Early April Garden

It has been a busy past couple of weeks in my garden, from finishing a new patio and surrounding bed to cleaning up and starting to plant all my other beds, creating a bottle tree, dividing and transplanting lots of perennials, planting summer bulbs, and tending to more than 300 plants I have growing under lights. Tomorrow, I’ll begin to harden them off by carrying them in and out of the house for a couple of weeks before planting them out…. not an enjoyable task, but necessary. The weather has been sunny and HOT but I have managed to get so much done lately! Since I’ve been so busy, I haven’t taken as many photos as I usually do this time of year, but here are a few quick shots of some of the blooms over the past two weeks:

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Kerria japonica ‘Pleniflora’
Blooming now, with about a million flowers!

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Prunus serrulata ‘Kwanzan’

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Tulips and Daffodils at edge of woods
The spring bulb flowers didn’t last long this year –
they didn’t like the 86 degree temperatures.

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Pink Tulips and Bleeding Heart

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A pretty pink tulip

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Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)
This gorgeous honeysuckle is blooming exceptionally well this year.

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Bluebells and Creeping Phlox in the spring bulb bed.

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Dwarf Lilac (Syringa ) ‘Josee’
This is ‘Josee’, a reblooming lilac. This type is supposed to be better for the south and our mild winters, and so far, it is blooming more than the old-fashioned lilacs I have. They are huge, but always bloom very sparsely (our winters just do not get cold enough for them). This lilac is about 5′ tall, and has many bloom clusters on it now. After the first heavy bloom in spring, it will continue to flower intermittently til frost.

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Are you enjoying this gorgeous, early summer-like weather?

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More Flowers

The warm spring weather continutes, and a few more flowers have started blooming during this past week in the garden. The yellow forsythia shrubs are also coming into bloom. The deer are serious pests this year and have eaten the buds on my hydrangeas and almost all the leaves off several evergreen shrubs. What they haven’t eaten, they have trampled down. Here are a few flowers they’ve missed:

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It’s way too early for the Creeping Phlox, but it’s blooming anyway.

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The Flowering Quince has a few flowers. It always blooms sparsely, don’t think it likes our mild winters and it probably doesn’t get enough sun.

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Grecian Windflowers (Anemone blanda) are blooming.

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The small daffodils are now starting to bloom in the edge of the woods. The larger flowered early daffs have been in bloom for a couple weeks now.

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The little irises are at peak bloom right now and look so pretty in the secret garden. I think I need more of these.

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Only three weeks til spring!

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Early Flowers

I wandered around the garden for awhile today looking at (and fussing about) all the deer damage to my hydrangeas and the constant rain and wet soil this winter, and was cheered by the flowers blooming now— daffodils, crocus, miniature iris.

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Crocus

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Iris reticulata ‘Harmony’

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Daffodil

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It’s so nice to see the garden coming alive again!

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Flooding and a Few More Flowers

After getting 3 or 4 inches of rain over this past weekend, we have had two more days and a couple more inches of rain this week. All this rain has filled the streams in the mountains, and the little creek in the Secret Garden is overflowing. After the downpours finally stopped early this evening, I walked around a bit in the garden and found a few more flowers, including forsythia shrubs, daffodils and hyacinths. A few of the miniature irises are still blooming as well as a few crocus. Tulips are several inches tall, as are the alliums and other spring bulbs and the daylilies. I’m hoping that the rains will stop now so I can get the beds cleaned out and some fresh mulch put down. I’m ready for the gardening season to begin!

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A drenched daffodil

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Hyacinths are just about to bloom

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Raindrops on Forsythia flowers

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How’s your weather? Does it finally feel like spring in your area?

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