Columbine: My Favorite Flower

In all the world of flowers, Aquilegia blooms, also known as Columbine and Granny's Bonnet, are my favorite. That is saying a lot!

Why do I love them so? I don't know; it's an emotional response. The first time I found one blooming in my garden, I was enchanted. This was soon after we moved to our current home, and I was yet a baby gardener. The charming pink flower with its frilly white petticoat reminded me of a little fairy girl, dressed for a party. I also love the clump forming, fern-like foliage with deeply lobed leaves. Bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds all love these flowers, too, and I love that they love them.

I soon found several more columbines scattered about the property. I suspect these were planted long ago by the original owner of my home, Mrs Dearing, and I think of them as a surprise gift from her. I transplanted my finds to a location in the front garden, and they have flourished in the rich organic mulch that covers the paths in that area. These perennials live only a few years but reseed readily, and every spring I search the paths for new seedlings, which I move to better locations as needed.These photos, taken last year, show columbine blooming beside a path in the front garden along with other spring flowers. My columbine haven't begun blooming yet this year, but they should be flowering by the end of this month.

The many varieties of columbine will cross pollinate, producing offspring with different characteristics. Because I love what I have, which I think is Aquilegia vulgaris, I have hesitated introducing other species. But this past weekend I relented when confronted with the multiple hued blooms with widely space, long spurs that characterize the McKanna hybrids. I bought several and then planted them in the woodland garden away from the others in the front. It will be interesting to see what sort of offspring they produce and if they do as well as my originals.Just planted McKanna hybrids, shown here in the woodland garden in front of spreading yews, have only a few blooms now, but new buds should open as spring unfolds.

Columbine isn't perfect. The foliage is subject to leaf miners, which leave unsightly trails in the leaves. While this doesn't seem to harm the plant, it spoils the beauty. The flowers bloom in spring, then the leaf miners arrive by summer. I usually cut the affected plants back to the ground, and then fresh perfect foliage will sprout back. In my mild climate, the foliage will often persist through the winter.

Aquilegia varieties will grow in hardiness zones 3-8. They do best in well drained, moist soil high in organic matter, and they prefer light to moderate shade. With their naturalizing but never weedy habit, they are most at home in a cottage or woodland type garden.

The Landscape Awakens

The nights may be cold, the days may be dreary, but spring has crept in nevertheless — slowly this year, not in an explosion of buds and blooms, but incrementally until I am forced to concede the season has overtaken winter. What winter? We hardly had one this year. Lou was outside yesterday, and mosquitos the size of land rovers bludgeoned him. With exceptionally mild winters two years running, the bugs have continued to breed, and I am left wanting at least a month of hard frosts. Too late now. 

But joy! The landscape is awakening. Cheery daffodils are always among the first blooms, and other flowers are joining them in the early spring garden.Clockwise from top left: Daffodils, candytuft, flowering quince, and snowflakes (Leucojum)

Edgeworthia is has been blooming with the daffodils for several weeks now. They remind me of ballet tutus!Above is what you see from the topAnd this is what you see from below!

Hellebores continue to amaze me. They are meant to be studied. Mine were once named varieties, but they have wantonly mated with each other and produced babies of questionable heritage. I love them all. (But I still ogle new hybrids with all sorts of frills and uppity pedigrees and prices to match. I would love to have some of those too!)

This is the year of the birdhouse. Among others, I recently refurbished an old cabin style birdhouse, and it has found a new home in the front garden in the area formerly inhabited by the cancer tree. I planted several shrubs in this area, unseen in the following photos and still dormant. I also plan to put flowers around the base of the birdhouse. The old iron stand once belonged to my father, who used it in his workshop with a piece of machinery bolted to it. I buried its heavy cross shaped bottom so that the appearance is more of a traditional post. The cancer tree, by the way, hasn't given up. Already I have found several sprouts insidiously snaking out of the ground, and I suspect I will be battling it with herbicide for a while.

Forsythia, seen above behind the birdhouse, is another early spring bloom that brightens even the gloomiest day. Another one is located at the edged of the woodland garden:

Camellias are blooming in several areas. The lovely shell pink one below is a mystery. Long ago we had to move a red flowering one from its spot behind the mailbox because of nearby construction. Some years later a new one sprouted in its old place, coming up through the low growing junipers that now occupy the site. I let it grow, and I was surprised when it produced a completely different and more beautiful flower than its presumed parent.

Top photo is the gorgeous mystery camellia. Below are two photos of another lovely camellia, Taylor's Perfection, located in the woodland garden.

Finally, here is a peek at a meandering moss path in the woodland garden, just as morning sunlight comes streaming through the trees. I hope to see more of this sunshine, now that spring is here!

May your heart be filled with sunlight, no matter what the weather may be....Deborah