Belated Bloom Day

Traveling caused me to miss the official Garden Blogger's Bloom Day for May, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. But like gardeners all across America, I am enjoying the explosion of spring blooms! Without further ado...

My spring stalwarts, native columbines, are blooming...

...as are golden alexanders (Zizia aurea)

And fellow carrot-family member, Taenidia integerrima. See how similar they look with their yellow umbels? The latter likes shade and can tolerate dryness, however, while the former likes moist sun.

Some prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) is still in its "flower" stage, prior to forming the "smoky" seedhead.

Salvias are starting to bloom too...

...but best of all is saved for last! Proving the old adage about good things and those who wait, after three long years my 'Twilite' Prairieblues baptisias are blooming!

Ahhh, worth the wait! Also blooming: Peonies; Heucheras; Chives; Camassia (mostly finished)

Wildflower Wednesday: Wildflowers for Shade

There is more to shade gardening than hostas! In fact there are a number of North American native flowers for shady areas. On this Wildflower Wednesday, hosted by Gail at Clay and Limestone, I would like to share some shade wildflower successes from my zone 5 garden.


This is woodland phlox (P. divaricata). These have been blooming their heads off for a couple weeks now and they absolutely light up this shady border. They haven't spread to groundcover status as much as I would have hoped, but the flowers are so pretty I'm thinking of planting more to help connect the blobs I currently have. If you have shade that is at least sort of reliably moist, you should not miss out on these lovelies!

Heucheras are like the designer clothes of the plant world. Every season there is a new color and pattern that's all the rage. Now don't get me wrong, I like designer heucheras just as much as everyone else! I'm looking to add some 'Citronelle' or 'Lime Rickey' to this border. But I've also discovered the pleasures of native H. richardsonii.

You can see the foliage here; the words I think of are ruffly and textured. They're pure green and so mix well with everything. Their flower spikes get to about 2 feet tall with white flowers. Sorry for the blurry picture...I always struggle to photograph heuchera flower stalks. They like soil on the moist side so mine have struggled occasionally in this dry shade (nothing has stayed dry this spring so that's not a problem this year). Here they are co-mingling with columbine and lily of the valley.



Native columbines (Aquilegia canadensis) are a stalwart of the part sun/part shade garden. I cannot get enough of these plants. After they've flowered I really enjoy the bobbing seedheads and clover-like foliage too.


What are these little cloudlets of yellow? They're yellow pimpernel (Taenidia integerrima). These are some of the most underrated, unknown natives but you can see in the above photo that they play nice with spring classics like bleeding hearts...

...and with other natives like shooting starts (Dodecatheon meadia). Unlike ephemerals, taenidia keeps its foliage all year and its flowers last for months at a time. It's a member of the carrot family so I would assume it's a host plant for swallowtail butterflies (although I've never seen any on my plants). It's dealt with deep shade and extremely dry conditions and my plants have gotten better every year (in fact this year I added three more).

Since the flowers are so delicate and small I think they look best in drifts and definitely need to mixed with other more robust plants to fill in around them. The past few years my mix of taenidia and big-leaved aster (Eurybia macrophylla) has worked really well. The large aster leaves are a backdrop for the taenidia flowers, and once they're done the asters start blooming. If you have shade in zones 4 to 8 I have two words for you: grow taenidia!

Fore more wildflowers check out Clay and Limestone! This is a wonderful time to see the last of the ephemerals and early season wildflowers all around the country!

Blurry Bloom Day

Warning: Many blurry photos ahead due to high wind conditions in the Chicago area lately!

It finally feels like a real Bloom Day! In the garden there are of course Canadian columbines (Aquilegia canadensis)...


...including this one that is a seedling I planted last year. So far it's my first seedling to flower!


The peonies and bearded irises are just waiting to explode. Cool, rainy weather lately has stalled some blooming around here.


The salvia is just beginning to bloom. 'Plumosa' is still only in bud.


Even the chives are looking lovely...


In the shady part of the front garden, yellow pimpernel (Taenidia integerrima) is doing wonderfully. It's the little puffs of gold you see here.

Those enormous leaves are actually the aptly named big-leaved aster (Eurybia macrophylla). It appears to be swallowing the Taenidia, but I assure the Taenidia is in no real danger.


(Conspicuously absent from this area are my Jacob's Ladders [Polemonium reptans] which I'm not even sure survived the winter.)

OK, so this little woodland area is doing quite well with shooting stars, lily of the valley and the Taenidias, but thanks to wind and a deluge of maple seeds, this picture does not do it justice.

That little blur in the foreground is a happily blooming 'Cascade Creeper' tiarella that I was sure would not make it this year. It was so dried out and sad last fall I figured it was a goner for sure. Now (although you can't tell from the picture) it's blooming, growing new foliage, and generally loving life near the Japanese painted fern and astilbe.


Golden alexanders (Zizia aurea)are the stars of the garden right now. These ones are in the sunny corner at the end of the front garden. Please excuse the harsh afternoon light and shadows. I pretty much broke every photography rule of thumb on this post!


Here are the very happy, very large golden alexanders in the rain garden, along with porcupine sedges (Carex hystericina) and owl-fruit sedges (Carex stipata) that are "blooming." Like grasses, sedges have inflorescences that contain flower parts but don't look like blossoming petals and all that.


Those blurry pink things are coral bells (Heuchera sanguinia), which are currently my only heucheras in bloom. The native alumroots nearby (H. richardsonii) are starting to send up some tentative flower stalks. Here you also see the lily of the valley that has crept under my neighbor's fence. Since this is a relatively new border I'm tolerating the invasion because I need the plants.

Due to wind I could only get a close up of this wild hyacinth (Camassia scilloides).

It's lovely by itself, but they're even better en masse. I have eight of them starting to bloom in the new southern border, but alas the weather would not cooperate for me to show them all to you.

My prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) are growing very slowly this spring after being planted last fall (in that whole sleep, creep, leap progression we're somewhere between sleeping and creeping). So there is just this one measly bud...


...and that completes this Bloom Day post! Check out May Dreams Garden where Carol graciously hosts Bloom Day and you can find out what's blooming everywhere!