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| Photo: Sally Blanchard |
If you were dragging your hoses to water your thirsty yard and garden in January, perhaps you spied many perennials poking through their mulch blankets including these Oriental Poppies, Papaver orientale brilliant. With their glowing orange blossoms and fuzzy, fern like foliage, oriental poppies are the ‘bling’ in the late spring and early summer garden. They are deer and rabbit resistant and attract bees and butterflies. They grow to approximately thirty inches and spread slowly.
Oriental poppies are very frost hardy and thrive in Zones 3-7. After many failed attempts at starting from seed, I gave up and purchased a small potted plant at the local nursery. Choose a location with six hours of full sun. Choose wisely; poppies can be fickle about being transplanted. They like sandy soil but have flourished in my unamended clay like soil. They do not like wet feet so be careful not to overwater. The plant will turn brown and go dormant in the heat of summer. I just cut back the brown foliage and tuck in a few sun loving marigolds near the poppy plant. In the fall, the foliage re-emerges as a relatively low ground cover.
