The Garden in Spring

The spring garden at Barklin House really begins right after the new year, with the blooming of the winter shrubs, particularly the edgeworthia, or Japanese Paper Plant.  It has many small trumpet-shaped blooms on its bare branches.  The tea olives will also put out blooms that are very fragrant on warm sunny winter days.  The paper-whites are dependable January bloomers, followed by the other bulbs, crocus, grape-hyacinth, native tulips, jonquils and daffodils. 

  The trusty re-blooming tulips.

Paper-whites and jonquils are early bloomers, too.

  Variegated vinca major can be very invasive - all it takes is one tendril from a window-box to touch the ground and it is off and running!

Yellow tulips like these must be considered annuals.  I plant them on New Years Day in big pots after they have spent the fall in the refrigerator with the lettuce and celery!  They do make a nice showing before much else is in bloom.

                                             yellow tulips

   Many of the spring flowers and shrubs make great cut flowers for the house.  Branches of forsythia, small red-bud branches and even twigs from the flowering quince are lovely mixed with a few flowers from the bulbs.  The flowers of the little bulbs like crocus and grape hyacinth are better left in the ground where they make a bright little surprise. 

 

The Lady Banks rose is another old garden friend.  Almost thornless, it can send canes thirty or forty feet into a neighboring tree if given the chance.  trained over an arbor, Lady Banks creates a cozy sort of leafy cavern, brightened with its lovely little blooms in late spring and maintaining its leaves year-round.

 

Continue to the Garden in Summer

Autumn Winter    N W F Habitat  Our Backyard Birds

 

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