Imagine having a Flower Clock made in a circle in your garden, with plants planted in 12 positions around the clock face, standing in for each hour. The plants will be placed corresponding to the hour that their flowers open.

Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist, wrote about this lovely idea, which he called “Horologium Florae”, literally “Flower Clock”, in 1751 in the publication “Philosophia Botanica.”

The flowers of many plants open and close at a regular hour each day. Aequinoctales are flowers that have fixed times for opening and closing, and these are the only flowers to use in a Flower Clock.

Linnaeus drew up plans based on the times that flowers, many of them wildflowers, opened where he lived, in Hammersby, Sweden. The University of Uppsala in Sweden, where Linnaeus was a professor, has a well known Flower Clock. If you want to design your own flower garden, you will need to adjust the plants by finding out what hour they open in your location, since the times vary by latitude.

For some general ideas, goatsbeard opens at 3 a.m., dandelions and chicory open at 4-5 a.m., morning glories open at 5 a.m., day lily at 6 a.m, catnip or catmint at 6-7 a.m., gentian at 9 a.m., day lilies, sweet peas, Star of Bethlehem and Iceland poppies at 10-11 a.m., Icelandic poppy, alyssum, calendula or field marigolds at 11 a.m. and passion flower at noon.

Put a bench at the 1-3 p.m. location for resting in the heat of the day, then four-o’clocks [pictured at right] at 4 p.m., moonflower at 6 p.m, and so on.

Andrew Marvell wrote about these Flower Clock gardens in his poem in 1678 “The Garden.”

How well the skilful gardener drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, th’ industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flow’rs!

Most Flower Clocks don’t work as Linnaeus outlined since many of the flowers he chose are short-lived yellow weeds. Today decorative and functional Flower Clocks exist in many parks, with hands operated by a clockwork mechanism, and the clock face simply planted with pretty flowers.

I first read about this delightful idea in the small book Hortus Miscellaneous: A Gardener’s Hodgepodge of Information, by Lorene Edwards Forkner and Linda Plato. I had to buy it as soon as I read the title and picked it up. I am all for having fun in our gardens, and anyone who puts the word “hodgepodge” in their book title is ok with me.

 

Copyright © by Terra Hangen