Articles for the Month of April 2024

Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day April 2024

Well, I am spectacularly late for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day this month.  My excuse is that we went to England in April and had a chance to visit some of the world’s most delightful gardens.  We spent one day at Kew and and another day at Wisley and soaked up tons of inspiration for the future.

Kew Garden

Wisley Garden

Arriving back home we found many things in bloom and some past bloom (as expected).  But I will share some aspects of the yard just to provide an insight as to what is going on here. The redbuds, dogwoods, and wisteria are fully out now and the apples are the last of the fruit trees to be flowering but they have a very strong bloom this year.

Pink Dogwood in the front yard

Fragrant Cloud Dogwood

Kwanzan Cherry is finished

Apple Orchard getting organic spray with radish flowers in abundance

The peonies have both finished blooming for some (P. caucasica) and just now blooming for others (P. mariei for example).

Paonia mairei

Early Tree Peony

We were delighted to see the Loropetalum get a full bloom this year.  It’s marginal in our climate but the winter was very mild this year.

Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum ‘Zhuzhou Fuschia’

There are many flowers happening at the moment ranging from very tiny iris to greenhouse delights and onto spectacular wisteria and trillium springing forth.

Iris henryi

Watsonia from the Greenhouse

Viburnum carcephalum

Trillium grandiflorum

In the alpine bed we have pulsatillas, poppies and delosperma.

Pulsatilla albana v. flavescens

Morrocan Poppy (Papaver atlanticum)

Delosperma basuticum

And out in the woods we find numerous surprises.

Narcissus ‘Badgeworth’

Camassia in the woods

Shooting Stars (Dodacatheon meadia) in the woods

Arisaema triphyllum (Jack-in-the-Pulpit) in the woods

Viburnum prunifolium (Blackhaw)

Altogether there are wonderful things happening everyday.  And now more to plant…