Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful, they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul. - Luther Burbank

Welcome to a new angle on Simply Flowers.  Today, I want you to meet my blogging sisters, and then enjoy flower-filled fashion from "Free People."  

First, after your visit here, feel free to follow links through  personalized stories from an international group of photograhers and bloggers we call "Sisterhood Stories."    We link our blogs together and I'd like to introduce you to your first stop in the circle, featuring the stunning photography of Aziza, from Little Twinkles: http://imagesofmydailylife.wordpress.com

Next, preview "Free People's" Spring fashion, with a rainbow of colors and fields of flowers.  If you'd like to shop, or enjoy the sunshine and style, head over to the "Free People" catalog at http://www.freepeople.com/mar-13-catalog/#1

Finally, if you live in Southern California and want your gardens and flowers to flourish, remember to follow this advice from Florence Sullivan, with April Gardening Tips. http://simply-flowers.blogspot.com/2009/04/calendar-for-growing-flowers-in-costal.html

Until next time, enjoy your garden and the beauty of Spring!

CATALOG CREDITS:                        

Model: Alana Zimmer, Dorothea Barth Jorgensen, Martha Hunt, and Fei Fei Sun

Photographer: Anna Palma                        

Hair: Amy Farid                      

Makeup: Deanna Hagan 

A Calendar for Growing Flowers in Coastal Southern California

April

Is your patio spilling over with color? It could be!

Mine is brilliant with pots of blue and yellow violas, pansies, blue ageratum, geraniums,a nd white alyssum. But they were all planted in November and December. So reach for your calendar and make a note to plant these things next year in those months. Even a huge redwood tub of yellow marguerites was planted last fall. The petunias blooming now are left over from last year. All in the sun.

Last month, and this month, is the time to be planting containers and tubs, and moss-lined hanging baskets of plants that will bloom clearn thru till next November. To plant now use for Pink: petunias, White: allysum, Blue: ageratum, potato vine, light blue or dark blue lobelia, Yellow: or Orange: dwarf french marigold, Red: fiberous begonia. These are all for sun. Vinca also.

For shade, now, use fuchsia, white allysum and impatients, but this would be light shade.

Small cyclamen can be purchased now for next winter's bloom.

PLANT - Dahlias from now till mid-June. A handful of bonemeal worked into soil below tubers at planting time is good. Take mum blooming bulbs, braid it and bend it over till completely brown. Try cherry tomatoes in a hanging basket, one basket will supply two people all summer. Put cascade mums into 12" pots now.

SPRAY - Watch roses for signs of mildew and spray it as it appears. Usually next month is bad for this. Spray ground too. Systemic granuales with fertilizer will protect from insects and fungicide to get the mildew. Systemic granules completely protect cinerarias, calendula, carnations, and any other plan you knoww that will get insect damage. Most of the garden will not need spray.

PRUNE - Camellias and azaleas after bloom, but only if needed for shaping and only after reading a book on pruning them. Important too is to remove the dead flowers from plants. Know what you are doing here. Sunseet prints a good book on pruning. Prune cape honeysuckle. Many other spring blooming shrubs need pruning after bloom.

PINCH - fuchsias till May Day.

FERTILIZE - lawns - shrubs and trees and bulbs when blooming.

Epiphyllums get top dreing of well-rotted manure. Hydrangeas get camellia food or cottonseed now. KEEP AFTER THOSE SNAILS.

WEED - Don't let it get ahead of you!

Hint: Even if you have poor reusults with petunias in the garden, do try them in container, epecially in moss lined baket where snails can't get them. Only trouble wa leaf minor and you can control that for six weeks at a time with systemic granules. These granule can be bought with or without added fertilizer.

REMEMBER: A garden is a thing of joy and a job forever! - unknown

Florence Sullivan