If you love gorgeous flowers, consider growing poppies in your home garden. Blooming early in the growing season, they definitely steal the show.
This gallery of poppies is the perfect antidote to winter blahs. See more of my idea galleries here: Idea Galleries.
Grow Poppies for Their Simple Beauty
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This has nothing to do with all of the traditional things that come to mind when you think of poppies: honorable service, medicinal uses (both useful and harmful), and the delights of a perfect lemon poppy seed cake (oh, yes please!).
This is simply about the essential, gobsmackingly beautiful, soul-restoring service that the poppy plays in the spring garden. It’s a show stopper of the best kind: waiting until the noisy spring flowering bulbs have faded out and before the trademarks of a vibrant summer garden have begun, poppies demonstrate the power of one and how brilliant repetition can be in a garden.
Which is my way of saying, I am smitten.
Here are my ten reasons (which happened to coincide with my favorite photos) why I find poppies irresistible. The photos were taken during a garden tour in June. Spring came a little late last year because winter did not want to leave. Normally (here in southern Ontario, Canada) the poppies peak in May.
I grow my poppies from seed. You can save them from the seed pods after a poppy blooms or buy them:
- Poppy Seeds at Botanical Interests (lots of varieties)
- Smart Seed Saving Tip for Best Blooms
ONE
After the spring flowering bulbs have faded, these bursts of colour start to appear.
TWO
Look at this next image. Who steals the show? The red poppies, of course. I could write love sonnets for the peonies and alliums, but there’s no disputing the brilliance of those flappy, red poppy blooms.
THREE
Bam! The orange poppies provide a nice backdrop but the red ones are the divas.
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FOUR
How’s this for a whoosh of colors? When the poppies are open, you know summer is on its way.
Want organic seeds? See Seed Company Listings (Canada & U.S.)
FIVE
As the poppies begin to fade, their colors become bolder. They will not go out with a whimper but a bang instead.
SIX
Perfect clashing colors: the red poppies bridge the gap between purple peonies and orange poppies.
SEVEN
Orange poppies still tight in their buds are like little firecrackers ready to pop open.
EIGHT
Without any red poppies to interfere with their show, the orange is downright breathtaking.
NINE
You can’t have too many.
TEN
And the song lasts for weeks.
Swoon.
BONUS
Seed pods!
~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛
