Blooming This Week: A Chimney Pot, Lungwort & Kerria

I guess all it takes sometimes is a week of warm weather to get everything growing! This past week has been pretty epic in terms of how fast everything has grown and started flowering. We also managed to finally install the vintage chimney pot in the garden. I am planning on putting some sort of pot on top, although I haven’t found anything suitable yet. We found a date of 1916 on the top. In the meantime I will spend my time imagining the big chimney that this sat on.

Lungwort (Pulmaria) ‘Majeste’

My lungwort has been blooming like crazy. It could actually use some dividing. I love the mix of blue and purple flowers on the ‘majeste’ variety. The whiteness of the leaves is also nice later in the season. The only downside is that when you transplant them, they are really unhappy for a few months. By the fall they usually are regrowing nice new leaves, but they spend the summer looking half dead.

Virginia Bluebell

The Virginia Bluebells have a similar flower to the lungwort, but are quite a bit larger. These are a favorite of mine. They have been slowly expanding in several clumps in my side garden (in part-sun). They leaves are a really nice vivid green and I really like that they are a native plant.

Trillium

Another native that I actually planted at the same time as the bluebells is the trillium. Both of these were planted as ridiculously small root stock that took a full year to come up (I had actually abandoned all hope). The trillium is really a lovely little jewel in the shade garden. They don’t last very long, once the heat of the summer sets in they will disappear until next year. The leaves on the trillium are really quite beautiful.  I bought both of these on ebay from a place in Tennessee (whose name escapes me). There appear to be several sellers now selling the Trillium and Virginia Bluebells.

Another shade plant that has shown up out of no where are my Bleeding Hearts. They were literally a few inches tall last week and now the larger ones are over 18″ high with flowers. I don’t usually choose pink flowers, but I will always make an exception for these shade loving plants. Mine have also grown large enough to divide and I have been adding them to several of my planting beds.

Kerria Japonica with Lunwort ‘Majeste’ below

Finally I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my Kerria Japonica. It is a bit of a weed (it sends out little runners) but it gives such a good show this time of year. I like to cut it back a little bit later in the spring, but right now I am enjoying this at both my back gate and side gate. This plant will grow in almost full sun to shade. The only down side of the sun location is that the flowers bleach out.

What is blooming in your yard?

To take a peak at all of my garden blooms click here.