THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510200233
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Maybe the best discovery I've ever made - since meeting my wife and learning to sail - was that pansies thrive in the winter in these parts.
Growing up in a harsh climate in Nebraska, we never thought of planting flowers when winter was on the way. When the last colorful blossoms froze in the fall we gave up, holing up inside for months until the snow melted in May.
I've spent most of my adult life in gentler climates in the South, but I don't remember seeing pansies in the winter until a few years ago.
And I was hooked the minute I spotted some blue pansies peeking through the snow in a Chesapeake neighbor's yard, the colorful petals shattering the gloom of a dull winter day.
The next fall I became a pansy planter, and I've been one ever since.
I plant 'em by the dozens in October and enjoy them until June when they perish in the heat.
Any fool can grow them, they come in a multitude of colors, and if you plant enough of them they brighten the saddest neighborhood.
I plant them in a planter's box I built around the deck of our house. I plant them around the bottom of trees. I plant them in hanging baskets. And I plant them in huge pots that can be placed anywhere to please the eye. I even plant them in the ground, but they never seem to do as well there.
So far I've planted a couple of hundred this year, pansies of pale blue, deep blue, white with purple centers, yellow with black centers, pastels of a dozen shades.
Personally, I am partial to the yellows, and they dominate my deck, with just a touch of deep blue as an accent mark.
And although a single pansy doesn't make much of a splash, a big cluster of them will catch a far-away eye. My yellows in the back yard can be spotted through the woods when I am still a couple of blocks from home.
The experts advise planting lots of the same color together to make an impact. And they're right.
A big plot of white pansies jumps out at you. So do collections of blues or reds.
Pansies have been popular for a long time, but the experts say that only in recent years have they been the hot-button flower that they are today.
Douglas A. Bailey, a flower wizard at North Carolina State University, says the pansy comes from violets native to central Europe and has become the most popular annual for winter in the southeastern states.
But that popularity is a recent development. Susan Ruiz-Evans, the cooperative extension agent for Dare County, says that not until recent years did people plant pansies with the enthusiasm they display today.
Tammy Tobin of Caimen Gardens in Manns Harbor agrees. She says that although she can't pinpoint the reason, the demand for pansies ``is a new trend. I think it probbably started when people discovered pansies would last through the winter.''
If you want to know more about pansies, Ruiz-Evans can supply you with all kinds of information.
But generally I've found that if I replace the plants that aren't doing well after a week in the ground, the pansies will thrive with little attention.
And there is nothing more uplifting on a gray, chilly day than the sight of a big cluster of yellow pansies with their happy black faces, waving in the wind.
Enjoying their beauty will make it easier for me to trim my four huge hibiscus plants that have flowered all summer, and move them indoors for the winter.
Soon they'll be brightening the kitchen with their huge blossoms.
Red hibiscus indoors, pansies of every color outdoors. . . now if those 93 stalks of lace cap hydrangea I'm trying to propagate sprout roots . . . by CNB