beds where they are now growing. I don't know if peonies are edible - I should research that. In the past I have picked the flowers when they were just starting to open and hung them upside down to dry. They make really lovely dried flowers.
I ate a lot of green garlic this spring and now the garlic scapes are already starting to form so soon I will be eating them like a vegetable. This fall I will harvest the bulbs. I intend to dig up hundreds of the garlic plants to make more room for growing vegetables.
The garden now looks somewhat like an English cottage garden - a mixture of flowers and vegetables planted in beds of random shapes rather than rigid geometrical ones. Parts of the garden are quite wild looking with large areas of naturalized flowers. The ground is rich since I have moved large amounts of compost soil onto the beds, soil that I have created by piling up the garden weeds and trimmings and leaves I rake up each growing season and leave to break down over the winter. I grow small amounts of many kinds of veggies and herbs and love to cook what is growing there.
Some ostrich ferns have taken over a large semi-shady patch of the yard and are now about five feet tall. The little patch of ferns has expanded slowly over the years and I know I need to dig them up soon as they are taking over but they are so beautiful and they serve as a natural barrier between the garden and the view from the street. Neighborhood cats love to come to my yard to smell the catnip that grows wild, to sit on the wooden benches and tables to sun themselves, and to lay in the cool shade of the giant ferns. Birds love the yard too. It is a rich and natural place for all of us creatures.
