Page 14 THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – FriDAy, MAy 16, 2025 Saugus Gardens in the Spring Here’s what’s blooming in town this week to make your walks more enjoyable By Laura Eisener T he clouds departed Mother’s Day to give us a great view of the full flower moon Monday, and pleasant flower-viewing weather most of this week. Julia Aston’s garden near Saugus Center is full of flowers viewable through her iron fence this week. Mr. and Mrs. Mallard duck (Anas platyrhyncos) wandered up from the Saugus River and found her backyard bird feeders, so it has been a festive scene with birds and blossoms! In addition to daffodils and bleeding heart in bloom, the colorful emerging foliage of alum root (Heuchera spp.) gives some warm colors to the garden over an extended season. Alum root is often grown for its colorful foliage as well as its Jonquils bloom in Julia Aston’s garden near Saugus Center. (Photo courtesy of Julia Aston) flowers, and there are many varieties with leaves that may be purple, pinkish or green. Variety names such as ‘Carnival Watermelon,’ ‘Lime Rickey’ and ‘Melting Fire’ give a hint of the leaf colors. ‘Indian Summer Silverberry’ is a hybrid that has silvery upper surfaces to the leaves and purple undersides. Greenleaved ones usually have bright pink or white bell-shaped blossoms on slender stems that may bloom several times in a summer – usually early June, mid-July and finally SeptemTulips and grape hyacinths bloom in the Condon gardens in mid-spring. (Photo courtesy of Amariah Condon) Camassia blooms in the Condon garden. (Photo courtesy of Laura Eisener) ber. These are often called coral bells. Those with colorful leaves do produce flowers, but the blossoms are small and usually more drab than the flowers of the green-leaved varieties. The foliage is kept all winter, but often rabbits will devour it when their preferred foods are dormant, and in spring and summer they leave it alone. The plants may re-leaf in spring, but if they are enduring additional stresses, such as drought, they may not survive for many years. The showy bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) in Julia’s garden are a different variety of the same species as the white ones pictured in last week’s column. They are very vigorous this spring after the rains of the past two weeks. If the weather is dry, they will go dormant more quickly than when the cool weather and rain persist into summer. In another part of town, Ann Showy bleeding hearts and Heuchera combine to make a pleasant color combination in Julia Aston’s garden. (Photo courtesy of Julia Aston) One of many delightful vignettes in Anne and Amariah Condon’s garden features a yellow bistro set with a matching hand-painted birdhouse and orange pansies seen beneath the branches of a Japanese maple. (Photo courtesy of Laura Eisener) and Amariah Condon have cultivated a beautiful garden with an amazing array of unusual trees, shrubs, hardy bulbs, and perennials. When I visited on Sunday, people were enjoying this garden in several ways: Amariah was up on a ladder pruning some of the larger Japanese maples (Acer palmatum); Ann was planting some new perennials; her sister Sue Condon, who also lives in Saugus, was sitting at a bistro table relaxing and reading; and I was wandering through, taking in all the wonderful details. The garden has several spots to sit and view the plants as well as the birds, butterflies, bees and more that come to enjoy all that this garden offers. Many of the birdhouses, birdbaths and furnishings were hand-painted by Ann. Among the flowers blooming in the Condon garden are quite a few camassias. Large camas (Camassia leichtlinii) is from western North America; small camas or common camas, (Camassia quamash) from Eastern North America; and wild hyacinth or Atlantic camas (Camassia scilloides), also from Eastern North America – three species of native bulbs that are still somewhat unusual in nurseries. Unlike most familiar hardy bulbs that originated in the Middle East or Europe, these beautiful plants deserve to be grown more often in gardens. To me, they bear no resemblance except perhaps GARDENS | SEE PAGE 16 Don’t eat those pansies! Yellow pansies bloom in a decorative pot in another part of the Condon garden. (Photo courtesy of Laura Eisener)
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