A Few of My Favorite Things

A much needed rain arrived last night, an inch on my rain gauge. If you haven't noticed, its been dry. The garden is busting forth though, and many of my favorite plants are just beginning to flower. My shade garden sits beneath white pines, a challenge in so many ways. The ground or soil is built on years and years of dropped pine needles, you can literally jump on it and feel the spring. Keeping plants watered in this spongy loam is a challenge all its own. Add the density of shade from pines, with no break in winter (as deciduous trees loose their leaves), means I have few perennials I can really count on to grow, much less thrive. Epimedium or barrenwort is one of them, oh joy for a plant that can grow so well on so little. 

Epimdium pinnatum ssp. colchicum

Epimedium x versicolor sulphureum

Epimedium 'Wudang Star'

I also grow a special primrose, Primula vulgaris ssp. sibthorpii. A little known primrose, generally sold as a pale lavender, my selection came from Heronswood, once the source of so many special plants for the discriminating gardener. I consider their selection much better with a richer color. 

About 7 years ago I bought a fragrant muscari, best known as grape hyacinth. This little oddity has been reliable and oddly fragrant. A hint of lemon and maybe chrysanthemum foliage describe the fragrance, it's certainly a bulb that I recommend because it grows for me in sun and shade, although far better in the sunny parts.

Muscari fragrans

With our recent spike in temperatures I wanted to pass along some advice I was once given. If we see eighty degrees in early April, in ten days we will have frost. Now this doesn't always happen, weather can certainly change. The warm air will exit to the east and pull down cold air from the north-west, or at least that's how it often happens. So with ninety degrees on April 10th, it would follow that April 20th might bring us a frosty night. Just sayin.

Comments

[Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens]

You and I like the same plants. I have a collection of about 30 different epimediums, and I love the bright color of ssp. colchicum, which I have for sale at my nursery. I also have that wonderful primrose and love primroses in general. I have tried the yellow muscari several times with no success---leaves only :-(.

[Elin]

Beautiful, Karen! the flowers and your photos!

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Carolyn, no surprise, when plants are good they get our attention. Do you have Epimedium brachyrihzum? And... I love that you sell Primula sieboldii.

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Elin, thank-you so much. Unfortunately we already have ticks and poison ivy, something you don't have to worry about.