Close to the ground, it's already spring

It's that time of year. There was still snow on the ground today, though it was melting fast. More snows may come. It's down in the teens again tonight. But if you look close in the garden, especially near the ground, things are waking up.

I didn't notice this in my own garden. I noticed it today while while taking a preview tour of the Smart Home down at the Museum of Science and Industry, which has been all spruced up inside and is set for a trans-global assortment of vegetables outside this year.

Out in the vegetable garden, I saw snowdrops blooming through the straw-and-wood mulch. I saw buds swelling on chokeberry bushes in the native planting by the bioswale. In the pockets of vertical gardens, I saw hens-and-chicks and other succulents already putting on new growth.


I hear they are on crocus watch at the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park. Back in 2004 and 2005, when Piet Oudolf was designing those grand sweeps of perennials, he included only a few bulbs. But he didn't reckon with winter-weary Chicagoans' powerful craving for the first signs of spring. The next year, he and landscape architect Jacqueline van der Kloet superintended volunteers who interplanted planted bulbs by the thousands. Now we wait breathlessly each year for the first small blooms.

Another sign that the gardening year is nearly upon us: the Chicago Flower and Garden Show opens Saturday at Navy Pier. Here's a story I wrote about it for the Chicago Tribune. I've been knee-deep in planning a professional meeting at the show, and I'm preparing two talks to give at the show March 12.

But those and other things have kept me rushing around or tied to the computer so much that I haven't checked for snowdrops in my own front yard. I have dormant pruning yet to do, and seeds yet to sow. And I'm running out of winter. There are worse problems to have.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

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