Jacqueline Houston is a member of the Wedgwood Garden Club, and also a Master Gardener of King County. She has been gardening in Seattle for over 30 years. Wedgwood Garden Club always welcomes new members – contact Jacqueline at tppoems@comcast.net for more information on our monthly meetings.
By the end of January I am sick of winter and desperate for Spring flowers. My hellebores are still stuttering into life, and even my snowdrops are barely showing above ground, and so I have taken to creating a tabletop winter garden in a shallow pot, to appease my longing for color and fragrance. It sits on my table and keeps me sane for a month!
The nurseries have just started carrying potted-up bulbs by this point, and after much trial and error I have found the bulbs and plants that can tolerate about two weeks indoors and then get planted outside for future enjoyment. I replant the pot in two weeks’ time, and then when those in turn fade, my garden is finally kicking into gear with all the early spring bulbs, and I put my tabletop winter garden away, mission accomplished.
My favorite combo consists of one hyacinth, one pot of miniature Tete a Tete daffodils, and two brightly colored primroses. The hyacinth offers fragrance, as do the primroses, especially if you get the plain yellow ones (sniff them at the nursery – most people don’t realize how fragrant they can be, as they are usually all the way down on the ground). The yellow primrose complements the daffodils, and I generally choose the second primrose to complement the hyacinth (both are pink in this case).
I fill my container (about 12 inches in diameter) with potting soil, then loosen the crazy circling roots of the bulbs, and bed them all in. Then I have a little bit of fun!
The children at my small in-home preschool help me decorate the remaining bare soil with slabs of bright green moss from my yard (so much to choose from!), and then we set up a tiny fairy garden, with a birdbath, birdhouse, watering can etc, and a pipe-playing pixie. The kids love to check it out every morning to see if fairy birds drank from the birdbath, while I drink in the color and fragrance that I miss so much in wintertime.
The bulbs mentioned here will flower indoors and not get too tall. Snowdrops, crocus and miniature iris have not flowered well for me indoors, and tulips are too tall. Scillas will flower inside and I sometimes use those, but the combo described here works so well, and satisfies me so much, that I rarely depart from it.