Mertensia virginica is a delightful spring ephemeral with soft blue flowers. Easily grown in shade or part shade, and requires no effort from the gardener. Plant and forget it. You don’t even have to clean up the foliage as it just disappears under other garden stars that grow later in the year.
Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’, the orchid iris, is one of the best reticulata-type early spring flowering iris. It makes a great show every year and multiplies quickly to form a good sized clump. The flowers are short, but wider than other similar types. To be honest, I don’t like pale colors in the garden but I’ve fallen in love with this one.
You have been growing seedlings in small pots and it’s time to move them to bigger pots. Or maybe you bought a small houseplant and it has grown too big for the pot and it needs more space. What size of pot should you use when potting up? Is it better to pot up one size at a time, or go to a big pot right away?
Is there a right answer or does the answer depend on your goals for the plant, the type of soil or the type of plant?
The answer is going to surprise many of you and it’ll show the value of listening to science.
Berberis thunbergii ‘Concorde’ adds great color to a larger rock garden. It looks good from spring to fall and can be pruned to any height that suits its location. The flowers are insignificant, but the foliage steals the show.
Prosartes maculata is a rare beauty for the shade garden. It’s flowers face down similar to hellebores, so you have to lift the flowers to really enjoy them but they do flower early in the year after most daffodils and before the big show of iris and peonies.
Carl Linnaeus, famous for developing the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature, received some incorrectly labeled seeds that turned out to be Corydalis nobilis. Decedents of these plants can still be found today in his preserved garden. In fact it is an early example of a non-native plant escaping from a garden and becoming naturalized in its new home. It is believed that all of the wild Corydalis nobilis growing in Finland and Sweden are escapees from Carl Linnaeus’ garden.
The Stinking Hellebore! With a name like that, you just have to have one in your garden.
Hornungia alpina ‘Icecube’ is a darling plant for the rock garden that is not very well known, especially in North America.
Violets are darling little plants for the spring garden, but some are little devils that seed all over the place and become a weed. Viola ‘Dancing Geisha’ is not a devil. I find no seedlings in my garden.
An absolutely gorgeous yellow wood anemone. This plant has received the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society, an award that is given to special garden worthy plants. It forms a tight low mat of ferny leaves and at the center of each leaf it produces a bright yellow flower. The flower has five … Read More
A perfect rock garden plant, and by rock garden I mean growing right on top of rocks. Asplenium trichomanesis a great little evergreen fern that likes some shade, and can grow with virtually no soil. It is quite happy growing in a small crack in a stone. They will also grow in the ground if given a very porous soil.