Missouri Botanical Gardens, Woodland Garden

There is so much to see and enjoy at Missouri Botanical Gardens! But my favorite part of it all has to be the woodland garden. I would have just been glad to wander around in there for hours, but The Person I Was With wanted to see the rest .

You wildflower plant geeks are gonna love this place.

Mayapple, podophyllum"Spotty Dotty"!

I love the red flowers! Do I want this one? Hella yes!

Small pond, statuary "Three Graces". Water is a bit murky but it had been raining for days.

Another mayapple! I love these things! Podophyllum plianthum Dysosma

Wow! What is this, I asked!

Jack in the pulpit, Arisaema ringens. Gorgeous!

This robin was just having the BEST time!

 Allspice, sinocalycanthus chinensis I think I have to have this shrub!

Another arum, arisaema serratum

Would you have believed this was an epimedium? epimedium latisepalum

Looks like they have trouble with four-legged critters too! I just did this very thing with a wire basket to protect a hosta that was being attacked by deer, the morning we left for St Louis. Worked, too!

I love this stream winding through the woodland garden

So does this lovely couple!

European beech, fagus sylvatica. A wonderfully picturesque tree.

And onwards to the Japanese Garden.

So many pictures (I took nearly a thousand), so many plants, and so little time! Tomorrow, the Japanese Garden.

Spring Surprises, and Stuff and Nonsense

Lots of things just pop up here. I don't know if birds "plant" some of them, or if they just come in on the wind.. Somewhow the new "stuff" usually manages to plant itself in the right spot. I have a couple of dogwoods and several redbuds that I've acquired that way, a mimosa, a black locust, and a few junipers that I've trimmed to interesting shapes.

Last fall I discovered a small sassafrass growing in the fence row, so we dug it out and put it back in the woods. Since its taproot got slightly mangled in the process, we held out little hope for its survival, but surprise, this spring, the little thing has leaves!

How do those plants move themselves like they do? About 3 years ago, I planted a lime green aquilegia next to a hosta that I thought would complement it with its lovely color. It did fine for two years, and now it is gone out of that bed. I found it, full grown, in the lower hosta bed, a good 20' away, under a dogwood. There also was a lovely white ajuga clump in that same bed. It disappeared also, to be found down a path next to a ground cover of euonuymous. Both of those plants have increased dramatically--but not where I put them!  How do they DO that?

The garden club has come and gone, and what an enjoyable evening it was! Perfect weather, good friends and wonderful food! Next month someone else will host a garden party. Oh yes, they all loved the garden!

 

A pretty happen-stance combination, ajuga flowers through creeping phlox. Pink lily of the valley is in the background.

Lunaria (money plant) in the foreground with woodland phlox divaricata. I love this combination! Lunaria is a biennial that always reseeds itself, and every year there is a different look.

I don't know if I like trilliums better white or when they age to pink. Either way, they are some of the most lovely spring flowers in the woods!

I peeked under the umbrellas of the mayapples, and look what I found!

False Solomon's seal is almost as interesting in bud as it is in flower. I am finding these spreading all through the woods this year.  A very welcome surprise!

Dwarf crested iris (iris cristata) just popped into bloom overnight! These actually came from an Arkansas woods, many years ago, a gift from a friend.

Fairy bells (disporum sessile variegatum), is actually a Japanese native wildflower, distantly related to the Solomon's seal family. I got it from the now gone and much missed Rocknoll Nursery, many years ago. It languished in another bed for years until transplanted to the current hosta bed, where it has flourished. This is the first year I've seen blooms! It is quite beautiful, about 12" tall, and not invasive, but spreads stoloniferously very nicely. A wonderful non-native worth seeking out. Very pretty with ferns and hostas.

I just cannot resist a pretty face, any more than I can resist checking out every garden center I pass. I found this charming pink pussytoes (antennaria Rubra) at Lowe's this afternoon. I divided this plant in two, it probably could have been three.

I also loved this little hernaria

"Sea Foam". Just right for my shade garden, likes morning sun only!

We discovered wild plum (Prunus americana) growing in the woods Out Beyond. It looks a lot like wild cherry, bark and all, but the leaves are more round. I would really like this to be growing in our woods; and it might be, if I haven't pulled out all the seedlings thinking they were wild cherry. Now I'll have to look at each one before I pull it! It blooms in the woods usually before serviceberry. Sometimes it has pinkish blooms.

Still lots of spring beauties (claytonia virginica) blooming Out Beyond. I mow a path through it each year, but not yet!

 

A nice surprise by my recycle bins. Where did you come from, my pretty?

Other stuff: our city had a truckload sale of rain barrels and composters. We picked up two of these rain barrels, and will hook up a soaker hose to water beds on the north and south sides of the house. Now I have to plant something low in front of them to hide those concrete blocks. They should save on our water bills, that is, provided it rains!

And nonsense! This rock creation is in the loosely termed "Japanese garden".  Those are Japanese roof irises(iris tectorum) in front of it. The roundish rock on top is a local "mineral egg".

It is in front of a little Japanese maple, Seriyu, which is a green upright lace leaf that only gets about 15' x'10' This is its third year. I carried it home from Wildwood Farm in Kenwood, Ca,  on my lap on an airplane! It has grown almost 6" this spring so far.  

I love dandelion puffs! I always spray some of these delicate beauties with extra-hold hairspray and they will last for a long time in a vase or a dried flower arrangement.

A little rain turned the yellow oak pollen on the hosta leaves into golden drops!

Another beauty, Aquilegia canadensis, our native columbine.

An update on the bluebird/ woodpecker feud: nobody seems to have claimed the woodpecker hole in the hackberry tree. It is still empty! The bluebirds have gone back to the edge of Out Beyond and I don't know where the woodpeckers are nesting, but I still see them around. There are lots of trees with dead limbs for them to have claimed!

"There is a mockingbird

Singing in the oak tree.

 He sounds delirious,

Leaping and catching air with his wings.

Perhaps he is drunk with spring!"

                                                    --S.P.

The Garden Club is Coming!

The garden club is coming!
Words that used to send me into a flurry of cleaning, weed pulling and trying to make everything picture perfect. Tomorrow, the garden club is coming to our garden. I finally realized after years of Martha Stewartism, that they are not coming to see my perfect garden. They are coming to see spring! And that, we have. Of course, last week was the peak of the redbuds, we still had lots of daffodils, and oh yes, last week was perfect! Next week, there will be thousands of irises, the hostas will all be up, and oh yes, next week, the garden will be perfect!  But let's take a stroll around the garden anyway and see what we have to share tomorrow!

The new Arkansas Black apple tree has blooms! Ok, there is only one cluster, but that means next year there should be many.

Lamiastrum "Yellow Archangel" is a spreading ground cover that is pretty invasive, but it is beautiful in bloom. Especially with lunaria (money plant) blooming in its midst. If you look closely, you can even see the yellow oak pollen covering its leaves!

Speaking of oak pollen, here is one of the culprits. This one is right next to the house and dusts us thoroughly with gold. The oaks are beautiful in bloom, especially in the morning with the highlighting its branches. We will have to rinse off all the garden furniture and deck before company comes or all of our guests will be wearing yellow! Next week we will be covered in falling oak flowers, so it wouldn't be a perfect garden then after all!

Tiarella is pretty in frothy pink, with white violets

Giant Solomon's seal  has hung out its pretty white bells

Jack in the pulpit has bloomed--and look at that, two flowers, and they are both different! What goes on here?

 

Sweet woodruff puts on a dainty show.

Camassia is beautiful in blue.

And the dogwoods are extra beautiful this year!

Of course there are still lilacs, and viburnums, sweetly scenting the air.

Still lots of Virginia bluebells and old-fashioned bleeding heart.

Geranium maculatum, wild geranium, will be showy in the woods along with plenty of wild phlox, which is just now at its most beautiful.

Merry bells are ringing still!

Ajuga is carpeting the ground in blues, whites, and pinks with green, bronze and black leaves.

One of my spring favorites, a shooting star! (Dodecatheon).

There are still penty of daffodils, though the early ones are gone and some of the others are fading a bit but still pretty, like this reverse-color cup.

Emergence! Blue irises are always the first to open, and there will be many of these tomorrow.

Even the dandelions are beautiful. Who says they are just a weed?

There are still lots of flowers going on, on the woods walk Mayapples are knee high with fat bloom buds, and trilliums abound, with the white ones shortly to be succeeded by the nodding red "Wake Robin".

And here are lilies of the valley! These are pink but most of them are white. Another lovely perfume on the spring air.

 

 Green and gold (chrysogonum) create a tapestry under azaleas that will be open tomorrow. 

Hostas are shoving fat stalks up as fast as they can, that rude Wirginia waterleaf is getting ready to redeem itself with puffy blue clusters, heuchera have tall flower stalks, there are violets everywhere in yellow, blues, pinks, reds, whites and purples, and late tulips blooming along with the early irises!

Come on in, Garden club members and friends! There's lots of spring to see, and grilled rainbow trout for dinner!

"Bright coral bells, upon a slender stalk,

Lilies of the valley edge my garden walk.

Oh how I wish

that I could hear them ring,

But that will happen only

when the fairies sing."

--old song