A Glossy Start to March

Although snowdrops are all but over, hellebores are still making a big statement in the garden and it could be easy to overlook other signs of early spring. I haven’t made a point of featuring hellebores in  a post this season, not yet anyhow, but thought I would begin my post that links with Jim’s Six on Saturday meme at Garden Ruminations with H ‘Glenda’s Gloss’, to show off her intriguing blooms – you don’t need to be able to look Glenda in the face to see how beautiful she is.

I was taken aback when taking photographs for my EOMV post to see wood anemones coming into bloom, albeit on the fringe of the woodland, although checking back on previous years they seem to flower any time from early March until the end of April; they flowered poorly last year, so let’s hope for a better season.

Snakes head fritillaries, Fritillaria meliagris, have been pushing up in recent weeks with many now in bud and, like the wood anemones, it’s easy to forget how quickly they follow on from snowdrops:

One plant rarely out of flower is Arabis ferdinandi-coburgi ‘All Gold’ which, once established, forms a useful spreading carpet to soften the edges of raised borders. Sadly it sometimes loses its variegation, but I can forgive this failing because of its never-ending pretty white blooms:

After double-figure temperatures in January, February has been a little cooler, but this hasn’t stopped tulip foliage pushing up in various containers, although flowering will still be a few weeks off. Here, they are partnered with wallflower ‘Sugar Rush Purple’:

Most of the tulips are in containers visible from the kitchen windows, a vantage point that also allows me to watch the progress of re-leafing many of the trees, starting with the elderly apples and