How’s It Growing: May 1, 2025
Stormy weather is always followed by sunny skies, green landscapes, and beautiful flowers, right? Every year it seems like Spring will never get here. The trees are bare, flowers are in hiding, and Mother Nature likes to tease with a bit of warm weather followed by a surprise snowfall. Then here in zone 5b, like an annual miracle, sometime around the end of April and the beginning of May the snow turns into warming rains, and everything starts waking up from its winter slumber. Of course, you can’t let these early signs of Spring fool you into actually planting in the garden just yet. Remember I mentioned that Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor and will follow a week of temperatures in the 70°Fs to a week of nighttime freezes.
So what’s a gardener to do? Well, last year I decided to let my love of gardening and growing things expand. I decided to start growing more from seeds because not only is it more economical than buying plants, it is also more fun! You also have access to a much wider variety of plants than you can usually find at the local nursery.
While it is a dream to one day have a nice Victorian style greenhouse, I have made do by converting one of our guest rooms into my seed starting room. Following the suggested seeding starting set up I read about on Margaret Roach’s gardening website, A Way To Garden, I got several sets of metal wire shelf units, lights, and heat mats. Last year’s efforts to grow vegetable starts was so successful, that we offered up the extras to our café customers.
This year things are looking just as good and I think the plants are just as eager to get outside as I am. Here we have some Verbena (bonariensis) and a couple Kiss-Me-Over-The-Garden-Gate (Polygonum orientale), annual flowers, that have already outgrown the height of the shelves.
I’m making another attempt at growing Artichokes, a favorite of mine that would grow like weeds in California, where I lived for many years, but here in Greenville, an area a several zones colder it is a challenge to beat the short season. This year I’m trying Imperial Star, which is supposed to be a faster maturing artichoke.
The squash, melon, and cucumber seedlings are going very nicely, and were potted up the day after I took this photo. This year we are growing Musquee de Provence pumpkins, Turk’s Turban (requested by the instructor of a watercolor sketching workshop that will be held later this year at the inn – Hudson River Valley Art Workshops), Pantheon Summer Squash, D’Artagnan Melons, and Gimlet Cucumbers (Johnny’s Selected Seeds).
Moving along to activity outside in our organic vegetable garden, seen here is a structure I put together to support snap peas. It is made of sticks I gathered from around the property. I had had my eye on a decorative metal support, but the garden budget said, “forget about it.”
The gooseberry plant has really taken off. I am training it follow the fence rails at the back of the garden.
If you visit our gardens, don’t be surprised if you see a “fairy” house here and there. This one is enjoying some private shade under the Victoria Rhubarb leaves.
We have a climbing hydrangea wrapped around one of the stone pillars at our garden gate. The leaves are just coming out and soon it will be filled with flowers. This particular plant has a wonderful history. It was started from a cutting given to the people who owned the inn before us by their head housekeeper, who also continued to work for us for many years until her untimely passing. I remember her fondly whenever I pass this thriving hydrangea.
We have one enormous Magnolia tree in the back of the side lawn, next to the White Garden and I was afraid that it just wasn’t going to bloom this year because I had seen Magnolias blooming all around the area but not single bud on our tree. But you can’t keep a great tree down, and ours finally put on her yearly show.
Muscari, the little blue flowers, that I planted from bulbs a few years ago seemed to have taking to this spot in the garden and are spreading nicely.
Today was the first mow of the season, always a milestone on the way to nice weather. This is the view from outside our cottage room.
I hope you have enjoyed this inn gardens update and little photo tour. Now that the last potential frost date is fast approaching and things will be popping around the gardens, I’ll be continuing these updates on a regular basis. I’m always happy to talk about our gardens, so if you have any questions or topics you’d like me to write about, send me an email at stay@greenvillearms.com.
