North American Mothers Day Gardens: Name Day With Yearlong Gifts

Summary: North American Mothers Day gardens build a name day into a year of spring hydrangeas, summer bellflowers, autumnal chrysanthemums and winter orchids.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum courtyard's "summer blues"; Monday, June 29, 2015: Nic McPhee (Unhindered by Talent), CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American Mothers Day gardens arrange seasonal and year-round bloom times from cut, hanging, planted and potted flowering bushes, grasses, herbs, shrubs, trees and vines in indoor and outdoor courtyards and sites.

Mothers Day gardens band favorites together into fresh bouquets that bear accolades for seven to 10 days and hanging, planted or potted arrangements for long-lasting appreciation. Store-bought and web-ordered deliveries communicate bright-colored, spring-blooming, sweet-scented arrangements even though blue, gentle fragrances from spring- and summer-blooming flowers convey best wishes this day and beyond. Blue blooms dazzle viewers from three floors of art work in, and visitors to the interior courtyard of, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum entertains Fenway neighborhood visitors with blue-flowering non-woody and woody plants as April through September components of nine successive changing, season-specific displays.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's greenhouses furnish big-leafed hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) as blue mopheads, deep blue lacecaps, violet lacecaps and white mopheads from April through June.

Spring-blooming displays give big-blooming hydrangeas three sets of companion plants: the first set for April, the second for April through June and the third for June. Big-flowered, large-leafed hydrangeas have blue blooms in acidic soils below, and pink blossoms in alkaline soils above, the neutral soil power of hydrogen (pH) around 7.0. April includes azaleas, blue cineraria, cream and ivory daffodils, Cymbidium orchids, lemon-blossomed Natal lily (Clivia miniata), pepper-scented nasturtiums (Tropaeoleum majus) and red-vein Chinese lanterns (Abutilon striatum).

North American Morthers Day gardens easily juggle April- to June-blooming, blue-flowering hydrangea's companion plants and its predecessor displays, January through March, and successors, July through December.

Red and yellow Guzmania, silver- and white-leafed Artemisia, silver-leafed Aechmea fascinata bromeliads and white Cape primrose (Streptocarpus) keep blue-flowering courtyard hydrangeas company from April through June.

June and July let in the last of April- to June-blooming, blue-blossoming mopheads' companion plants: blue Nile lily (Agapanthus) and fragrant, tall PeeGee mopheads (Hydrangea paniculata). June manages the transition from the museum inner courtyard's three months of spring-blooming arrangements, from April through June, to its summer-blooming displays in June and July. Its prequel spring-blooming and sequel summer-blooming months note seasonal blue's niche between the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum inner courtyard's hanging nasturtiums and chimney bellflowers (Campanula pyramidalis).

Maroon canna, southern Europe's 6-foot- (1.83-meter-) tall chimney bellflowers and variegated jade offer North American Mothers Day gardens summer ornamentation for indoor and outdoor fireless grates.

January to March midwinter tropical displays of Areca, fan and fishtail palms, Norfolk Island pines and tree ferns precede April's nasturtiums, May's mopheads and June's lilies.

February and March qualify as the inner courtyard's two midwinter tropics-overlapping, orchid-filled months, with calla lilies, hooded nun's orchids called tankervilles, lady's slippers and leopard orchids. Spring- and summer-blooming mopheads recede before summer- and fall-blooming bellflowers that recede before Japanese-styled, October- and November-blooming chrysanthemums with single flowers on single stalks and stems. The museum's December-blooming inner courtyard sustains dark red amaryllis, silver curry (Helichrysum italicum) and, with five- to six-inch (12.7- to 15.24-centimeter) diameters, 40-plus-year-old jade (Crassula argentea).

North American Mothers Day gardens treasure the second Sunday in May even though their Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's inner courtyard-inspired plantings tribute mothers throughout the year.

Chimney bellflowers (Campanula pyramidalis) contribute cream, blue or purple colors to July and August floral niches: Gardner Museum @gardnermuseum, via Twitter Aug. 26, 2016

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum courtyard's "summer blues"; Monday, June 29, 2015: Nic McPhee (Unhindered by Talent), CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicmcphee/18660473624/

Chimney bellflowers (Campanula pyramidalis) contribute cream, blue or purple colors to July and August floral niches: Gardner Museum @gardnermuseum, via Twitter Aug. 5, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/gardnermuseum/status/761666847259459584

For further information:

"Courtyard." Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum > Gardens at the Gardner.
Available @ http://www.gardnermuseum.org/gardens/courtyard

Gardner Museum @gardnermuseum. "Campanula pyramidalis takes 2 years from seed to flower. Enjoy this rare bloom while it lasts!" Twitter. Aug. 19, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/gardnermuseum/status/766748331099893760

Gardner Museum @gardnermuseum. "The Gardner's courtyard is 1 of only 2 gardens in the world to grow Campanula pyramidalis." Twitter. Aug. 26, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/gardnermuseum/status/769231695933341697

Gardner Museum @gardnermuseum. "The Gardner's courtyard is ever changing. This week tall Campanula pyramidalis make their appearance." Twitter. Aug. 5, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/gardnermuseum/status/761666847259459584