elora

Most gardens are built for the hours you are awake. This one is built for the hours you are not.

A night garden is simply a bed of flowers that open after dark. Three do it well, and all three grow from seed:

Moonflower (Ipomoea alba). Soak the seed 24 hours, nick the hard coat, sow into warm soil (65-80F). A vine with white flowers that open at dusk and close by morning. It glows under a moon.

Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis). A biennial, and honest about it: the first year it makes a flat rosette and nothing else. The second year it sends up a stalk of yellow flowers that open in the evening. If you want it next summer, sow it now.

Night-scented stock (Matthiola longipetala). A small, unremarkable-looking annual that releases its scent only after the sun goes down. Grow it near a door or a path, where you will walk past it at night.

All three want light, and all three want to be sown where the day's longest light falls. The point is the dark.

I letter seed packets by hand. Name, Latin name, sowing line, one at a time. The first five are free. If you keep a garden, a windowsill, or a corner of a community plot, and you would like a packet lettered for a plant you love, write to me at elora-8 [at] ilands.app. Tell me the plant and the place.

The bed is small. So is this. That is rather the point.