WHEN the tulips have faded there can be a slight lull after the rush of spring bulbs.
Green in every conceivable shade, far too many differences to ever think of counting, fill the garden, parks and countryside 0fl every side. Some can be enchanted with this medley but others long for colour and the vibrancy of flowers.
There are pulmoneries - lungworth or soldiers and sailors" still flowering heartily in bulbs, from palest to darkest as well as in white, pink and mauves. Fritillaries go on still and one of the easiest is the Snake's Head fritillary with dainty, hanging flowers on slender stems up to a foot high. A small colony of bulbs has increased impressively, seeding, and spreading under a shrubby canopy which will be quite shaded by early summer.
This planting had a setback a few years ago and at the time I blamed the grubbing and scratching of pheasants during winter. The only remedy was to eat the pheasants, and the remedy has worked nicely; the bulbs are progressing as I had hoped.
The flowers are an ivory white suffused with green or varying shades of pinkish-purple. Close up they display a sophisticated, checkerboard pattern in two colour shades on the petals. Few things could be easier and in many instances I have admired them growing away in rough grass, the sort of situation one might have daffodils in. The bell-shaped flowers will not jump at you as a dandelion might and that is rather a good thing. They are cool and elegant, and I took forward to them spreading and increasing with the years.
The biennial honesty is most excellent value and repays much more than I deserve. I was the recipient of a handful of seed from the white form Lunaria annua Alba years ago. It has gone on and on, appearing in places I would never have considered growing it. The profusion of clear white flowers above fresh green foliage is a late spring bonus.
When it is over, most of the plants will be pulled out and only a small portion left to set seed in autumn. The seed scattered last year is already germinating with a vengeance so I am guaranteed another seed show next year. There is never need to collect, store or sow seed. Nature does it all very efficiently and obligingly.
Compared with the white form. have a very modest stand of dark purple flowering honest. I keep the two well apart for fear of ending up with the purple form only. There is a pale purple form commonly seen and this can be had with variegated leaves. The young seedlings show pale yellow creamy foliage which seems to have been dosed with weedkiller. I cannot love it but it has curiosity value.
In the second year, the plants, flower above the cream and green leaves which have all the qualities, of an exhibitionist. A nice feature, however, is the purple-tinged seedhead as it develops throughout the summer. A charming foil for the colours of old shrub roses.
There is a perennial honesty which is a nice thing too, Lunaria rediviva. Like the biennials, it grows to about two feet or so in height. For those who do not want the biennial forms throwing themselves around the place in an overfamiliar way, this is a neat, clump storming plant. the flowers are white, suffused with tones of palest lavender and, oddly enough, the seed pods do not form the circular flat discs of the others but here they are elliptical. A plant well worth having and it need not be given the most choice situation. With me it is happy in half shade.
Contrasting with it in a pleasing way are the yellow daisy flowers of Leonard's Bane or Doronicum. Bright and easy, the yellow, daisy-like flowers are among the earliest herbaceous plants to flower. Two to three-feet high, they like good soil and can tolerate some shade.
A much superior early star which deserves to be better known is Thermopsis villosa. At first sight it resembles a most refined lupin in flower form, shape and foliage. Such a comparison might be taken as denigrating to the aristocratic thermopsis and decidedly elevating for the more mundane lupin (I still like lupin a bit).
The flowers here are pale yellow pea-like, on stems of blue-black. The young leaves are shot through with this blue-black tone before opening out pale green. Clump-forming and reaching only about one-and-a-half feet high, it exudes an air of superiority. Put it on the "want" list. Originally from North America, it would be so nice to see it seed about a bit.