Right now i'm into getting any seeds going for hummingbird attracting plants. I've only just started my wintersowing today.
That is an amazing site on columbines.

The flowers that I always drool over are dahlias...the larger dinner plate ones. There are so many varieties and they are gorgeous.

Hibiscus, datura, cosmos, agastache, echinacea, shasta daisy, rudbeckia...

You really want us to choose just one?

I'd like to get to a point next year where my gardens either come back or self sow. I plan to start fewer containers and keep it under 100. The next year, I'd like to slice that in half again, possibly more. I can't fill the entire yard with flowers even if I wanted to. The driveway would be a massive undertaking to remove all that concrete.

It is always scent to me. The scent of a Southern Summer truly is sultry. I imagine being older, maybe in my 70's walking through a lush landscape that has a lovely balance of sun and shade, my hands touching rosemary bushes which exude a heady herbal fragrance. I'm on my way to pick some apples to can for apple butter to have for winter on home made bread. Bread I made with some grains I'm growing up the back of the garden. Then I'm thinking about the lovely bouquet I'm going to pick for someone in thanks for their kindness and delivering it on my afternoon walk in the neighborhood while the bread cools in time for dinner.
I think about growing flowers which look perfect on the mantle here - reds, with green and variegated foliage or bright colors to compliment the kitchen, greens and purples to grace the tables of the porches and patios. Then I think about biting into a delicious caprice salad with the home baked bread. I guess in winter I feel somewhat sensory deprived from my garden - the taste and smell are integral to my enjoyment of what is growing outside.

What a wonderful thread, Lynda!

I don't think I can choose just one, either!

GGG--love your sensory description. I am feeling sensory deprived in zone 5. :) And your interactions and integration of the garden in your life is spot on for me.

I am still of the "just one more" crowd, and I know I have the space to fit more flowers. I just need more vision--I have a hard time visualizing without someone showing me a picture or how to. Grass is so over rated, but the kids do need some yard to run and play. :)

Scent is definitely important to me. I bought a packet of Indian Peace Pipe this week, and I am ready to give the nicotiana another try--I didn't sense much scent from them in years past. On another thread, the white nicotiana was suggested to me.

Austin roses are quite an imagination grabber for me--the scents are amazing, and I love to think about all the flowers and foliage that can go with them to create a cottage garden look. Right now I have five Austins around my yard, and I love them all and enjoy finding plants to go with them.

GGG...you have GOT to get a winter honeysuckle for your yard. Do you grow tea olives? Ohhhh.... heaven.

I know they aren't wintersown, but hey, they smell great and sometimes bloom for us in the dead of winter. The tea olives. The honeysuckle blooms in February.

I love my creeping thyme. It smells so good. I can walk on it and it is so soft!

This year I had to have another variety. This one has pink flowers. My other was wolly thyme no flowers but so pretty and grows well for me. I am wintersowing it for the first time. I had been told thyme was hard to grow from seed but here on WS forum someone told me it wintersows well.

Karen

Every year I have one thing that I must have last year it was bulbs-over 400 by the time I was done(can't wait "til spring!!) The year before that it was roses-12 old garden roses to be exact. This year it's Dahlias-just seeds though, I don't care about big fancy show dahlias, I just like the simple ones for the bees. And clematis-I need a couple of them to climb the apple tree(aka crap apple tree) Don't know which ones I want though!
-B

I am dreaming about Prairie Smoke and Quaking Grass. I have so many new to me seeds from Tokens trade and generous folks on this forum that I am looking forward to many!

Anything scented that will bloom during summer nights. It's the biggest treat to sit outside and sniff and feel the warmish breeze.

Believe it or not just simply petunias and cockscomb this year. I am trying from seeds for the first time and keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes as planned.

I know they arent ws, but roses are my absoulute favorite, tho its a love hate relationship, as im always battling some disease or an army of japanese beetles. As for ws plants, i think i enjoy all the types of agastaches the most.
I agree that scent is what takes you to a diffeent place, i love everything that smells good!

I dream about what isn't or can't be. My beautiful, so fully double red poppy I posted about last year, would not self pollinate. Many kind souls here helped me find information about it. Believe it or not, I grieve over it and fear I shall never see or have another quite like it. I DO try to put it in my order of priorities and perspective when there are so many hurting people out there over things far, far more grievous, have certainly experienced that myself.

Oh yes, I see something that catches my fancy and want to have it and do have some of what I had wanted and have appreciated them when they have done well.

Another dream is some unique crossing of one of my plants, whether by the randomness of nature or or controlled hand pollination. It would have to be through natural means and not through genetic manipulation though. Money is not the motive but the joy it would bring.

I also dream of one day having my beautiful wild violets lining one side of my house and neighbor's fence again which my neighbor killed with herbicide drifting through the fence. I do not believe he did it intentionally, but the sadness over that lingers, and they try to make a comeback each year but just can't make it. What is it about those violets that most want rid of, so thick, lush, and three different kinds? Just seeing them and walking down the path there gave me such a feeling of serenity and peace, even when they weren't blooming.

For me it is whatever is new to me that year. I love the anticipation of seeing them bloom for the first time.

Some new to me this year are - Alonsoa meridionalis 'Coral Beauty', Alyssum 'Summer Peaches', Eschscholzia Calif. 'Apricot Flambe', Gazania 'Daybreak Orange Cream', Melampodium 'Melanie', Nasturtium 'Copper Sunset', Scabiosa 'Ace of Spades', Tithonia, and Ursinia anethoides (Star of the Veld).

Maybe that's why I seem to be on an unending quest to acquire more seeds. Just to have new things to try.

These aren't flowers, but I also get excited about sowing tomatoes and peppers. My mouth starts watering just thinking about them, LOL!

Bonnie

Another I wanted badly after token posted about it here was painted daisy. It was so pretty and many people posted pics of it on his thread. I could not find it at the time but I found it today.

I guess the plant I dream of depends on the day and the mood I am in. I usually want something when I see a post or picture here!

Karen

Nicotiana 'Perfume Deep Purple'. It has the most wonderful scent of any nicotiana I have ever planted. No self seeded plants last year and I felt deprived all year. I thought I had some seedlings but when they bloomed it was a different variety and then it was too late to sow and still get bloom before frost. Will ws seeds this spring to be sure to have some.

Well I'm pretty sure Lynda has a good idea what I dream about but I'll share anyway.
There are the favorites like cosmos, morning glories and heucheras that are all so special each one is a surprise and I want every kind I can get just to experience them.
Then there are the plants I hope will be a good match for my actual gardens, like the ligularia and more heuchera's and hostas and surprisingly tough things like ajuga and ruds. Things I want to see grow happy and tall not just despite the shade and soggy clay but because of it. That is a real dream there, lol.
I suppose there should be another catagorey for the things that don't have the proper conditions but I want to grow well anyway, like delphiniums and squash, i.e. things that need sun.

girlgroupgirl and token, my first year up here in the cooler regions I went to all the nurseries and asked about gardenias, wisteria, and tea olives. They don't thrive here. I do absolutely love the smell. When i was in high school I bought my parents two gardenias to plant outside their bedroom window. One of the few flowers I cared about as a teen. Please enjoy those for me.

At least fragrant peonies are a wonderful thing I have up here that I could have never had in the coastal plain of Alabama and Georgia! I traded 3 for 1. Not exactly and even trade...

Hibiscus,Lilac Sensation,Pink Poppys, Ligularia,Clematis,Baptisia. ONE is hard. for sure.Honestly I think I even like weed's.

I would have to agree that in more northerly climes, you just don't get the same scented garden plants as we get here. However, you can grow a TON of plants I just adore - especially more English Cottage Garden traditional that I can't grow, and loads of fruits too. I log for hedges of currant bushes!!

Token, you CAN winter sow winter honeysuckle. I got seeds from Gardens North!!! I have only one tea olive right yet, I can't get the fences in yet to plant the privacy shrubs. When I can, you can bet both "regular" and orange tea olives will be going in :)!

I just laughed when I read the smell is integral as to what is going on outside...have you ever smelled alfalfa tea or a fresh pile of horse compost? My neighbors sometimes do :)

Norabelle, I sent you an e-mail regarding nicotiana.

I long for black raspberries and would like currants and gooseberries, too. The black raspberries are my favorite, and I think they grow in part shade, but the Jap beetles go for them now, and before I didn't know how they would look or if I could control them.

I'm getting old. I think I'll try some anyway. I love black raspberry pie, and they are hard to find now. I once found a huge institutional-size can of pie filling for $10, but they quit stocking it. That pie was good! Everybody seems to want blackberries which I don't like as well. I do like red raspberries, too, but the black is what I'd grow.

One dream is I always wanted my own rhubarb. That I have winter sowed some seeds for and finally figured out where to plant it if it does well.

Ohhh....painted daisies and the other one...crud what is it called? It is a daisy that has thin petals and very colorful...Livingston daisy! I would LOVE to have those!

Aliska, I've got Navaho blackberries and Bristol raspberries
if you're interested drop me an email-still have raspberry seeds left.
-B

I'm like Token, it would be hard to narrow it down to just one flower. Roses, Magnolias, lilacs, Peonies, columbines, Johnny jump ups, tulips, daffodils, forget-me-nots.

People living in the South..do you know what Sweet Shrub bushes are?(Aka Carolina Allspice) If any of you have any seeds from one, please let me know..or know where I can order the seeds.

I agree with GGG - often it's the scented things. I have a new lilac bush (well, we just planted it last spring). It had one bloom last year, but has tons of buds on it now. I can't wait. The one it had last year was heavenly!

I also love the bearded irises - most of them smell wonderful, especially the plain, old-fashioned lavender ones. There's nothing like that grape soda smell!

Then there are my tower pink columbines, which should bloom for the first time this year. I have been waiting impatiently since ws them last year. I love my other columbines, too - so pretty and delicate. And the site Lynda gave us was just gorgeous!

The other thing that gets me is daffodils. I have hundreds of them now - I'm not much of a winter person! The big bold yellow ones are my favorites. I even love the smell of them. As my litle girl said when she was about 5 - "They smell like spring." Yes, indeedy.

Annual Poppies! I am planning on ws a bunch of different varities and it is the only flower that I have so many types of.

Who could pick just one with such a vast pool of possibilities? It's all the gorgeous new daylilies I planted last fall. Add the peony poppies, ladybells and white turtlehead I'm WSing this year along with lupine 'Tutti Frutti,' penstemon 'Mystica' and Rudbeckia 'Irish Eyes' & 'Autumn Colors' (the last one from Token and I've seen his pictures!).

Can't forget the hot, hot pink mallow 'Vulcan' seeds I found at the job lots store plus all the new columbines I'm WSing. My brother planted SO many different daffodils here nearly 20 years ago and they've multiplied so those will send up stunning new blooms in just a matter of weeks. My favorite of those is Narcissus poeticus/poet's narcissus. This year just might be the one in which I can justify the price of a spare battery for my camera.

We're closing in on the "official" end of winter--only 32 days 'til spring!

I get fads and obsessions. This year, it was pink figleaf hollyhocks. And No One was selling the seeds! Oh yes, plenty of places were selling the mix of colors, the Antwerps or Bright Lights. But no one was selling Just Pink. Finally, I found one place that was selling them, and she ended up sending me some for free because I told her that part of her website was broken. That was really nice! And just recently , I got some more pink ones in a trade. So I am all set now. Until the next obsession!

For non-seed flowers, I have been crazy about old fashioned roses for a long time, and buy a few more every year. I also like the PG type hydrangea, the kind you can prune into a tree. But you can only have so many of those because they all look pretty similar to each other. I don't like the mophead hydrangea because the flower heads are too big and too few, and flop in the mud when it rains. But I found a hydrangea called "serrata preziosa", which is a cross between a mophead and a lacecap hydrangea. It has flower heads that are smaller than mopheads so they don't flop over. And the flower colors change from shades of pale lavender to burgundy red in the fall. I am really hoping it blooms in its first year here.

Lois in PA

You people in the south can have:

Lady Banks Rose (gets huge)
Confederate Rose (not a true rose)
R. Roxburghii plena (hard to find one at all especially one with the nicest bloom form)
Awakening Rose (a Paul Barden Rose that will scramble up a tall tree and bloom profusely all summer)
Bougainvillea
Pecan trees
Lots of others that don't come immediately to mind or that I've never seen.

And you can put your kudzu vine on the detested weeds thread, glad we don't have that.

Herb gardens with all kinds of fragrant herbs, both culinary & medicinal, will stir my imagination. Double if they're the fancy shaped kind.

But in flowers alone, I love tall, colorful flowers that aren't too fragile - stands of lupine & foxgloves come to mind.

I forgot lycoris squamigera aka Surprise Lily, Ressurection Lily, Naked Lady, not a true lily but member of the amaryllis family, bought some bulbs which were expensive, planted carefully per directions, shot up leaves in the spring and dies back which is charactistic, but the blooms that are supposed to emerge quickly in late Aug, nothing for 2 years now.

I'm not a hard left environmentalist but definitely have environmental concerns, did a photo essay on the subject, and this, I fear was the victim, along with other native trees and flowers, of a big, bad bulldozer to make way for human habitats.

{{gwi:359626}}

So many flowers capture my imagination, along with the little winged friends (bees, butterflies, birds) that come to visit the flowers.

In particular - just bought seeds for Aquilegia caerulea, Rocky mountain Columbine. The blue flowers are gorgeous, but it will be at least 2011 until they bloom (X the fingers), so I'll be dreaming for awhile. :)

Hope the Aquilegia canadensis and Phlox divaricata (WS'd 2008) and the Virginia bluebells and a few other swap goodies bloom a little this Spring. Although it won't be a huge show, it's nice to see the first blooms, just to see what they look like.

Also looking forward to the Lunaria annua (money plant) blooming this Spring - scattered some seed last summer in an area where there were already one or two, and now there are a dozen big healthy clumps out there.

Can you tell I'm looking forward to Spring??