April in Two Gardens: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day April 2012

This spring has alternated between unseasonably warm and fairly seasonable. The warmth brought the forsythias and daffodils into early bloom, and the returning cool weather kept them looking good for far longer than we had a right to expect. The old garden has cultivated flowers blooming; the new garden has some native plants blooming. I thought I’d show you some of both.

Blooming At The Old Garden

Until I received this trial plant of Double Play® Big Bang from Proven Winners, I didn’t know spireas did this. The brilliant scarlet emerging foliage is very eye-catching at a time when not too much else is in bloom. I also noticed bright new foliage on a spirea at our new house, but I don’t know the name of it.

I had to take photos at the old garden last Thursday, so I am sure this old-fashioned flowering quince, a passalong from my mother-in-law, is in full bloom now. It will survive almost anything, but in a really cold winter, the flowering will not be as profuse.I bought this hellebore from Seneca Hill Perennials in 2010, and this is the first year it has bloomed. I don’t think I would call this double, but the catalog stated that they were selling seedlings from the mother plant, and couldn’t vouch for their doubleness. I don’t care; I really like it.Flowering almond is another tough, old-fashioned shrub. It usually blooms in mid-May, so this one is way ahead of schedule. The earliest daffodils have gone by here, but the mid-season ones are blooming now. Much to my surprise, the double bloodroot was not blooming, and neither was the hepatica. I still haven’t made up my mind which garden is colder.

Blooming In The New Garden

There is a brushy area by the side of the house, and I was delighted to find a generous patch of bloodroot blooming in it. I guess this is why I am surprised the double bloodroot isn’t blooming, but my friend Bub, who has both, told me the double is always later. And it is typically a May flower for me.There are two brooks on our property. What I think of as the “big” brook forms the northern border of our property. The “little” brook cuts through our property to join the big brook. It separates the lawn from the second-growth woods. If either of them have a name, I haven’t found it on any map thus far. Neither of them are very big. These trilliums are growing in various spots along the big brook. According to Trilliums, T. erectum is very common and very early, so much so that “it is not unusual for the plants to suffer considerable frost damage.” Despite this, the authors say “this species tends to form large clumps.”I do have one cultivated plant in flower at the new garden, much to my surprise. I’m pretty sure they are some of the Summer Snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum) my friend Leslie Kuss gave me at the Garden Bloggers’ Buffalo Fling. But I don’t remember planting them. What I think happened is that I dug them up with something else, and didn’t know what they were. Since I didn’t know what they were, I didn’t label them or write down where I had planted them, figuring I’d surprise myself. Well, I did. That never happens to you, does it?

Inspired by the words of Elizabeth Lawrence, “We can have flowers nearly every month of the year,” Carol of May Dreams Gardens started Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from all over the world publish what is currently blooming in their gardens, and leave a link in Mr. Linky and the comments of May Dreams Gardens.