These are some pieces I've written for various print & on-line gardening magazines. From the Violet Journal:
Violets in North Idaho
Violets are a welcome part of gardening in far northern Idaho. They're among the first flowers of spring and the last in the fall. Easy to care for, generous with bloom and deer-proof! Snow cover protects them from winter lows to -20ºF and good rainfall makes them lush. Growing them in afternoon shade protects them from summer heat spells which can be intense in the mountains.
There are many native violets and I have several here in the woods. None are fragrant but the sight of hundreds of lemon yellow V. orbiculata spangling the forest floor is not to be forgotten. They prefer Cedar swamps and Tamarack woods and grow among Trillium, orchids and Blue Bead Lilies. V. adunca, the Early Blue Violet, has leaves like folded valentine hearts. The flowers are just the lavender side of blue. Small in the woods (1-2"), in the fat soil of a garden can go to 6". The earlier yellow violet V. orbiculata is the first to open, its beaded-edged nearly round leaves often over-wintering. Tiny (¼-1/3") flowers with violet pencilling. There is a variety farther up the valley on Kootenai Lake with purplish, evergreen leaves but I've yet to meet it.
V. renifolia, white with purple pencilling (if you pick them to look: ¼" flowers), is later and the smallest plant. V. palustris is very similar but has runners. V. glabella, another yellow, is larger than orbiculata with pointed lower petal & bolder markings, and V. nephrophylla, from boggy places, has darker blue flowers than V. adunca and is larger and featherier. V. canadensis is much larger: it can reach 8" tall if encouraged.
V. odorata naturalizes well, especially the old purple form which colonizes happily. Their fragrance perfumes the air in spring and usually in November if the rains are kind. V. sororia 'Freckles' is very hardy, rampant and showy. V. sororia is nearly as aggressive but its blue eyes are a treat and if kept on the dry side it leaves room for others.
Winter Hardy Pansies
Here's an update to my winter-hardy pansy project. In my climate (USDA Zone 4, mintemp -25 to -30F, with or without snow cover), pansies don't always over-winter as I remember them doing in my childhood. There's lots of self-sown seedlings, but not much true over-wintering. After some research I discovered that most of the viola & pansy breeding being done today is done in California, Mexico and Japan, where winter pansy has a whole different meaning than it does where January can mean 4 feet of snow on the ground.
I began trialing a few new varieties each year and what began as a hardiness project has branched out to include color & form. Some seed catalogs note hardiness but this is rare even in grower's lists or so general to be meaningless.
This winter was relatively brief yet we still saw -26F and anywhere from none to 3 1/2 feet of snow. The winners are Stokes Swiss Giants and Crown mix for size and Joker Mix for old-fashioned Pansy patterning and richness of color; plums, purples, golds. . .they have longer stems than the Crowns too. Reliable Viola cornuta colors such as the very elegant Alba Minor, Lutea splendens, Arkwright Ruby, Chantreyland and Black Prince also have suitable stems for cutting. My favorite blue pansy is still Joker Light Blue. We had several melt-offs and I picked pansies and violets every month of the winter. Some were a bit mashed from the weight of the snow they'd had to deal with but they perked up and opened once inside. Dismal failures include the Chalons, Maxims, Rococcos & Impressions.
Moving into hardier/more long-lived territory are the oddly behaving Viola 'Fuji Dawn' and Viola coreana which appear not to have wintered and then suddenly burst forth 'boing!' from the soil in mounds and bloom immediately: nothing one day and by the end of the week, blooming specimen. Very strange.
The there are the Violets and Sweet Violets, my favorites. The wild Viola adunca is blooming now in the woods, the odoratas have been blooming along for a month or more, and V. sororia 'Red Giant' and V. priceana both burst forth this week; 'Freckles' is just beginning to open. I got new colors of sweet violets last summer and it is pleasant to see them settle in. Even the double 'Compte de Chambord' wintered, which I was uncertain of. 'Wren's Pink', 'Reid's Crimson Carpet', 'Mme Armandine Pages' all bloomed intermittently all winter. A dream!
Last night the little hybrid Viola jooi x pumila, soft rounded pink blooms, popped open and I saw in the seed pans that I have sprouts of V. polyssecta and a numbered variety from a Sakhalin Island expedition of Ray Brown's. (Though that may turn out to be quite familiar, as much of the plants from that trip turned out to be native here as well!)
This year's varietes include Panola Pink Shades (really pink, not lavender trying to pass for pink) which definitely has long stems and the as yet unbloomed Happyflower and Skylines. Check back next spring to see how they did. . .