GARDENING

GROWING WILD

A tale of one man's attempts to tame a few of nature's beauties. BY BOB SCAMMELL

Late one March, while walking to my truck, I was startled by bright-purple color emanating from the wild prairie crocus A tale of one man's attempts to tame a few of nature's beauties. BY BOB SCAMMELL (Anemone patens) patch, snuggled up against the southwest-facing foundation of our house. This was the earliest blooming, by at least 2 weeks, of the latest addition to our wildflower garden.

By "wild flower garden," I do not mean the result of broadcasting packets of alleged wildflower seed collections into the landscape. No, our prairie crocus patch grew from seeds carefully collected out on Alberta's bald prairie by an avid wildflower gardener friend. We planted the seeds in the one place in our garden that emulates prairie conditions. Two decades later, they continue to be the first bloomer in the seasonal progression of color from the perennials in our wild garden.

In the wildflower garden at our former house, we used the same kind of hot, dry location to grow wild cacti—red-flower pincushion plant (Coryphantha vivipara) and yellow-blooming prickly pear (Opuntia polyacantha)—all of which we rescued from a prairie pipeline construction right-of-way and then transplanted.

Location is critical for wildflower gardening. We strive to duplicate in our garden the soil, moisture, and sun exposure conditions in which the plant thrived in the wild. Our most spectacular failure illustrates the importance of this point: We dug a

Photos, clockwise from top left: Imladris01/Getty Images; Vronja_Photon/Getty Images; Derwyn/Getty Images; sdbower/Getty Images