Spectacular, bright spring flowers, but at 1,100 metres, we can't put them outside until mid-May due to cold nights

Gorgeous flowers are everywhere in garden stores now, but for those of us with gardens at a higher altitude, it’s too early to put bright annuals outdoors. Patience, patience.

I gave into temptation Saturday and bought six plants that will have to brighten my dining room for the next month, before our nighttime temperatures are high enough to put them in veranda pots and set them outdoors.

My sister-in-law in England, who has a very large garden that wins competitions every year, told me last year that flowers should be bought in groups of three, to ensure good clusters with enough colour. I’m following her advice this year.

The magnificent vivid purple of the pericallus was too much to pass by at the garden centre. They are relatively easy-care plants, but will need to be  watered twice a week. I use water from our pond, fed by a mountain bisse, which I haul to the veranda in a bucket, so I don’t like flowers that require water more often than this. Annuals are pretty much limited to the veranda, as we are in the driest corner of Switzerland, and to avoid using precious water resources I prefer to have perennials, whose root systems can withstand dry spells.

A good scrub with a brush and water with some bleach will ready these pots for a mid-May planting session

A bisse is a Swiss underground snow melt streams that surfaces partway down the mountainside, channeled for irrigation. The mountains here have a fine web of these streams, mostly hidden.

Canton Valais has created a series of bisse walking paths in some of the areas where they surface. They are a great way to visit the Swiss Alps and pick up a bit of history, since some of the oldest irrigation channels were built well over 1,000 years ago.

Farmers use them for irrigation, a system of communal water-sharing. We do, as well, on a smaller scale, but we need to be fair and use just our share, keeping in mind the people lower down who also use them for their gardens to preserve drinking water supplies.

The pink flower, whose name I’ve forgotten (garden fatigue!) is a winner for this climate, as it’s happy even without regular water. I can plant it in the garden and it should flower all summer long. The plan is to put it in front of small rosebushes with varying shades of pink.

I’ve never found an answer to this and I’d love to know: why did nature choose purple and orange for autumn flowers? So many of our most spectacular late-season blooms are these colors, mostly in deep tones. The sun is lower in the sky, and in the mountains this means it leaves deeply angled streaks of light, which these richly colored flowers pick up beautifully, creating an outdoor cathedral when the light hits them.

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Too busy planting and cleaning out flower beds to write much, but the warm weather has brought a gorgeous explosion of colour to the garden, starting with these irises and bleeding hearts.

I couldn’t resist putting the closeup lens on the camera.

I used to think our slopes, warm days and cool nights in the mountains were perfect for irises until someone burst my bubble by telling me they grow just about anywhere.

That’s a good thing in the end. They are gorgeous!

Tulips, Swiss Alps

Flower shops filled with tulips in the spring always surprise me, because I almost never cut my tulips to bring them indoors, and I forget that other people fill vases with them and set them around the house.

I think I’m lucky to have streaks of gay color from them spread around outside, brightening the view from every window. The Dutch have done such a superb job of taming them that we forget these are magnificent mountain wild flowers. My favorites are red ones that tumble down from the top of the field next door, true farmer’s tulips.

I plant more exotic varieties and a lot of colors, but these are more susceptible to the cold, and the temperature can dip below freezing until at least mid-May, sometimes later, at 1,000 meters altitude.

Tulips bending from beautiful blooms' weight

Last weekend I was enjoying this particular variegated group when I noticed that one, a lovely flower, had a broken stem.

The cold at night weakens the stems and when they are top-heavy with luscious blooms they tumble over, sometimes breaking the stem.

I took it inside, put the single bloom on its side in a small wooden dish, no water, and it became our centerpiece for two days, giving off a deep perfume while we admired its elegance indoors for a change.

The color and perfume remained far longer than I expected, reminding me that for all their delicate beauty, tulips are pretty tough! I don’t cut the stems of mine – there are far too many – and I don’t dig them up, just hoping they will make it through tough winters. I do divide them when they multiply to the point where the flowers start to get smaller, once every 3-4 years. Gardener Doug Green has some sound advice on caring for tulips. One especially good tip: don’t water them after they’ve bloomed.

The fallen tulip finds a home inside

Back out in the garden, another spring treasure was the sudden blossoming of the strawberry plants, We’re a good two weeks below the gardens down the hill, on the plain, but I’m happy to wait: I’d wager our strawberries are among the world’s best!

Alpine full-size strawberries give us these charming flowers a month before the berries are red and ripe

Bernex, canton Geneva

Saint Prex, Vaud

Pink in Versoix!

I wrote earlier today on my Among the Vines blog that a Petite Arvine I’d tasted has a nose of wisteria, and if you aren’t sure what this smells like, step outside because it’s in bloom.

I also wrote that it’s generally pink – only to step outside and see purple wisteria everywhere today! Do step up, close your eyes and breathe deeply.

I bought a small jasmine plant at Schilliger Garden Center last June when I was tired of the cold weather we were having and the late start to the garden. I knew it was foolish to hope it would bloom in my too-cool Alpine garden at 1,100 metres, but there is a silly side to my gardening self.

I was right. It tried but never succeeded in doing much more than giving me one or two weak flowers. When the first frost came I thought I might as well bring it indoors and see if anything happened.

Here it is – it waited for Christmas Day to surprise me with wonderfully scented white flowers, with many more on the way. And just outside, behind it in this white on white scene, is a pile of good crisp snow. When the morning sun streaks in, the contrast is very cheering.

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I’m a great fan of flowers with nice round centres and petals, in all colours and of all varieties. They are one of the reasons July is always a wonderful gardening month. Here are some that perked up beautifully after the weekend rains.

It was 5 degrees C at 1100 metres last night and I woke up fearing the flowers and basilic would be limp, but they warmed up quickly.

Here are some of the others (click on images to view larger).

And light purple and just about any purple is a great addition to a garden. I’m very fond of this tri-colour sage, whose soft greens contrast nicely with its deeper violet kin, along a rock wall. That’s a little solar lamp that lets us see these at night, when they look very pretty.