Anchorage Daily News

I suppose you could say this wet, cool weather is as close to an English summer as we could get. It certainly hasn't seemed to hold back the garden of David and Edith Goodgame, who are famous for their English cottage-style borders of mixed perennials and annuals.

David is especially known for his love of English delphiniums. He has some of the most unusual colors of named plants as well as some he has grown from seed.

David and Edith have a garden to be proud of. It's obvious that hundreds of hours of love and labor go into it year-round. Thousands of seedlings (I think David said 3,000) are started indoors in the spring and nurtured under lights until it's warm enough to head outside.

They also winter over pots of roses and a huge, yellow-flowered Brugmansia "Charles Grimandi" that sits near a bridge and water feature. Garden gnomes are sprinkled around as well. David said people keep buying them for him.

I bumped into the Goodgames in February at the Seattle flower and garden show, where they were stocking up on plants and bulbs and related items. I also bumped into David at Costco earlier this year, and his wagon was full of clematis and peonies.

David also orders plants directly from England. He said he is planning to expand the flower borders next year. How they find room for it all is a wonder!

Talk Dirt is a garden blog for the Alaska community hosted by Fran Durner of the Daily News. Join the conversation at adn.com/talkdirt.

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