Catching up with some great catches

Well, I'm baaaccckkk! Vast improvements in the weather coupled with a need for a bit of a break have kept me in the gardens and away from the blog, but today is cool and showery, a great day to do a little catching up. I've been roaming around the province, doing book events plus of course checking out nurseries; I haven't been to all my favourites yet this year, but have certainly visited those in the Valley and part of the south shore. With the book-travel winding up soon, there will be more time for just relaxing travel to gardens and nurseries.

Before I go on about some of the great plants blooming here, a couple of interesting housekeeping tidbits for those who visit Facebook and nursery websites:

Baldwin's Nurseries now has a Facebook page, and I hope people will visit and 'Like' it.
Glad Gardens has a new website as well as a Facebook page. I think these pages on Facebook are extremely useful for keeping people current quickly.
The Friends of the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens are holding their Native Plant sale tomorrow from 9 am til noon at the gardens. The gardens are at Acadia University in Wolfville. Baldwin's Nurseries, Bunchberry Nurseries and I will all be there, and the Friends are selling a host of native species great for home gardening.

Now, on to the plants! I have become very fond of geums in the past few years because they've been vastly improved, more vigourous and longer-lived. Last year I added 'Eos' to my collection, which is certainly electric neon-gold and orange. In the top photo is another new variety, 'Mai Tai', which is more subtle but equally splendid.

One of the most interesting of the well-behaved (ie, clumping) anemones is 'Vestal', known for her delicate double centre. She looks sort of like a daffodil, except she's the size of a dime.

I'm developing a deep and abiding fondness for alpine gardening, though I'm very much a neophyte with this specialized type of gardening. One of the easy to grow and striking plants in my alpine collection is Rosy pussytoes (Antennaria). They are very eyecatching and spread slowly to make a nice clump.

A little more challenging, but very rewarding to grow with the right conditions, are the lewisias, or bitterroot. These have fleshy leaves something like ice plant or other succulents, and produce a raft of striking flowers. They need perfect drainage, especially overwinter, which you can provide by planting in gravel, or in a potting medium well amended with sand. Native to parts of North America, they are just dazzling when in bloom.

In previous years I've had problems growing tiarella, or foamflowers, mostly because there are a couple of aggressive plants where I tried the foamflowers and the latter got overwhelmed. But last year I put in the most excellent 'Pink Skyrocket', which has rewarded me with a fine, spreading colony of dainty flowers and foliage. Encouraged by this, I'll likely add another one or two.

Some of the new releases of euphorbias have been less than hardy, and I'm not entirely sure about 'Helena's Blush' yet. However, I had success with 'Ascot Rainbow' so I'm giving this one a whirl too though it's rated for zone 6. We'll see what happens.

A couple of years ago I decided it was time to add a flowering crabapple to the plantings here, and so I selected one of the darker-flowered ones. This is 'Makamik', which is just flushing into full bloom here though varieties in the Valley have been in bloom for a week or more.

This may not be recognizable to many people, because it's a different species of Weigela than you're accustomed to. This is Weigela middendorffiana, the Middendorf weigela. It blooms about 3 weeks earlier in my garden than the standard W. florida cultivars, and as you can see its flowers are yellow and very different from the usual trumpet-shaped variety. I know this plant is available at Bloom Nursery in Hammonds Plains, and likely also at Springvale in Berwick; I don't know about anywhere else.

I'm gradually getting braver and adding more and more rhododendrons and azaleas to my gardens. This is a species called Rhododendron russatum, and it's about the bluest of the purple-blue flowered varieties. It's a small-flowered/lepidote species, and a tidy plant in my garden.

We grow deciduous azaleas here, which are hardier than the evergreen species you see down south in warmer climates. I am very fond of the Northern Lights series, and 'Mandarin Lights' is in nearly full bloom at the moment. This plant just glows on dreary days!

It's well known that I am not usually a fan of petunias, much preferring callibrachoas in my hanging baskets. However, I was intrigued by the new Potunia line of plants, which form a mounding clump of blooms rather than a wave of straggly stems. This is 'Papaya', and I am thinking I like it quite a bit, though it's still early days yet.

I love putting snapdragons in my containers, and when I saw 'Peachy Dragon', I knew I'd have to try it out. There's a whole series of these open-faced snaps, but I only have this one--so far!

In the past, I've found cupheas to be messy and ugly when their flowers are spent, but I was really impressed with the bloom colour on this variety, 'Vienco Lavender'. So I had to add it to a container planting, and we'll see how it fairs this summer. The hummingbirds have been over to look at it, but I don't know much about it yet.

The hummingbirds love the well-named hummingbird mints, agastache, and I love the Acapulco series of colours. This year I was able to get a new-to-me one, 'Pink and Yellow'; I also have an apricot coloured variety that did overwinter (different series, from Jelitto Seeds), and Acapulco Orange too; so these delightful plants will be pleasing me and the hummers and other pollinators all summer.

Plenty more new and new-to-me plants to show off, but that's enough for one post! What new plants have you excited this year?