The Whistling Gardener

by Steve Smith

Steve Smith is owner of Sunnyside Nursery in Marysville, located at 3915 Sunnyside Blvd., and a respected local expert on all things horticultural. You can reach Steve at 425-334-2002 or by e-mail at info@sunnysidenursery.net.

For those of you who haven't figured this out, Mother's Day to the garden center is like Valentine's Day to the florist or Halloween to a candy company. For all intents and purposes, it is our Christmas and it is always our hope that, among all the choices that kids (and dads) have to show mom how much they appreciate her, they will choose the garden center as their first choice.

Granted, not all moms like to actually get out in the garden and get their hands dirty. But I would venture to guess that most all moms like flowers in some form, either as a bouquet, ready to enjoy in a vase, or as an actual garden where they can cut their own flowers as they so please. Moms deserve to be surrounded by beauty and the easiest way to accomplish that is to either help her plant a garden or go to the garden center and buy some containers already planted up and ready to enjoy (hopefully for most of the summer).

Garden centers all over the country have been gearing up for this coming weekend with Mom being the single focus. You will find fabulous containers bursting forth with vibrantly colorful annuals, hanging baskets of fuchsias and Wave petunias mixed with Bacopa and lobelia. You will find blooming rhodies and azaleas, flowering cherries and crab apples, hydrangeas and roses that have been forced into bud and bloom, tables of early blooming perennials and flats of seasonal annual color.

Containers galore is the best way to describe the choices of pottery, wire baskets, faux terra cotta pots and even decorative planters made from bamboo. Most garden centers will also gladly plant any of these pots on the spot for mom. They'll even fill them with vegetable starts. I bet mom would love to have some pots filled with culinary herbs that she could use when she is cooking.

Raised beds are all the rage this year. You could build some for mom and fill them with a good quality soil and let mom pick out the seed packets and transplants she would like to grow. Fresh lettuce and carrots, peas and onions and potatoes can all go in now. Later you can plant some tomatoes, peppers, beans and corn for her. In fact, you could just tell her that you will take care of the whole shootin' match and all she has to do is cook the stuff when it is ready to harvest.

Growing up in Southern California, May was just another sunny month and by this fifth month of the year we had already planted zucchini and tomatoes and corn and beans, and deadheaded our summer annuals several times. But for us northwesterners, May is the month when we really go nuts in the garden. The frosts are pretty much over (I know we have had a few nasty frosts in May in years past) and the soil is warming up. Plants have come out of dormancy and they are actively growing. The tulips and daffodils are finished blooming, the magnolias, plums, pears and most of the cherries are done, and the dogwoods are just coming into their glory. Rhodies are in their prime and it may just very well be the most beautiful month of the year. I can assure you that if you bring mom down to the garden center she is going to find something she can't live without.

While not as exciting as blooming plants, mom still will appreciate you offering to weed her beds and spread some fresh mulch in them. If you broadcast some corn gluten over the soil before you spread that compost it will give mom several additional weeks of weed-free beds and the corn gluten will also act as a fertilizer. The results will make you look like a hero.

While the lawn is usually dad's domain, moms still enjoy an attractive carpet of green. Now is a perfect time to whip that old tired lawn into shape with some environmentally-friendly fertilizer. You could also kill the moss, dethatch and aerate while you are at it. By the end of the month that lawn will look like a golf course.

So you have options for mom. Whether you choose flowers or veggies, fruit trees or flowering trees, or some ornamentation like a bird bath or attractive arbor, just make sure you also tell her how much love her.

Steve Smith is owner of Sunnyside Nursery in Marysville and can be reached at

425-334-2002 or online at info@sunnysidenursery.net