African Garden + woodland wildflowers

The Lush Life: May Bloom Day
Malus 'Prairiefire'

Northern Illinois doesn't have flowering dogwoods or rhododendrens, but we've got crabapples in abundance and never have they looked so good as they do right now, all over. The three days of unseasonable heat cooked all the tulips and daffodils except one that just opened, Narcissus poeticus, that Kathy, of Cold Climate Gardening, gave me last summer. Because of squirrel interference, only one of the three bloomed.

The heat also put an end to the Hepatica show, but brought on the last of the native woodland ephemerals.

Dodecatheon media alba, with Phlox divaricata 'Clouds of Perfume' and Dicentra 'Bountiful'

The little merrybells is not having a good year. It has been crowded out by bigger plants, so that there is only one bloom.

Uvularia perfoliata

It will be moved to a better location.

By contrast, it's been a great year for the Trilliums. Both Trillium flexipes

Trillium flexipes


and the other white Trillium have doubled in size, and I found a lone T. sessile plant with just foliage.

Blooming for the first time this year are Phlox divaricata 'Montrose Tricolor', which is a wimpy little thing I'd be happy to unload on whoever wants it, and Phlox divaricata 'Lemon Slice', which I got last year from Plant Delights. 'Lemon Slice' is really strutting its stuff. I'm not seeing much of the yellow varigation in the foliage, but it did have ruby foliage all winter, making it much more showy than other Phlox divaricata.

Phlox divaricata 'Lemon Slice' and Geranium sylvaticum 'Mayflower'

The non-native Geranium sylvaticum 'Mayflower' and the native Geranium maculatum are blooming now too.

Geranium maculatum seedling

This darker flowered form might be the result of a cross with 'Mayflower'.

Enough with the text, on with the show.

Stylophorum diphyllum the native celadine poppy
Polemium reptans 'Stairway to Heaven'
Tiarella 'Pink Brushes'
Dicentra 'King of Hearts' with Viola labradorica
Allium aflatuense 'Purple Sensation'
Aquilegia vulgaris seedling (Heart of Gold)
Epimedium grandiflorum 'Lilafee'

Good scents:

Corydalis 'Blackberry Wine'

and

Iris germanica hybrid.

along with the crabapple blooms make being in the garden a delight.

Finally, because it wouldn't be spring here at Squirrelhaven without them, a couple of Anemonellas.

Thalictrum thalictroides 'Oscar Shoaf'




Thalictrum thalictroides 'Cameo'



Also blooming: a load of hellebores, the white and the pink single flowered Anemonellas, the redbud, the Chaenomeles, Tiarella 'Iron Butterfly' and 'Oakleaf', Heucherella 'Burnished Bronze', Zizia aurea and a bunch of stuff I've probably forgotten. (I'd forgotten the Brunneras, 'Jack Frost', 'Hadspen Cream', and 'Looking Glass', and Pulmonaria 'Roy Davidson', Muscari, little violets, Arisaema triphyllum, and Geranium macrorrhizum.

As always, thanks goes to Carol, of May Dreams Gardens, for hosting Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.