A few plants for the show bench
The National Show of The American Primrose Society is drawing near! And I am a vendor this year, so that means I have been very busy getting plants ready. This is a huge job which includes digging, dividing, potting, labeling, sorting the good from the not so good and worrying.
For the last few weeks I’ve been prowling around the gardens trying to decide which plants might be in bloom at the right time for the show benches and which would be good candidates for dividing & potting for the sale benches. I have dug many plants in hopes that they will be perfect for the show, but some are not panning out as planned and I’ll probably not take them. But then most are looking very good and I keep adding to the collection for the show benches.
My small 'nursery' of overwintered flats and plants for the APS show
My gardens are my nursery which means I don’t have a whole lot of room for all the plants I would like to grow, so the variety of plants won’t always be where I would like. I grow almost everything from seed or division and I’m learning new techniques all the time. I’ve been reading Bill Cullinas book ‘Wildflowers’ A Guide to Growing and Propagating Native Wildflowers of North America. It has been such a great guide. I love Bill’s way of explaining all manner of growing methods in such an enjoyable way. I just learned that if you poke around the crown of Dodecatheon you can tease off a few easily separated crowns and pot or replant them. So I went out and put this knowledge to practice and he’s right! The plant does separate very easily and I left most undisturbed, while separating off 3 crowns for potting. Next I want to try my hand at root cuttings of Primula denticulata.
Primula denticulata in the garden
The above plant will grow into a large ball of purple flowers. These love a constantly moist soil in part shade and will self sow when happy. Each year the clump gets larger and can be dug & divided in early spring. They come in pink, white and all shades of purple to almost red. I’ve got lots of them all along my streamside,and they are one of the earliest flowers in the garden.
Preparations for the Primrose show will be ongoing this week up till the last minute when I leave friday morning, so I’ll try to keep posting as the week goes on and especially at the show! If you want to read more about the Primrose show or see photos of past shows click here.
Primrose Hill Woodlanders 
dooooodecatheon. oh, man, I need to get you the pics I took at Mt ranier, of them, as well as digitalis, and a few other plants, but there were drifts of those guys! maybe I’ll go back, and harvest some seeds….in a less…um…official part, or maybe see about getting a permit. I mean, harvesting a few seeds…isn’t gonna hurt the plants..
good luck with the plant show!
Hey Matt….You can harvest up to 10% of a population of the existing plants’ seeds, so there will still be splenty to perpetuate the plant in its natural environment. so, yes please try to get back there and save some seed for me!
the show was 2 weeks ago now and I got 2 blues and one 2nd ribbon, also a best in category for a really pretty deep red flower! The show was loads of fun and I came home with lots of new plants for the gardens!