Purple greets you at the entry to the garden. The Baptisia australis, also known as blue false indigo, that first poked above ground May 1 is in full bloom. Disturbingly rare this year are the bumblebees that usually adorn these plants.
The brick path that you can just make out in the photograph of the Baptisia leads to the meadow rue, just to the left of the bend. Meadow rue is very happy in the shade of the silver maple, between the hosta and the south face of the neighbor’s garage. Meadow rue has a basal rosette of leaves and tall flower stems—it’s over 4 feet tall. It’s a lovely, well-behaved plant that is attractive to bumblebees.
The hostas provide great swaths of calming green, and at the other end, a clump of false Solomon’s seal, which blooms roughly at the same time as the meadow rue. White flowers and swaths of green provide rest for the eyes and allow the purple flowers to be foci.
I love Solomon’s seal, false and true, for its arching foliage and lovely white flowers. They bring calmness to the garden, which is needed to balance the fairly raucous display of the Alpine columbine.
There is a non-native geranium, Geranium cantabrigiense, geranium Biokovo, also white-flowered, behind the False Solomon’s seal.
Walking back towards the Baptisia, the Alpine columbines, which have been in bloom most of May, are winding down, providing a little comic relief with their jester’s-cap seedpods. If you leave the seedpods in place, they will dry out, shatter, and scatter their seed. I cut the spent flower stems at the base of the plant and put them seedpod-end first in a paper grocery sack to finish drying out. The seedpods will eventually shatter. I put the dry seeds in a little jar and refrigerate them. The seeds can be scattered in the fall where the plants are wanted. This is easier than transplanting, as they have a taproot.
A plant that wanders around the garden, with or without my help, is blue-eyed grass. It is well-mannered about seeding in, and the seedlings are very easy to move, but this little iris has a rather unruly growth pattern. These little flowers will make you smile, if you can get the plants situated where they can be an asset. The Lamium that this blue-eyed grass is sprawling next to is one of the very few variegated plants I have in the yard, another resting spot for the eyes.
Some blue-eyed grass has wandered over next to the neighbor’s driveway where it drapes scenically across the wood that keeps driveway and garden in their respective places.
As the Alpine columbines set seed, the geranium, Johnson’s blue, blooms. It is a very showy, long-lived geranium that does not set seed. If any purple can be considered a hot color, it is the purple of Johnson’s blue.
The peonies were put in to temper the sheer purpleness of the purple period, but they are also extremely showy. If I ever knew the name of this variety, it is lost to memory now. This is just the edge of one plant—there are three next to each other.
Whew. May and June are a big splash! After this, there will a flush of roses, and then summer will settle in.
More soon.