Fall flowers make a shower of color

Young Chang

Lesson No. 1 on life and gardening: Don’t obsess about pulling out all

the weeds. When you’re young, you do this, convinced that being weed-free

will fix everything else, Corona del Mar gardener Jeannette Wells said.

But it won’t. And the weeds always come back. So smell the roses now,

while you weed.

Lesson No. 2 on life and gardening: Be patient. Dormancy signals a

bloom to come. What you do in fall foreshadows the next spring.

“Camellias and azaleas, you need to feed them during the month of

October,� said Janelle Wiley, a color specialist at Sherman Library &

Gardens. “To have a beautiful bloom in the spring.�

Wiley and fellow local gardeners liken gardening to life. And though

waiting for plants to bloom may be less exciting then witnessing colors

explode, they insist that the best gardeners know how to appreciate a

good rest.

But for those who want to see some color right away, now is the time

to plant fall flowers, including chrysanthemums, pansies, English

primroses, Icelandic poppies, cyclamens and obconicas. As part of her job

at Sherman Gardens, Wiley recently planted these to paint the grounds a

deeper hue.

Anything red or yellow will be more red and yellow , more like its

primary color, if they’re planted now. The obconicas will bloom in

pastels. The English primroses will burst into deep blues, cobalt blues,

canary yellows and whites. And the pansies -- they’ll birth almost all

the colors of the rainbow, Wiley said.

She likes planting cyclamens in the fall because they’re cold-loving

plants that grow well in the shade.

“They like to be planted up on a little throne. They like to be

planted high,� she added. “And they look like little queens to me.�

The cyclamens bloom for about four months but are perennial, returning

with blossoms every few seasons.

“You can replace them every two years,� Wiley said. “You don’t have

to, but they give you a nice life-span of at least two years.�

Wells advised that healthy growth depends largely on how you mix the

soil bed, which tends to harden around this time of year.

“It takes a lot of time to amend,� she said. “There’s a lot of clay,

and the clay stores the water and you have to put things in the soil to

make it more porous.�

Her home garden, which you reach at the end of a winding, brick path

up a slight hill, is decorated by a trellis arch entwined with pink and

white roses that cascade down.

Wells likes to plant camellias, ferns and hydrangeas all year round,

but her fall collection includes double anemones colored a “true blue� at

the end of a long, green stem.

Other flowers on her fall palette include bulbs in vivid colors that

make them look like roses, double camellias, tall-stemmed foxgloves

colored a “wonderful lavender� with little cups hanging down and

Canterbury bells that often wait an entire year to bloom. They need to

establish themselves, Wells explained on their behalf.

“They’re beautiful, they really look like bells and they’re more

bunchy than a one-stem and they’re quite large,� she added.

Bulbs are some of her most successful plants in the cold. Many of them

have to be refrigerated for six weeks and then planted in the fall, for

blooming during the winter.

Pansies and Johnny jumpups are shallow-rooted annuals that are fun to

plant above bulbs, which can grow through the smaller flowers.

Wells describes her garden as a potpourri for sights and smells.

Wiley said her favorite part about gardening is the process, although

other gardeners might disagree.

“When you start cleaning the bed out, getting it ready for the

flowers, you don’t have color yet,� Wiley said. “And two weeks later, you

see color!�

She’s speaking for the faster blooming plants, but the longer waits

prove more rewarding, she added.

“It’s a lot of hard labor ‘cause you gotta make a nice bed for your

plants and give them the right companions that join in with them,� Wiley

said. “But you have the expectancy.�