Mitella Diphylla: Mitrewort or Bishop's Cap

Mitella Diphylla is a fabulous little plant for the woodland garden. It enjoys spring sunshine and is among the first perennials to bloom sending up sprays of stems covered in miniature white flowers. When the summer heat kicks in it prefers shade. The flowers fade but the neatly mounded light green foliage remains throughout summer. It prefers moist soil but does quite well for me in average to dry soil.

From a distance the flowers create a white haze above the foliage. It is really worth getting up close to see the flowers. They are reminiscent of snowflakes. I have never seen this plant available at garden centres. I picked it up a few years ago at the High Park Native Plant Sale. There is always a great selection of natives available. While I love to gawk at all the newest plant selections to see the latest, greatest colour or the biggest, fanciest blooms, I find I am often more thrilled with the understated beauty and sheer reliability of native plants.

Wood Poppy: Stylophorum diphyllum

A few years ago I bought a passport to the annual Open Gardens Toronto. I found myself in a shady Annex garden with a double wide lot (wow, does it get better than that?) The gardener had a great selection but one plant and its story captured my imagination. There were a few of us garden tourists gawking at the plants when the homeowner started talking about her wood poppies. She had a small drift of these woodland beauties and announced that it was quite probable that she had more wood poppies growing in her backyard than were growing wild in all of Ontario. Its sad predicament was enough to convince me to grow the wood poppy but there's more than a sob story to recommend it. The deep yellow bloom, not fully opened in the picture above, looks really stunning in dappled shade and full shade. Although short-lived, the blooms are plentiful. Peak blooming time is right now, early spring, but flowers appear sporadically throughout the summer.

The flower buds provide quite a bit of interest because they are covered in fine white hairs. They appear on on stems about a foot high. The foliage is impressive featuring large lobed leaves. Wood Poppy is described as a plant of moist deciduous forests which makes its performance in my garden somewhat of a surprise. It is growing in the driest and most soil-poor section of my garden: right under a mature fir tree with a soil depth of maybe two or three centimeters. It gets a few hours of early morning sun and is then plunged into deep shade for the remainder of the day. Apparently, these growing conditions are perfect for my wood poppies. They are thriving.

In just a few years my small plants have grown into impressive clumps. They are beginning to form a dense ground cover. The wood poppy is famous for self-seeding. I have found seedlings doing very well in some very tough spots including a sidewalk crack. I'm hopeful that my wood poppies will continue to multiply eventually surrounding the base of the fir tree which has been a barren wasteland for years.

I'm glad I visited that Annex garden. The gardener shared a wood poppy seedling with me and provided some inspiration. I was intrigued enough to seek out and purchase a few more plants. Maybe one day I'll be able to claim Ontario's largest wood poppy population.

Bloodroot & Turkestanica

I let out a little gasp of excitement when I saw the bloodroot in bloom this morning. I thought it would be a few more days at least. Two years ago we were into May before the bloodroot really came into its own.

The bloodroot seems to be multiplying successfully. There used to be three plants (and therefore three blooms) at the base of the serviceberry. This year, there are at least three blooms wherever there used to be one. At this rate, I should have a very impressive clump in about a decade. It will be worth the wait, no doubt. While the bloodroot flower is diminutive and short-lived the foliage continues to provide drama for a while to come. Once the flowers fade, giant, multi-lobed leaves similar to curvy fig leaves unfurl. Bloodroot is considered an ephemeral that goes dormant in the summer heat but in my garden the foliage lasts right through the summer. Sufficient shade and moisture seem to do the trick.

Tulipa Turkestanica made its debut today. Compared to
last year the blooms are a little behind schedule. Turkestanica is an outstanding performer: it is loaded with blooms and they last a long time.

This is a species tulip. The squirrels do not appear interested in it. I planted Tulipa Saxatilis and "Little Beauty" with Turkestanica but they did not bloom last year. This year there is plenty of foliage to suggest they will.

Mini Daffodil: Tete-a-Tete

Who needs sunshine when the daffodils are in bloom? The rain has been relentless, pounding at times, but the miniature daffodils Tete-a-Tete are holding up quite well. Unlike the crocus which really struggled to stay upright in this spring of downpours, the mini-daffs seem unfazed.

Tete-a-Tetes are remarkable little bloomers. This is their second spring in bloom and they seem just as vigorous, if not more, than last year. I have ten groupings of Tete-a-Tete all more or less equally spaced along the edge of the garden. Each group features more than a dozen blooms. The effect is quite pleasing. As a bonus, Tete-a-Tete flowers last for a very long time.

I have also managed to achieve some nice colour combos. The Dwarf Iris "Cantab" is fading but its blue still looks wonderful in among the daffodils. The deeper violet-blue of a small clump of chionodoxa produces a similar result. The yellow daffs also look nice against the cinnamon foliage of the heuchera with the name that escapes me at the moment. Its foliage came through the winter remarkably untattered producing this pleasing duet with the daffs.

There is more rain in the forecast. I'll have to rely on Tete-a-Tete for my sunshine fix.

Last Crocus

The last of the crocus is in bloom. "Ruby Giant" is the flower I think of when I think of crocus. This is the only flower that escaped the squirrels unscathed. Of the six different crocus varieties that bloomed this spring, "Ruby Giant" proved to be the squirrel favourite.

"Giant" is a relative term in the garden. This crocus is by no means a a giant compared to some spring bloomers. It gets its "giant" moniker because its bloom is large relative to other crocus of the same species.

I am absolutely thrilled will the crocus this year. They have been blooming since the beginning of April giving me nearly a month of garden enjoyment even in this particularly cold and wet spring. Without question I will add at least another six varieties to the garden in fall...maybe even twelve... maybe even...

Reluctant Spring

Have I mentioned that spring has been absolutely wretched this year? I spent ten minutes in the garden this morning and had to turn back because of the cold. The daffodils were none too happy either. Last year the daffodils were in full bloom weeks earlier. This year fewer than a handful have opened.

Despite the cold I've already made my first garden purchases of the year: a sharp-leaf hepatica and the double primrose "Miss Indigo."

I can't say that I have ever been a fan of primroses. My neighbour grows a number of them though and over the years I have come to appreciate their charms in early spring. So when I saw "Miss Indigo" I thought why not?

I try to add native plants to my garden whenever and wherever I can. The sharp-leaf hepatica (hepatica acutiloba) caught my eye with its unusual and somewhat hairy foliage. I'm not sure if that's a bloom-in-waiting or a seed head (I bought this at a local nursery where the plants are so far along there are even flower buds on the coneflowers). I would love to see it flower but if it doesn't I will gladly wait to see it next year. This is a great time to plant the spring ephemerals because it is easy to see where the bare spots in the garden are. Now if spring would hurry up and bestow some sunshine and warm temperatures on us I could start feeling good about adding even more new selections to the garden.

Dwarf Iris Cantab Returns

Dwarf Iris "Cantab" was easily my favourite addition to the garden last year. It is a true blue that makes me swoon. I recall reading somewhere that "Cantab" aren't really expected to return so it was with great delight that I discovered them in bloom. It does seem that there are fewer flowers this year but even one bloom is more than welcome. This is truly a stunner.

Sadly, it has been an absolutely wretched spring and "Cantab" is a little worse for wear. The temperatures have been really cold. The winds have been biting. And the rains have battered everything -- the crocus have been flattened and the "Cantab" is barely holding its own against the conditions. There's sunshine in the forecast for tomorrow. I'll have to do my best to get outside and enjoy the fleeting beauty of the spring bulbs.