Greetings friends and fellow gardeners.
Recently, I’ve been gathering ideas to share new plant material with all of you, and I’ve compiled the following list of some new introductions and some old-time favorites that I think will brighten up your spring garden.
Spring is always a great time of year, a time to come up with new ideas, a fresh start on old plans halted by the onslaught of winter, and of course preparation to prepare your tools and inventory your seed selections. , new plants for the garden. and anything creative to make the next few months exciting.
So … Since time is of the essence, let’s get started.
When I was living in California, I remember driving down a back road to my house and meeting a spectacular group of Alcea, or Holly Hocks as the newbie knows them, and taking a camera in hand and taking a wonderful photo of them.
By scanning my current supplier catalogs, I have added these varieties as a few to look for this spring. I hope you like them like me. Be sure to search for them on the search engine of your choice and enjoy the beauty of these great selections.
1) Alcea ‘Crème de Cassis
This variety offers very showy flowers and has a raspberry red center with a yellow throat. Surprisingly, this plant has a unique characteristic, as it has single and double flowers on a single stem. This majestic plant is a biennial or short-lived perennial. Note that Holly Hocks self-seeded and cropped up the following year. It blooms in mid-summer.
2) Alcea ‘Summer Memories’
This variety is a seed variety that is handpicked by one of my suppliers, which comes as a mixed color variety of individual samples. It comes in light yellow, white, pink, deep red, burgundy, and orange colors. All flowers come on very tall stems during the mid-summer months.
3) Brunnera (macrophylla) ‘Mirror’
What a find! This extraordinary plant has wispy panicles of blue forget-me-not flowers that appear to float above the foliage. Brunnera has large, heart-shaped, mature leaves that are silvery and tend to drop downward in a cup shape. This plant is perfect to bring light to any shade garden.
4) Campanula (persicifolia) ‘La Belle’ Bellflower with peach leaves
The fairly tall erect stems offer a beautiful bouquet of deep blue double flowers that have a silver sheen. The plant forms a mound of leathery, evergreen, dark green leaves and will last quite as long as a cut flower.
5) Clematis ‘Veronica’s Choice’ Clematis Veronica is unique in that it repeats itself. The first round of bloom offers pale to almost white lavender flowers with ruffled, ruffled petals and large 6 “wide blooms. The second round of blooms is unique. This is a wonderful mature specimen friend.
6) Helleborus (Rose of Lent) ‘Ice follies’
This plant is a more floriferous and robust member of the genus. Up to 100 flowers on a mature plant! Large 3 “cream to light yellow flowers are heavily spotted with flecks of burgundy to red.
I think this is a great starter series and I will continue with another group as the season unfolds. Just to keep you in touch with the world of gardening, I wish you all a great spring (if we ever get out from under all this snow). See you later ….. Happy gardening … Your humble gardener … Chet Stentiford