This page is under construction. I’ll be adding flowers as the season progresses.
The Flowers….
Here are some of the beautiful flowers I grow here on the farm, along with pictures and notes or comments.
Marigolds
Marigolds have bright, bold colors that mix well with a lot of other flowers. They have a long vase life and bloom early in the summer. The varieties I grow are the Giant Yellow, Giant Orange, and Coco Gold. In prior years I tried the white swan variety. I decided not to grow that one anymore because white swan plants are shorter and the blooms were smaller, and they look a lot like the Small World dahlias that I grow.
I started the marigolds from seeds that I bought from Johnny’s Selected Seeds website, they cost $5.95 for a packet of 50 seeds. This year, for the first time, I used coco gold marigold seeds that I saved from last year’s flowers, and it worked! YAY! I wasn’t sure if they’d germinate because my seeds didn’t have the dark color like the seeds I bought from Johnny’s. The interesting thing is that I got several coco gold plants, but I also a couple varieties that are completely different and they’re pretty cool. Check out the pictures to see what I mean. I got one plant that has a single row of petals, and another plant where the blooms looks like a hairy puff ball. How cool is that!?!
For me, the Giant Yellow bloom first, then the Giant Orange, then Coco Gold shortly after. I harvest marigolds when the center still has a hint of green in order to get the best vase life. Some people don’t like the smell of marigolds, but it’s actually the foliage that carries most of the scent. I remove all the leaves when I use them in bouquets. There is a newer variety out with no scent call Nosento Limegreen, but I haven’t tried it yet. It’s a smaller plant similar to the white swan, and the blooms are yellow, not limegreen.
marigold seeds - Giant Orange
marigold seed close-up
May 10th - started some Coco Gold marigolds from seeds I saved, I put 2 in each cell
2 trays of marigolds started May 10th
May 23 - planted marigold seedlings out in garden after hardening them off
June 1 - marigolds
June 15 - marigolds - I pinched 3 rows and left 3 rows unpinched
June 30 - marigolds - just starting to bloom, the Giant Yellow bloomed first
July 7 - marigolds
Giant Yellow marigolds
marigolds - Coco Gold on top, Giant Orange in middle, and Giant Yellow on bottom
single petal marigolds that grew from seeds I saved from last year's flowers
marigolds that look like hairy puff balls, these grew from seeds I saved from last year's flowers
Sweet William
Another one of my favorite early summer flowers is Sweet William (in the Dianthus family, cousin to carnations). The bloom heads are really big and full and are made up of several smaller flowers clustered together. Check out the pictures below. They are a ‘cool flower’ so it can be planted out BEFORE our last frost date in the early spring. It is a tough plant. As you’ll see in the pictures, the seedlings endured a snow storm when they were on the deck hardening off. It didn’t bother them at all, and I planted them out in the garden 2 days later.
The Sweet William seeds I bought this year cost $5.95 for a packet of 25 seeds from Lisa Mason Ziegler’s website called The Gardener’s Workshop. Lisa wrote a fantastic book about cool flowers called..….wait for it…..Cool Flowers. If you’ve never heard of cool flowers, or if you’d like to learn more about them, I highly recommend her book. It’s a small little book with great pictures, and although it contains a ton of information, it’s very easy to understand.
The varieties I grew this year are the Amazon Neon Purple, Amazon Neon Rose and Amazon Lavender Magic. I started the seeds in a 72 cell tray. I only started one tray, and I wish I had started more. I think next year I might convert one of my 3 feverfew beds and plant it with Sweet William instead. All 72 seeds germinated, I didn’t lose any! YAY!
When I planted them out in the garden, there were a few plants in the Sweet William bed that over-wintered from last year. Some people have good luck over-wintering their Sweet William, but I usually don’t. Of the 5 or 6 plants that survived the winter, most died and never bloomed. The only one that did bloom was the variety called Sweet Purple White Bicolor. It’s one of my favorites because it has a really cool bloom. The individual flowers that make up the big bloom heads are white and each one has a ring of purple, very eye catching. In the photo taken April 18th when I planted them out it’s the large clump to the far right. For some reason, I didn’t get pictures of the blooms after I harvested them, so I included a couple pictures of bouquets where it was used. Love it!! The ‘Sweet’ series is a little shorter than the ‘Amazon’ series.
March 16 started Sweet William seeds - Amazon Neon Cherry - got seeds from The Gardeners Workshop website - seeds come in small plastic vile
March 16 started Sweet William seeds - Amazon Neon Purple
March 16 started Sweet William seeds - Amazon Lavender Magic
March 16 - tray of Sweet William, sprinkled with vermiculite to help hold in moisture
March 22 - Sweet William germinated
April 3 - Sweet William hardening off
April 11 - Sweet William hardening off
April 16 - Sweet William hardening off in snow
April 18 - planted out Sweet William, the thick patch on the far right, and a few on the bottom right, are last year's plants that survived the winter
April 28 - Sweet William bed
May 25 - Sweet William bed
June 1 - Sweet William bed
June 1 - Sweet William bed cropped to show the Sweet Purple White Bicolor just starting to bloom
July 7 - Sweet William bed, I already harvested a few of the Amazon Lavender Magic
July 7 - Sweet William - Amazon Lavender Magic
July 8 - 3 varieties of Sweet William - Amazon Rose on left, Amazon Lavender Magic in middle, Amazon Purple on right
July 13 - Sweet William - Amazon Purple on left, Amazon Rose on right
July 15 - Sweet William - Amazon Rose - large bloom in my hand
July 15 - Sweet William - Amazon Lavender Magic - large bloom in my hand
July 15 - Sweet William - Amazon Purple - large bloom in my hand
one of my famous red, white and blue bouquets with a Sweet Purple White Bicolor towards the bottom
another red white and blue bouquet with a few Sweet Purple White Bicolor
Canterbury bells
Canterbury bells (or Campanula) were one of my Mom’s favorite flowers. She was 102 when she passed in March 2025, and she had never seen them before. We first saw them in my cousin’s garden. We both fell in love with them, and I knew I had to add them to my lineup. The huge bells are incredible, they’re like lily-of-the-valley on steroids. They’re available in 4 different colors - dark purple (which is my favorite), lavender, rose and white. I didn’t get many of the rose shade this year. We had a streak of 90 degree days right after they bloomed and they all got scorched in the sun and were unusable. The cups face upwards and have a great vase life. There are several bells on each stem, and the stems can grow to be over 2 feet long. They are a “cool flower” which means you can plant in the garden BEFORE our last frost and they can withstand the cold temperatures, a light frost, and even snow. They used to be considered a biannual because you can plant them in the fall, they’ll survive the winter, and come up in the spring. New varieties can be planted indoors in late winter and bloom the same year.
Canterbury bells - Seed to Bouquet
Canterbury bells seeds
started seeds indoors Feb 12
Canterbury bells seedlings March 22 - the white on the tray is diatomaceous earth, the yellow are sticky traps, both to help prevent fungus gnats
hardening off Canterbury bell seedlings March 30
planted 3 beds (approx 3'x6' each) of Canterbury bells April 15 - I put the larger seedlings on the north side of the bed, smaller on the south side
Canterbury bells May 10
Canterbury bells May 25
Canterbury bells June 1
Canterbury bells starting to bud June 11
huge stem of white Canterbury bells
long stem of dark purple Canterbury bells
large 3" cups of lavender Canterbury bells
bouquet with Canterbury bells, peonies, feverfew and foliage
red, white and blue bouquet
red, white and blue bouquet
Daffodils…..
After the hellebores bloom, the daffodils are the next flowers that come up in early spring. These are specialty daffodils, not the traditional yellow cup and petals. These flowers are gorgeous and enormous! They’re HUGE, most over 3 inches across. They cover my hand.
buckets of daffodils
daffodils on top and bottom right, hellebores on bottom left
Peonies…..
It’s official, I’m obsessed with peonies! I love the smell, the bloom structure with all those fluffy petals, and I love all the different varieties and colors. I want to grow them all!
Most of the peonies on my farm have been growing here for over 80 years. My neighbor’s grandparents lived here a long time ago, and he remembers these peonies from when he was a kid. He’s now in his 80s. How cool is that!?! Imagine the changes they’ve endured, the things they’ve seen, and the stories they could tell.
Along with the original peonies that have been here for years, I’ve also added a few new varieties including raspberry sundae, red charm, coral sunset, all that jazz, and scrumdidleumptious (which must have been didlyicious because it got eaten by something, and I’m not sure it’s going to survive).
One of the great things about peonies is that you can harvest them when they’re in the “marshmellow” stage and store them in a cooler or refrigerator for weeks, even months if done correctly. This helps to extend my peony season.
huge peony covers my hand
gorgeous peonies over 80 years old!
light pink and dark pink peonies in wrapped bouquets
light pink peonies in mason jar bouquets