If your garden is looking a little dreary about now and
suffering from the winter doldrums, consider a bright pick-me-up
complete with perky faces and sweet fragrance.
If your garden is looking a little dreary about now and suffering from the winter doldrums, consider a bright pick-me-up complete with perky faces and sweet fragrance.
We’re talking the viola family here – either pansies with their “faces” or their smaller counterpart, violas. Both pansies and violas, which fall under the viola family horticulturally speaking, will bloom throughout winter without worrying about frost. They’ll provide flower color until it gets warm, probably June or even July.
Violas are floriferous, five-petaled flowers that pop up on dark green, heart-shaped leaves.
They’ll bloom practically year-round in sun or shade in our mild-winter climate, depending on when you plant them. They’re particularly suitable for containers and window boxes, but do great planted in mass in the ground as well. They make an exquisite groundcover between bushes and trees, and are perfect for planting amid the tiny crevices of rock gardens. Many violas have the added attribute of sweet fragrance, too.
One benefit or problem, depending on how you look at it is that violas have a tendency to become nuisances in the garden where volunteers will come up in the spring and summer.
Many times, I’ve been faced with yanking dozens of new seedlings from unwanted spaces by the bucketful. Oh sure, I salvage a few of them, transplanting them into six packs, containers and hanging baskets to provide some early-season color. Of course, this is also a benefit in that cheap gardeners save money on new bedding plants!
Many veteran gardeners automatically think of the common “Johnny Jump-Up” variety when thinking of violas. These tricolor violas come in purple, yellow and white, and have been around for 40 years.
Interestingly, violas were originally known as herb trinitatis because of its three colors, which were considered a symbol of the Trinity. There’s romance mixed into the viola background, too. Hence, the romantic mischief in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare where “the juice of violas on sleeping eyelids laid/ Will make a man or woman madly dote/ Upon the next live creature that it sees.”
All violas are easy to start from seed, or you buy already-started transplants at nurseries. Again, they do best in the cooler weather of fall or winter in our area, but can also be grown in the spring and summer. If you plant them during warm weather, put them in a slightly shady area.
Otherwise, this time of year, go ahead and plant them in full sun.
The same is true for pansies, which are larger versions of violas. Pansies are known for their “faces” or blotches of varying color on flowers that resemble a face. Pansy flowers are usually around three or four inches around whereas violas are two or three.
The name “pansy” is derived from the French “pensees” or “thoughts.” It remains the plant’s meaning in the language of flowers. The drooping of the pansy’s flower head in the evening or on cloudy days does not mean that it is lost in contemplation, however, but rather protecting its delicate flowers from dew or rain.
So why not start your own wildflower explosion this year by planting pansies and violas? Just don’t blame me when the violas invade the tomato patch and pop up in every conceivable corner of the garden.
Keith Muraoka lives and works in Gilroy. His award-winning column has been in this newspaper since 1984. E-mail him at: ga********@jp*.net, or write him in c/o Morgan Hill Times, P.O. Box 757, Morgan Hill, CA 95038.
