The garden explodes into bloom so quickly, from a few species flowering to dozens seemingly overnight. This has been an excellent year for flowers, with just enough rain to keep all the plants happy.
The peonies were especially brilliant this year. They have taken a long time to really fill out, but it was worth the wait!
The poppies (Papaver orientalis) are still blooming, although the rain today might be challenging their delicate beauty.
I am a huge fan of Lychnis coronaria, but not the straight species with the almost impossibly magenta flowers. I like the muted white or soft pink cultivars. They just fit into the landscape better.
Linaria is a weedy perennial, but the purple is so pure (or maybe just to my color-challenged eyes), and “weedy” just means generous in my memory garden, where it can be tough for plants to take hold. The hummers like it, too!
One garden surprise is this hybrid tea rose that Leon brought home from his Mom’s home after she passed away many years ago. This rose has always struggled. This is the very first year it looks healthy, strong, and full of flowers.
And the orange rose in the memory garden is about to explode after a really hard pruning in late winter.
I have a weakness for the simplest roses, both in form and scent. This is the weedy arboretum rose that has seeded around our yard. I let it bloom, then cut it back to the ground to try to contain it.
Speaking of scent, one of the best fragrances I’ve come across in flowers comes from valerian. I have only ever smelled it in my garden, from the one seedling that survived the packet planted three years ago. The fragrance is subtle, with hints of vanilla, but very distinct.
Last but not least, the Verbena bonariensis plants sprinkled in the memory garden are blooming. Aside from native plants, these are the pollinators’ favorites.
Wow! Spring came very quickly this year. So many flowers all around the yard have come and gone in the last month.
Leon loves dahlias, so I purchased some from Swan Island, a nursery we visited a few times in Oregon. I planted them with stakes in front of his Bedrock stone studio–it will be interesting to see how they grow.
And below are more recent flower pics. Every day brings something spectacular and new.
We had some very wet weather right in the heart of tulip season this year, but it did not dampen their spirits much, and the bloom show continues now in early May. When I ordered the tulip bulbs last year, I was not so careful in matching perfect color combinations. There were some serious color clashes! But there were also some gorgeous individual flowers and some fun combinations. It was pretty random…maybe I’ll be a little more careful last year. But probably not.
Here are some of the great photos from this year’s show:
When Leon’s sculpture studio was abruptly closed in October, we decided to create a new space for him to carve here in our yard. That meant removing a garden to make room. What had been the orchard garden was razed to create a flat, clean space for a new outbuilding. There were several great plants in that garden that I wanted to save, but we were in quite a rush–there was no real prep for transplanting, just a quick dig-it-up-and-move-it event.
Ultimately, I moved three David Austin own-root roses, a hellebore, and a grafted Asian pear espalier. I felt pretty good about the hellebore. It came out with lots of soil and roots. I was unsure how the roses would do. They had minimal roots and seemed rather fragile. The poor pear tree had the bulk of its major roots deep behind the fence, making them impossible to dig out; it was transplanted with almost no roots at all!
Amazingly, so far, all of these plants are doing great!
Hellebore has no idea it was even moved–just bloomed right through it and seems very happy in its new space in the memory garden.
All three roses have strong new growth!
I’m still most worried about this pear. While it is putting out new growth, which is great, I know sometimes trees have hold-over energy they use to bloom and leaf out, and then they need the roots to provide their energy for the rest of the year. I would not be surprised if this tree, so aggressively torn from the ground, ends up dying after it leafs out and blooms a bit. I hope it doesn’t! It would be so great if it survives and it clearly is trying.
Here are some photos of a few other flowers in the garden today. Spring started a bit early, but then stalled out. It is finally really coming on.
Here is a photo dump of recent blooming plants in the garden and greenhouse.
Common violet–so easy to take them for granted, but they are generous of flower and interesting of foliage.
My Veltheimia bracteata is blooming in the greenhouse. Due to their intricate structure, the flowers are almost as beautiful in the bud state as they are fully bloomed.
Tulips have been budding and blooming quickly in the last two weeks, elegant in all stages.
First hybrid tulip bloom.
And it was sunny enough to look inside!
Plum blossoms.
Lots of Pleione blooms in the greenhouse! I am relieved. The rats were eating the pseudobulbs pretty regularly, and I thought there might be none left!
Phlox cuttings taken in late March. They wilted right away, but luckily it rained a bit and they are recovering. There are 24 cuttings, 6 each in four gallon-sized pots.
Narcissus hybrid forced in pots in the greenhouse. These have lasted a few weeks now, and the fragrance is sweet but subtle.
Masdevallias blooming in the greenhouse.
Hyacinths have been surprisingly perennial in the memory garden. I have an odd mix of colors. I think of them as festive rather than chaotic.
Forsythia in front of the orchard garden. This plant is painfully yellow, but there is a grace in the way the flowers hang from the stems that gets overlooked in the glare.
Oregano in the veggie garden–the foliage makes charming patterns.
Fritillaria raddeana is a naughty ornamental in the native plant garden.
Euphorbia blooming in the memory garden in the rain.
Easter cactus just a week or two early.
Mom’s cymbidium, gifted to me by brother Tim many moons ago. This cultivar never fails to produce a few scapes of phenomenal blooms.
Corydalis in the memory garden. Early, short, and sweet–they only last two weeks, and the plants disappear shortly after. They are reliable, though, and thoroughly perennial here, but nonspreading.
Corylopsis blooms in the front of the orchard garden. Lighter and more demure than the forsythia next door, this shrub has healthy but fairly uninteresting foliage.
Clematis bud–one of thousands on our back fence. We should have a great show this year.
Spring is in full swing here in North Seattle. Thousands of seedlings are popping up in my native nursery pots, and flowers and leaves are springing out in the native garden.
Oregon grape seedlings have appeared in the last week.
Lupinus rivularis seedlings have also shown up this month.
Lupinus rivularis seedlings have also germinated. I am looking forward to having more of these to add to the native plant garden and share with neighbors.
More Oregon grape seedlings with year-old western columbine seedlings behind.
About two dozen western columbine seedlings survived the winter. I am feeding them and trying to boost their size before planting them out or giving them away.
I planted out most of the large-leaved avens, but this one is just waking up, a seedling from last year.
These are just a few of the thousands of seedlings that have popped up from seeds planted last autumn. Some of the seeds were planted the year before. It is tough not to get excited by the germination of the natives after so many months. The seep monkey flowers are probably the most successful germinators. I have potted at least 50 of them in small clumps into 4″ pots…tough to know if they will take or not. They look fragile after transplanting, but my hope is they will “catch” and start to grow in the coming weeks. These are annual plants, and I have high hopes of adding them to the edge of our koi pond as well as slipping some around Twin Ponds and other wet areas in the neighborhood.
Other seedlings include another monkey flower, the scarlet monkey flower, with the tiniest seedlings I think I have ever seen! There are a lot of teeny seedlings that just germinated in the last week. It will be another month before they can be transplanted, maybe longer.
Other seedlings include fringecup, Oregon tough-leaved iris, grass widows, Menzie’s fiddlenecks, Douglas aster, and yarrow. The tree and shrub seeds are slower to germinate. I am still waiting on western crabapple, madrone, cascara, pacific dogwood, blackcap raspberry, and others.
In addition to seed starting, I undertook some vegetative propagation today by uprooting some Douglas aster starts from my biggest clumps. I potted about twenty cuttings into pots and watered them well. If they strike, they should be ready for transplanting or giving away by the middle of May. I was very impressed with Douglas aster as a patio pot plant last year and will share that benefit when I share the cuttings with neighbors and friends.
Probably the showiest flower in my native plant garden, salmonberry.
My osoberry was covered in blooms this year. Their juxtaposition with the developing leaves reminds me of a shuttlecock.
My Oregon grape is blooming especially well this year.
I have not seen pollinators on these flowers, but am hopeful that there will be hundreds of berries in the fall to feed the birds and provide more seedlings to plant out and give away.
A special flower appeared in the garden today. These are usually so well-hidden that I miss them. It is the flower of the western wild ginger. I happened to get a few photos this year.
As much as I enjoy propagating these natives and watching them bloom, my new favorite hobby is documenting the “why” of native gardens–the birds and other wildlife that are drawn to my garden. Here are a few birds that are nesting in our yard this year so far:
There is a pair of Bewick’s wrens nesting in a box just outside our front window. Here is the male singing his beautiful song within a few yards of Leon and me.
I spotted this pair of dark-eyed juncos building a nest on the ground in the native plant garden today. The nest is in a not-so-safe place. I will try to help them protect it if I can. I would not be surprised if another paid of juncos is nesting on the other side of the yard. They seem to love the messy orchard garden.
Nuthatches are typically a seasonal bird for us, but I believe a pair is nesting in a box in the orchard garden. This beauty was scaling our big Douglas fir tree today.
A third bird box likely has chestnut-backed chickadees. There is a pair hanging out all over the yard.
The queen of the yard birds, our American crow, Half-Beak. We have been enjoying her visits for at least twelve years. She is back, and I heard mating noises today. I imagine she has a nest in our Douglas fir tree.
The song sparrows seem to like the branch piles in the orchard garden. It seems likely they are breeding there somewhere.
Several other bird species may be nesting in or near our yard. I have been hearing pine siskins consistently in the Douglas fir tree, which is new. They are usually long gone by now to parts unknown. I hear and see golden-crowned kinglets every day. There is a yellow-rumped warbler that visits the suet feeder every day. It looks scruffy, maybe with avian pox, but it seems to have a good appetite, and its health has improved in the last week or so. There are spotted towhees around the yard every day. They seem to like the messy orchard garden, too. I see and hear black-capped chickadees every day now, too. A pair of Anna’s hummingbirds frequents the north side of the orchard garden. Infrequently, a Townsend’s warbler appears at the feeder. Some house finches were hanging around last week. There are band-tailed pigeons that roost in several trees nearby. We see American robins, Stellar’s jays, glaucus-winged gulls, and northern flickers daily. I am excited that our neighborhood continues to host so many avian species and hope a few more of them raise broods here in our yard.
