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Landscape Perennials for Spring Blooms

My favorite Spring blooming plants from March & April include a few old favorites, and some new plants. I work at Cofer’s now, and I haven’t had much time to write, but will soon. My next post will be about the fifth year of raised bed garden planting-which I finally got done this past week.

Early March Bulbs sleep all winter & then awaken to Spring Sunshine

Tiny Quad Daffodils
Creamy and Snowy White
Buttery Quads
Grape Hyacinth Muscari
Tiny Frilly late bloomer Daffodil

Late March-Early April Shrubs, Perennials, & Vines

SweetShrub-Native
Tiarella-Native
Nellie Moser Clematis
Pink Azalea

mid April

Dutch Iris
Pink Bearded Iris
Native Dogwood
The Iris Bed! best year yet

late April After studying her reflection Nature improves upon her artwork

Sensitive Fern-native
Multi Blue Clematis
Blue-eyed Grass-native
First Aqualegia Columbine

Wow! So much happens in the garden in those few months.

The blooming is over now, but the plants live on growing & storing energy for more blooms.

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Gibbs Gardens Daffodils

I waited for several years to visit Gibbs Gardens when the spring daffodils were blooming. March 26, 2016 was closer to the end of the season, but there were plentiful daffodils and other blooming plants to enjoy. Gibbs Gardens, located in Ball Ground, Georgia, has one of the largest daffodil gardens in the world.

gazebo & daffodils at gibbs gardens
Gibbs Gardens 

Daffodils appear on my blog often, and I’m excited to finally share the pics of the gardens. It softly rained from time to time that day. The white cherry blossoms and the Japanese garden were stunning. The stroll through the gardens and forest felt magical.

swath of daffodils on slope
unknown daffodil
plants from Gibbs Gardens
What is this plant? Some type of Euphorbia I think.
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view from the top of the hill
side of pond Japanese Garden
Japanese Gardens – the largest in the Nation!cypress stairstep over pond
Snowy White Cherry Blossoms
Cherry Tree
View leaving the Japanese Garden

I’m currently digging & transplanting crowded daffodil bulbs in my yard,  spacing them out, & hoping they will bloom next spring. I have a post in the works about that process.

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Transplanted Daffodil Bulbs

I dug up a closely crowded cluster of daffodil bulbs in the fall of 2014. After letting them dry out in the garage over the winter, I planted them in my “bulb bed” in the backyard which already contains Dutch Iris and Iris, in the early spring of 2015. They grew last year, but no blooms as expected.

2021-You can also plant them in the fall when you did them up. In fact, that is the way I do it now. Didn’t need to store them.

This year, blooms! Somewhat early, due in part to the warmer than average weather, and lots of rain. The heads are so heavy on this variety, they seem to have a hard time standing up straight.

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The American Daffodil Society has a fantastic website and DaffSeek is an amazing identification tool. There are at least 25,000 different registered hybrids of daffodil! The photo below is a much smaller variety that is in desperate need of dividing. I will dig up some of the bulbs this fall and transplant them to other sites in the yard next year.

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Daffodils of Spring Past

Okay, so these daffodils bloomed in mid March. I took pics, but didn’t get a chance to post them until now. A lot has happened since then, most notably kidney stones! Which, btw are really terrible. Stay hydrated out there this summer!

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I was sidelined for a bit, but am now back focused on my writing and gardening. Again, better late than never, so the next few posts will be catching up what has happened in my yard and garden the last couple months. There are several different varieties of daffodil represented here. There are so many different types, and I love them all.

I will also be posting the rest of my writing pieces here over the next few days, and completing my Folk Literacy portfolio. Check out my writing in my Environmental Writing portfolio on the header. It contains an interesting mix of a few of my pieces that are all related to nature or the environment, but differ in genre of writing.

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Sweet Daffodils

BigFrillyDaffy

There are hundreds of Daffodil species and over 25,000 named hybrids. I only have a few different types in my yard, and haven’t taken time to identify them.  I plan to divide and replant some crowded clumps of bulbs after the foliage fades this year to encourage more blooms next year.

I took these photos over the last few weeks.

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They are all so beautiful and cheerful at this time when little else is happening yet in the landscape. I cut some of the super sweetly fragrant types a few weeks ago and put them on the mantle in the lovely bud vases my sweet sister-in-law gave me a few years ago.

budvase