Carol in Hendersonville, North Carolina, is sharing some beauties from her winter garden with us today:
The winter garden is dearly appreciated. Honeybees emerge for the snowdrops (Galanthus spp., Zone 3 – 8) and hellebores (Helleborus hybrids, Zone 4 – 9). Cyclamen coum (Zone 5 – 9) is in flower. Cyclamen hederifolium (Zone 4 – 9) foliage makes an attractive ground cover for this time of year.
Collected flowers from different hybrid hellebores placed in a Limoges china dish, so that the “faces” are easy to see and enjoy.
Galanthus ‘Cowhouse Green’ as a delicate green hue to the outer petals (technically called tepals). This variety was found in the 1980s by Mark Brown in Buckinghamshire, England.
The foliage of Cyclamen hederifolium emerges in the fall and looks beautiful all winter before going dormant again in the spring. Every plant has slightly different patterns on the leaves.
‘Diggory’ is a snowdrop variety with beautiful showy petals that seem to almost puff up as the flowers open.
Leucojum vernum (Zone 4 – 8) looks similar to snowdrops, and bloom nearly as early, but have six broad petals tipped with green of the same size, rather than the three large outer petals and three small inner ones of the snowdrops.
‘Pagoda’ has bold green spots on the outer petals giving it a distinctive and unusual look.
‘Trumps’ is another variety with green markings, and is much loved because it is a very vigorous variety, rapidly clumping up and multiplying in the garden.
A flower of winter-blooming Cyclamen coum, mixed with some foliage of Cyclamen hederifolium, which blooms in the fall.
A “yellow” snowdrop – still mostly white, but with yellow-ish ovaries and markings on the petals, with a hellebore blooming behind.
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