I Wet My Plants

There’s so much going on in the flower beds, it seems every day there is something new.  I decided to take some pictures of how everything looked yesterday morning after a couple of mornings of light frost.

Darwin Hybrid Apeldoorn Tulip:

One of the tulips has a busted bloom:

Here’s a cheery double Narcissus ‘Dick Wilden’ bloom:

Some blue grape hyacinth muscari armeniacum:

I’ve never planted bulbs before and last year I used the guideline on the back of the packages for spacing and depth. The depth was fine though my spacing is another matter entirely. Here is some very orderly and sparse large-cupped Narcissus ‘Gigantic Star’ and ‘Ice Follies’:

Ice Follies:

Gigantic Star:

I mean, really, this looks like a newbie mistake, especially since not all of them came up.  I’m thinking of digging them up after they’ve finished blooming and spacing them closer together so that they aren’t so sparse. I’ve been looking around at other gardens in my neighbourhood and really like the clumping effect of most of the spring blooms.

Lungwort is still hanging in there:

Apple tree blossoms about to emerge:

Dwarf tulipa is growing up:

Allium ‘Gladiator’ is doing well:

I still haven’t seen any of the anemone that I planted and the package says that it blooms in early spring.  If they haven’t come up by now I’m not sure if they’ll come up at all.  Maybe I bought a package of duds.

A couple of days ago, I divided and relocated some overgrown perennials in my garden.

The larger chunk of bleeding heart seems to be happy and doing well in its new location in the back yard garden:

The Siberian iris is bouncing back and I hope it’ll recover this spring to bloom later this summer:

The Centaurea montana likes its new spot in the side bed in the back yard:

Time will tell if the bleeding heart and hosta will have enough growing space without duking it out this summer. So far so good:

And the hosta in the front bed seems to like its new location under the apple tree:

The forecast has been calling for rain for the next three days so I won’t have to worry about watering them while they settle in. There’s only one small transplanted chunk of bleeding heart that doesn’t look like it’s going to make it. I’ll be happy as long as the other two larger chunks do well.

What started out as a tentative exploration in the art of dividing plants, specifically a Bleeding Heart that was a bit big for its confined space, quickly turned into a project of massive proportions. Once I got started I forged on to divide and/or move many of my other plants as well. After a few hours of this I finally realized that maybe I had gone a little overboard when I was seriously considering chopping down an overgrown Potentilla. It all started with the perennial spade that I got for Christmas:

I hauled out my perennial spade, a shovel and a bag of used coffee grinds to the side yard where the Bleeding Heart was:

I would have rather used aged sheep manure but I was too lazy to go to the nursery and was impatient to begin. Last year this Bleeding Heart and its neighbouring hosta were getting too big for their cramped corner. Not only that, they were growing right up against the fence. Things had to change this year and I started out by digging a 4 inch ring about the base of the plant with my shovel:

By hauling up and down on the shovel at different angles, I was able to get a big chunk of the plant out. Here you can see the extent of the brittle roots:

I didn’t get all of it in one go – there was a small piece still in the ground pushed right up against the fence:

I looked at the big chunk of Bleeding Heart and parted the foliage to make a straight line down the middle:

Using my perennial spade, I cut the chunk in half:

Here you can see some of the pieces of plant that fell off to the side. The roots are quite brittle:

I tossed in a shovelful of used coffee grinds and mixed it in with the soil in the hole:

I repositioned the half chunk of Bleeding Heart, about a froot from the fence, so that it could grow and fill the space out nicely over the next few years.

After it was replanted I watered the area deeply and thoroughly. The other half of the Bleeding Heart went into a shady spot in the back yard:

Really, I should have stopped there but I decided to keep on going. I vaguely know there is some rule about dividing spring-flowering plants in the fall and fall-flowering plants in the spring but I didn’t care. I have a theory that most of my plants are pretty hardy and will come back, even in situations where I don’t want them to (that’s right, I’m looking at you orange ditch lilies). So the Bleeding Heart’s neighbouring hosta got divided and relocated (bottom of the picture):

Its other half went into the front yard in a space previously-held by some Siberian Iris:

The Siberian Iris went into the back yard where it would have wet roots, a tip I learned from a Master Gardener:

Not shown is the new digs of the Centaurea montana and the Sempervivum arachnoideum. Thankfully the weather has been cooler and rainy, helping my newly-relocated plants to adjust to their new homes.

I was gifted some lungwort through Plantcycle last year and put it in a sunny spot along the west-facing side of my house. It didn’t like being transplanted and I thought it had died, however, it made a valiant return near the end of the summer and I was looking forward the blooms this year. Here it is on April 17th emerging from the ground:

Here it is on April 20th, covered in a light dusting of used coffee grinds:

You can already see the pretty spotted foliage of the leaves amongst the few blooms. Here it is three days later on April 23rd:

And here’s how it looked this morning on April 25th, in a pretty little clump:

I’m pretty happy with how this plant has grown in my flower bed.