Back Mountain Bloomers plan luncheon

“If I’m not out there walking around and getting dirt under my fingernails,” renowned gardener Jenny Rose Carey said, “it’s a sad day.”

Speaking for others who also like to work the soil, she added, “It’s our serenity, our way of growing fresh vegetables. It’s someplace to go when we’ve had it with our families, our workplaces. I know my garden has been my refuge and my creative outlet.”

If you identify with her sentiments, or even if you just like flowers and would enjoy learning more about them, perhaps you would like to attend the Back Mountain Bloomers Garden Club annual Garden Speakers Luncheon, set for noon Thursday, Oct. 3 at Camp Orchard Hill in Dallas.

Carey will be the featured speaker, discussing her recent book “The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide” — and sharing her appreciation for all sorts of blossoms.

“We try to spread flowers out throughout the year so we have something in bloom every day of the year,” said Carey, who tends 4.5 acres of gardens in Ambler, Pa., with help from her gardening assistant, Hanna, and a carpenter/artist named Joe.

So, what blooms in winter?

“Witch hazel is a lovely, winter-blooming, flowering shrub,” Carey said, noting she has “45 different types of them” including a witch hazel that blooms in autumn and one that blooms in late winter or early spring.

And while she is fond of the snowdrops that have been known to pop up against the snow in late February or early March, and which happen to be white, she’s really a fan of color.

That’s why she’s planning to wear her signature pink to the Back Mountain Bloomers luncheon — “It’s a happy color,” she said during a telephone interview, describing herself at that moment as “wearing a pink t-shirt, pink toenails and drinking tea from a pink cup.”

It’s also a reason she’s particularly enthusiastic about her Lycoris plants. “I have four different colors and one of them is such a shocking hot melon I can’t even describe it. It’s almost like neon,” she said, describing another as “sky-blue-pink.”

Lycoris grows from a bulb, and Carey said she’s becoming “rather obsessed with anything that can grow from a bulb or a tuber or a rhizome.”

“I think it’s pretty magical,” she said, that you can plant a bulb and maybe forget about it until it shoots up. Then you remember, “Oh, wait, it’s going to be that gorgeous thing.”

You can expect to read more about bulbs in her next book, Carey said.

The author grew up in England, in a family of gardeners and botanists. “My mum was a big propagator and I was probably about 7 when she taught me to take cuttings,” she said, recalling another early task was weeding in the family’s “allotment,” a British term for a community garden down the street from their home.

“It wasn’t long after World War II,” said Carey, who is soon to turn 65. “Everybody grew vegetables but our cottages had very tiny little gardens and sometimes all shade so you might not be able to grow beans or potatoes. It wasn’t far (to the allotment) but when you’ve got little legs it seemed like to the moon and back.”

“I’d have to go down the radish row and pick the weeds out,” she said with a chuckle. “My memory of it was it was always hot. But it didn’t put me off weeding.”

Carey designed her first garden at age 16, filling it with the classic herbs parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme which grow well in England’s climate.

After moving to the United States with her American husband, she became director of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Garden at Meadowbrook Farm. She has earned degrees in biology, horticulture and education, and considers herself an educator at heart.

She recently returned from a trip to England with her grandchildren, but noted that if she’s home in Ambler, she herself will lead public tours of her garden.

Back Mountain Bloomer Lisa Lindquist has twice visited Carey’s Victorian garden, Northview, in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and she is in awe.

“I tell you, her garden just blew me away,” said Lindquist, who enjoyed the different sections, or “rooms,” including a dry garden, a cutting garden, mixed flower beds and more.

“I toured it in September of last year, with 100 other people. It was tremendous. We were all in love with it.”

Anyone interested in attending the Oct. 3 luncheon at Camp Orchard Hill may sent a check for $50, made out to the Back Mountain Bloomers, to Carol Sorber, 52 Baird St., Harveys Lake, PA. 18618. Deadline is Sept. 20. Doors will open at 11:30 a.m.