easy-to-multiply wildflowers; my open-day recap; good, bad & ugly celandines  

What spring wildflowers can you multiply easily yourself (like now!)? How long will a young trillium take to flower -- and can you really count the little ridges on its rhizome and tell the plant's age, like rings in a tree? Why do three very different gold-flowered early bloomers (one a tenacious invasive) share the common name of "celandine?"

I asked acclaimed naturalist Carol Gracie (the guest lecturer at my next Open Day June 7). Two tickets to her lecture are also up for grabs. Click here to get the answers, and enter to win the tickets. 

hot topics from my may 10 open garden day  

Which edging machine do you use?, one visitor to my May 10 Open Day asked, and as my physical therapist will confirm, that would mostly be my right leg and arm, guiding the low-tech iron tool I've relied on for more than 20 years that's now as well-worn as my shoulder and wrist joints.

"You have a lot of plants," dozens said to sum up their tour (while looking positively exhausted at the thought of weeding among them).

The most-asked question, though, was a side-effect of the prolonged cool weather: the peek-a-boo view into the usually hidden world beneath the trees and shrubs, none of which had any leaves yet, but had thousands of unusual flowers carpeting them.

A quick recap of my May 10 Open Day, and an invitation to join me June 7 when I do it all again...but with different plants evoking different questions, I suspect.