Spring has finally arrived at Purdville. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost some of my photo gallery features when I switched to this new design. You can click on each thumbnail for a larger image, but then you have to use your browser’s Back button to get back to the thumbnails.

Also blooming:

• Creeping phlox
• Narcissus poeticus, ‘Irish Laddie’, and ‘Curly Lace’
• Lilacs: light purple, single white, double white
• Pulmonaria (lungwort)
• white violets
• Flowering almond
• And, of course, the mystery plant of the previous post

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.

I hate to admit it to you Southerners, but when the snow melts, what it invariably reveals is…a mess. I’m not just talking about the dead vegetation that needs to be cut back. There’s human-made messes that ought to be dealt with, too. But let’s talk about the plants first.

Cut back and clear out dead plant material

Only March 11th and this catmint is already poised for growth. Most of the crocuses haven't opened yet.

With the exception of the exceptional foliage plants featured in this month’s Bloom Day post, most every plant in the garden is represented by a pile of slimy brown mush when the snow cover finally melts. Some plants get an early start out of the gate in spring, however, and they will look more attractive in their early spring greeness if the brown gook is cleared away.

How do you know which ones are the early ones? Well, that is what your garden notebook is for! Didn’t you make note of which plants put out early growth and write it down so you wouldn’t forget? Let’s pretend you just started your perennial garden last year, so this is your first spring with your new plants. Practice your powers of observation:

Early new spring growth is often a deep redor dusky purple, making it difficult to see. This columbine still needs its dead foliage trimmed back.

I usually wait a little longer before trimming the veronica, because some new growth sprouts from last year's stems. A more ruthless gardener would probably just grab all the stems and make one cut.

Snow removal leaves a mess

I find myself needing to explain things to you Southerners again. When the roads get icy, or only a little bit of snow is anticipated, the highway trucks drive through applying a combination of salt and grit. The salt lowers the freezing point of water and the grit improves traction. When we get significant snow accumulation, the trucks must push (plow) the snow off the road, leaving it piled along the edges of every street. As you might imagine, a lot of that grit mixes with the snow as it is scraped off the road and thrown to the side. When the snow melts, you often find this:

The grit that was used to provide traction last winter shows up on the mud season lawn.

Don’t clean up too much, too soon

It’s tempting to rake away every bit of detritus on the first warm day, but that’s not a good idea. With the loss of snow cover, plants are actually more vulnerable now than when they were buried under the white stuff. We’ve already had a few days in the high 50s and hit 60F once, but this morning at 7am it was 9F. Imagine a plant coaxed out of dormancy being socked with that kind of a temperature drop. I’ve had a lot of plants come through the winter just fine, only to be killed by the vagaries of mud season. Biennials that bring a rosette of leaves through the winter, such as foxgloves, seem to be especially vulnerable. It seems counter-intuitive to cover a plant that made it through the winter just fine, and yet sometimes I wonder if that’s what I should do. Of course, it never occurs to me until after the mercury plummets, and by then it’s too late. And I wonder what kind of material would offer additional protection without trapping too much moisture, encouraging rot. Got any suggestions?

It is easier to weed grass out of daylilies when the daylilies have gone dormant and the grass has not.

Seedlings!

I started out this mild day trying to be pragmatic. I had it in my head I should drain and store the garden hose, haul all the empty pots and window boxes down to the basement, and (sniff!) take down the hammock for the winter. But it all sounded so boring. Somehow I got my hands in the dirt, and I was a goner. What had I been thinking? I can do all that boring stuff when it’s chilly, wet, windy, and perhaps snowy. (Well, actually, the hammock should come down when it’s dry.) But the opportunity to pull some weeds in mild weather and moist soil, weeds that would be left to spring in a normal year, well, such an opportunity should not be missed. Especially since I find weeding so much more satisfying than draining hoses. (It is fascinating how far grass runners can travel in friable soil.)

I got the original hellebore from Seneca Hill Perennials. Owner Ellen Hornig has stopped offering hellebores in a big way, though she is sure to have something you’ve never grown–or even seen–before. According to her website, she will be accepting orders for spring after November 30. Gardeners, start your engines!

Variegated bulbous oat grass, sweet white violet, and a bit of ‘White Nancy’ lamium in the lower left corner

Because of the warm April, a lot of the daffodils that were still blooming last year are done for this year. This is the “gap” time between the early blooming spring flowers and the big June extravaganza when all the experts say I should have lots of tulips blooming, but I don’t. I love tulips, but they prefer better draining soil than what I’ve got, and the plentiful rodents like to eat them. Instead, I seem to have a lot of green and white vignettes, such as the one above, and the one below.

The foliage of Brunnera ‘Looking Glass’ looks well with the great white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum)

Other white flowers blooming now are Narcissus poeticus and N. ‘Thalia,’ as well as the narcissus I’m calling ‘Irish Laddie’ (all featured in last year’s May bloom day post). My double white lilac (variety unknown) has also started to open. It’s always the earliest.

New and Noteworthy

Creeping phlox and ‘Waterperry’ veronica adorn the Birthday Garden wall, while ‘Curly Lace’ daffodil gazes down on them both.

I just got that dainty ‘Waterperry’ veronica last fall, and had no idea it would complement the creeping phlox I got from a friend many years ago. The ‘Curly Lace’ daffodils are a new introduction from Brent & Becky.

This ‘Victor Reiter’ sea pink (Armeria maritima) also graces the base of the stone wall

Both the veronica and the sea pink are marketed as Plants That Work in Nooks & Crannies. If you have a stone wall like mine or need a little plant to tuck in somewhere, you might want to browse through their website.

Everything else

• Johnny-jump-ups (Viola tricolor)
• Seneca Hill hellebore, pale yellow with pink flush
• plum colored hellebore, also from Seneca Hill Perennials
• Rundy’s cherry tree
• Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’. A species tulip that grows in the crocus bank.
• grape hyacinths
• The ‘Looking Glass’ brunnera growing next to the trilliums above has its first blossoms
• forget-me-nots
• Virginia bluebells
• violets
• The last bits of Corydalis solida
• the first trollius blossom
• purple-leaved ajuga

This looked spectacular earlier in May, but the narcissus were already done by the time Gardeners Bloom Day came around.

Those orange-cup daffodils were blooming at my neighbor’s, between her house and the brook, but too far away from the house to be noticed. I marked them and dug them up and got half for myself for the labor of digging and replanting her half. The hellebore came from Seneca Hill Perennials. I didn’t plan this combination. The daffodils were already there; the hellebore was an unexpected gift that I had to “put somewhere,” and that’s where I thought the hellebore would be happy.

I’ve since surrounded these two with some grape hyacinths that bloomed somewhat after the peak of these two, and there weren’t enough of them to make an impact this year.

What do you think?

In contrast to what gardeners in many other parts of the country have endured, where Spring arrived in full force, only to be slapped down by Winter’s last stand, Spring has not really made its grand entrance. It’s only been peeking through the window, wondering if it really wants to come in.

The snowdrops are dangling the last of their bells. The crocus bank would look pretty good–if only their blossoms would open, which they won’t do without sunshine. The daffodils have been on the verge of blooming for a week, likewise just waiting for a bit of sunshine:

But are we going to get sunshine? No-o-o. Not for the forseeable future. As a matter of fact, thought it’s raining now, we’re supposed to get snow:

Snowfall accumulations of 8 to 12 inches will be possible
overnight… especially in the higher terrain . Total snowfall
accumulations could well exceed a foot by Monday evening… with 12
to 18 inches possible in the highest terrain along the Interstate
81 corridor.

In addition to the snow… strong north winds of 15 to 25 mph with
gusts to near 40 mph will cause blowing snow and whiteout
conditions. The strong winds combined with heavy and wet snow will
likely result in downed trees and power lines and power outages
throughout the area.

All I can say is, I hope they’re wrong. But if the choice is between snow or ice, yes, I will take snow. If we do get snow to the depth they are predicting, it will be the heaviest snowfall I can remember this late into April. I mean, hate-pril.

Cornelian cherry, forsythia, Siberian squills, glory-of-the-snow: all are waiting for the sunshine which will be delayed for yet another week. The only flower newly blooming for April is this plum-colored hellebore, which Ellen Hornig of Seneca Hill Perennials included in my 2003 order because she felt something else in my order was undersized. The something else has since died, but this hellebore just gets better and better.

Stop by at May Dreams Garden for all the other Bloom Day reports.

Lynda, Fraser’s Thimble Farms was offering ‘Lady’ hellebores at their 2002 website. While you are there, make sure you check out their Japanese hepaticas. Oo la la! Collecting them could be an expensive hobby! If you search at Google using the keywords helleborus +lady (the plus sign means lady must be on the same page as helleborus) you will also find some wholesale sources, and maybe one of them would be suitable to recommend to your local grower. I think I will wait until someone on the east coast offers the ‘Lady,’ because even though they sound luscious, shipping cross-country can be prohibitive.

One is H. niger and the other is H. orientalis. It’s the niger that is blooming now. The O blooms closer to Easter. The ‘Lady’ series is H x hybridus Lady. To paraphrase an article in BBC Gardener’s World, “Exciting colour options are now available to gardeners with the introduction of a new series of hellebores bred by Gisela Schmiemann in Germany.” Hopefully, I can get the garden center in Creston, BC to bring the series in for sale. The colors are really spectacular. The blue is the deepest and the yellow is sharp and bright. On another note…….night before last we received another six inches of snow. It was bright when I got up at midnight to take care of ‘the necessaries’, and ’sitting on the throne, gazing out into the back yard’, who should stroll out from the trees, but two lovely young does! I spent over an hour watching them pick through the perennial bed munching roses, helichrysum, residual asparagus fronds and the odd blue berry and raspberry twig. Taking into consideration we are almost in the city limits where most yards are lit, dogs abound and traffic is always there, I couldn’t get over the resiliency of these two ladies….coming to terms with foraging in the suburbs.

Mine aren’t in a sheltered spot and they are subject to wind almost every day that comes from the south. After a very mild late summer and early fall, the temps plunged without benefit of snow cover. The Hellebores fell over and looked quite forlorn and as soon as the weather moderated, they lifted their cushy heads to let me know all was well. Today we received a foot of new snow that flattened them and all I had to do was brush it aside and they perked right up again. It would be nice if the spring and summer bloomers had such recuperative powers!

So, Lynda, they really do bloom in the snow, unlike snowdrops or crocus, which wait until March for me? How important is snow cover? If you have good snow cover, the soil doesn’t freeze and I guess I can see how they might bloom. But what about if the ground freezes solid and there’s no snow cover and it’s way below zero (F)? Do they just come up later, or does it kill them? Are yours in a sheltered spot?