Mill Pond Garden open for Mother’s Day tours

Mill Pond Garden will celebrate Mother’s Day with visitors from 10 a.m. to noon, Sunday, May 8, sharing an abundance of flowering bulbs, roses, rhododendrons, azaleas, clematis and much more. 

Tickets, available at millpondgarden.com, are $15 to admit a vehicle with up to six visitors.

Visitors will likely see frogs basking in the frog pond, turtles sunning on turtle logs, geese and ducks with babies in tow on Red Mill Pond, and visiting osprey or bald eagles fishing. The garden will be alive with color and that wonderful new green of spring leaves.

Most people plant flowering plants in their garden as the major features, and they can make the most enjoyment by planting for a succession of bloom. When one flowering species is going off, another is coming into bloom to provide the garden with a constant change for enjoyment. Mill Pond Garden provides a place to see what to plant for successful four-season interest.

Mill Pond Garden, located at 31401 Melloy Court, Lewes, will display flowering plants in the peak of mid-spring including American Rose Society prize roses, native rhododendrons, clematis, iris, native trilliums, pansies, native woodland phlox, tulips, weigela, and flowering vines.

Thoughtfully planted gardens using different species of azaleas and rhododendrons may offer continual changing bloom from late March to mid-June for up to 12 weeks of flowers instead of one or two weeks.

For example, blooms during the last week of March in the Cape Region could feature rhododendron mucronrolatum amethystinum, Tatiana Copeland’s favorite at Mount Cuba garden in northern Delaware, then PJM types like Olga Mezitt, followed by azalea Karen (a favorite for good fall color), President Roosevelt, then Serenity Glendale hybrid, poukenense azaleas and Hinode Geri.

The next in succession for early to late May would include Girard’s hybrid azaleas, catawbiense rhododendrons, boursault rhododendron, English roseum, Percy Wiseman, solidarity, Gomer Waterer, the sensational Anna Rose Whitney, and finally the new evergreen, ever-blooming azaleas. The next in succession from late May through early June would include nova zembla, America, purpurea and later-blooming white Chinoides.

Mill Pond Garden does not recommend any of the mid- to late-season blooming deciduous azaleas because they get petal blight, a fungal disfigurement and maintenance nightmare. The new repeat-blooming evergreen azaleas are highly resistant to petal blight so can be recommended as later-blooming azaleas from early May to early June, repeating in late September. These repeat azaleas like full sun to bloom well. They can grow quite large, so give them space.

One tip for extra interest is to plant a clematis in with the azaleas to let it grow through the shrub and flower with the azalea in a complementary color, or before or later than the azalea to add extra bloom time to the same space. Clematis grow like this in the wild, with no serious harm to the shrub they grow in.

Succession of bloom planting can be done for the whole garden and for many species, not just for spring azaleas and rhododendrons. With some planning and good choices, a garden can provide constant color all year long, even in winter. A beautiful garden with good trees and flowers in colors complementary to each other and the house increases not only the enjoyment, but also the value of a house by up to 20 percent, a practical investment and a pleasure to live with.