Hi GPODers!
03.05.2024 - 14:27 / finegardening.com / Joseph Tychonievich
It is your GPOD editor, Joseph, here today, sharing photos of more wildflower adventures, this time in southern Indiana. It is amazing to me what beautiful flowers I saw and how many of them I have never seen in gardens! There is so much more we can do to truly appreciate and grow our beautiful native plants.
Giant waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum, Zones 3–7) has big beautiful clusters of soft blue flowers.
Many of the hillsides I saw were just covered with clouds of these giant waterleaf blooms. This plant is a biennial, so after the flowers fade the plants will die, setting lots of seed to germinate and carry on the show in future years.
Prairie trillium (Trillium recurvatum, Zones 4–9) was a new species for me to see in the wild. Though the flowers are not as showy as those of the classic great white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum, Zones 3–9), they are beautiful and interesting and definitely reward a closer look.
Speaking of rewarding a closer look, wild ginger (Asarum canadense, Zones 4–7) has attractive foliage, but it is easy to overlook the flowers. Because they are pollinated by beetles that live on the ground, the blooms open not up in the air but down right at the soil surface, often even covered by leaf litter. But in the spring it is worth poking around a little to see and enjoy these unusual flowers.
Violet wood sorrel (Oxalis violacea, Zones 5–9) is a plant that was new to me, and I just fell in love with it. Some sorrels are weeds, but this is a wonderful little native. The little pink flowers were fine—but the foliage! I just loved the carpet it made of green leaves, each marked with a dark burgundy pattern. I would LOVE to have this carpeting my shade garden at home.
I’ve pulled a LOT of weedy,
Bridgerton is coming to Chelsea this month, as Netflix makes its debut at the flower show, with a garden themed around its popular TV show. First time Chelsea designer Holly Johnston has created a garden based on the personal journey of the show’s main character, Penelope Featherington. The Bridgerton Garden is part of the Sanctuary Gardens area at the show.
Irvin Etienne is the curator of herbaceous plants and seasonal garden design at Newfields, a 152-acre campus with art galleries, performance spaces, world-class public gardens, and a nature park in Indianapolis. Irvin has been a frequent contributor to Fine Gardening, sharing his horticultural expertise through informative articles like A Bright Idea for Spring Containers, Big and Bold Plants for the Back of the Border, and Bring It In!, a primer on overwintering all kinds of tropical plants. In this episode he delves into the path that brought him to horticulture, the lessons learned from decades of gardening in public, and some of the (many, many) plants that earn their keep in his home garden.
Joseph here, your GPOD editor. Last week I was in the Cincinnati area for a work project, and I took some time to hike in a few area parks. It was perfect time for spring wildflowers, and I saw some real beauties!
Collaborative post
My name is Anna Lindquist, and I’m a personal and professional plant nerd based in the Intermountain West. I’m especially enamored with native plants and am constantly in awe of the magical vignettes created by native plant communities. Though I’ve tried my best to replicate them in gardens, I’ve found that nature always does it best. I moved to Utah two years ago and unfortunately do not currently have space to garden at my rental property, so I have had to rely even more on public lands for my nature fix. Being at the confluence of multiple eco-regions, Utah encompasses a little bit of everything. These photos showcase the beautiful diversity of plants found across the state, from the desert to the high alpine.
21 of the Best Peach Varieties to Grow at Home
Today’s photos are from Lee:
Perennials are the heart of so many gardens, coming back year after year to fill our spaces with beautiful flowers and foliage. But because they don’t usually bloom as long as annuals, and change through the seasons, they can sometimes be difficult to use effectively in a garden design—but not for the gardens we visit today in our look back at some of favorite perennial gardens featured on the GPOD.