It might as well be spring

Pining for tulips, daffodils, peonies and those tricky-to-grow blue hydrangeas?

You only have to travel as far as the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St. Paul for the annual Spring Flower Show, which

opens

Saturday and continues through April 29.

The Conservatory will unveil the glorious Sunken Garden, brimming with many of Minnesota gardeners’ faves, at the Spring Fling weekend Saturday and Sunday. Events include live music, garden talks by staff horticulturists, children’s stories and take-home seed pots from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.

Admission is free. The Conservatory is at 1225 Estabrook Drive, St. Paul. Visit www.comozooconservatory .com or call 651-487-8200.

LYNN UNDERWOOD

Getting small

With gardening, the fewer decisions I have to make, the better off I am. This is why I’ve always secretly wanted a small garden. They’re easier than a full yard. You don’t have to plan — no need to worry about color or flow if all you have room for is, say, a rosebush and a lawn chair.

And then I read “The Tiny Garden,” by Jane McMorland Hunter (Frances Lincoln, $30). Turns out I was wrong; apparently you can do a lot in a small space. Tiny mazes, interesting ground cover, tall privacy plants, water gardens, a trellis, containers galore. Rooftops, patios, sidewalk edges, climbing up walls, spilling over fences — anywhere there’s dirt, you can plant.

“The Tiny Garden” shows you how. Hunter has advice on everything from planning the garden (I was wrong about that, too) to planting, composting and maintaining. She has suggestions for shade, sun (broken down by: western light, eastern light, southern light and northern light), wind, drought, buggy soil, polluted soil. For every possible condition, she has an idea.

On a recent snowy afternoon, I sat and stared at the photo on page 73 — big pink and red blossoms cascaded down a terra-cotta wall into a sun-drenched courtyard punctuated by a vibrant blue door. It was a tiny space. But on this white-out day in early March, it was the only place I wanted to be.

LAURIE HERTZEL

When Irish wiles are gardening

Des Kennedy, a popular speaker on the gardening circuit, has been exercising his green thumb and wicked wit for 35 years at his home on one of British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. In his new book, “The Passionate Gardener: Adventures of an Ardent Green Thumb” (Greystone, $16.95), he explores the improbable attachment that people develop to digging in the dirt and planting things.

His Irish Catholic and seminarian backgrounds serve him well as he descends Mount Hortus bearing terra cotta (or perhaps hypertufa) tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments of Gardening — in which he interprets the biblical laws as they might be observed by gardeners. Not to worry though, for redemption is to be found in the author’s corresponding Seven Contrary Virtues.

There are plenty of scraps for his humorous compost, as he explores the follies of malignant garden sprayers, bone meal made from mad cows and good fence/bad fence. Kennedy is a green-thumb rogue. He’s the kind of gardening friend you’d like to take on a visit to the nursery and then, once the plants are safely home, to the neighborhood pub.

JARRETT SMITH via : www.startribune.com