Happy New Year! Like many of you, we’re busily taking down all of our holiday decorations and boxing them up for this year- Wait what?! Wildly enough, Candlelight decorations start being created in less than 5 months from now! Stay tuned for our new theme- I’m giddy with excitement about it!

While our weather has been a little all over the place and fairly mucky, we’re grateful it’s still allowing us to work on clearing our gardens from spent perennials and fallen leaves, as well as redoing some of our marl walkways! Our gardens are budding with excitement at this weather which makes us hold our breath a little since we're still probably due a frost or two- the flowering apricots seem particularly determined in the Carraway Garden. The gardens this time of year are a great reminder of the excitement to come and the beauty of the present gardens- more textures of green with pops of color from camellias, berries and hellebores! A balance of resting perennials and buds of new growth for a new year seem so appropriate for this time of year as we move from the holidays into big new plans for the year to come.

If you’d like to learn more history about how our gardens came to be, join us for our first 2022 Garden Lecture on January 8th, with Tryon Palace Research Historian Lindy Cummings! She’ll be discussing historical aspects of 18th century gardens, colonial revival interpretations and how the gardens at Tryon Palace came to be. This lecture begins at 10:30 a.m. in Cullman Performance Hall at the North Carolina History Center, with a suggested donation of $3.

If you’re looking for a New Year’s Resolution, consider joining us as a garden volunteer! We are looking for Master Gardeners, Horticulturists, Garden Enthusiasts, General Yard Workers, and Carpenters. Some background in gardening is great but none is necessary, just a willingness to learn. We are looking for volunteers for pruning, planting, raking, mulching, watering, weeding, fence and trellis repair. Due to current guidance, we do require all volunteers to be fully vaccinated. If that sounds like your cup of tea, please contact me at hadley.cheris@ncdcr.gov.

We hope to see you soon! Happy Gardening,

Hadley Cheris, Tryon Palace Gardens and Greenhouse Manager

Annuals

• Batchelor’s Buttons (Centaurea cyanus) blue
• Dianthus- Super Parfait Raspberry, Zing Rose
• Dusty Miller ‘Silver Dust’
• Flowering Kale “Bor Scarlet”, “Nagoya Mix”, “Yokohama Mix”
• Gazania ‘Tiger Mix’, ‘Pink Shades’, ‘Colorado’, ‘Sunny Side Up’, ‘New Magic’, ‘New Day Yellow’, ‘Enorma Mix’
• Johnny-jump-up (Viola tricolor) purple and yellow
• Pansies: Cats Mix
• Pennisetum Fireworks- purple blades
• Snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus) various
• Sweet William (Dianthus) Telstar Mix; red, white, pink
• Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’
• Violas: Sorbet Sorbet XP Mix Spring Select, Penny White, Admire Mix Maxi, Frizzle Sizzle Mini Mix

Perennials

• Algerian Iris (Iris ungularia) blue
• Bachelor’s Button (Centaurea montana)
• Bath’s Pink (Dianthus gratianopolitanus) pink
• Bearded Iris "Immortality" white, reblooming
• Bears foot Hellebore (Helleborus foetidus) yellowish
• Bleeding Heart (Dicentra eximia) pink/white
• Bog Sage (Salvia uliginosa) light blue
• Candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) white
• Cape Leadwort (Plumbago capensis) blue
• Carnation (Dianthus sp.) various
• Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia numularia) yellow foliage
• Creeping Veronica (Veronica umbrosa) blue
• Daffodils, Jonquils (Narcissus sp.) yellow, white
• Hellebore (Helleborus X orientalis) pink, white
• Leopard plant (Farfugium japonicum) yellow
• Ornamental Grasses (Various)
• Paperwhite Narcissus (Narcissus papyraceus) white
• Pineapple sage (Salvia elegans) red
• Poet’s Laurel (Danae racemes) orange berries
• Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) red, white, pink
• Yarrow (Achillea millifolieum) white, pastels

Vines

• Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) native, red and yellow

Trees and Shrubs