What's Blooming?

I love to go out side every day and make my garden checks. It's so interesting to see the changes in the garden from day to day. This time of the year it's exciting to see the perennials come up and start to bloom. Various types will bloom at different times of the season. 

The first things to bloom in my garden were the tulips and daffodils (both bulbs) and the creeping flox was the first actual perennial to bloom. 

 Late blooming tulips still looking good June 13, 2010




Creeping flox is a short perennial which grows tiny green lacy leaves on last year's growth and blooms early. I have several at the corners of one of my flower beds. This variety gets tiny blue flowers. There is a pink flowered variety too, but my pink ones didn't make it through the winter, whereas the blue ones grew like gangbusters and seem to be very hardy. It is so easy to start a new one, too, as I found out almost by accident. Just take a piece of the plant and stick it into the ground and it readily gets roots and starts growing!

It is a good ground cover.

Creeping flox

The Forget-me-nots bloom really early too. Tiny, but cute!

The next perennials to bloom were the forget-me-nots and the Siberian iris.  The Forget-me-nots are short little plants with tiny blue flowers . They are not a long living perennial, but they will self seed for a few years so you will always have a clump or two. 


The iris has long narrow leaves and light blue flowers. This is only it's 3rd summer and I can see that the tiny clump it started out as, has increased in size 3 fold.  The flowers last for several weeks.

siberian iris

Blue Sage, the 'May Night' variety is an early bloomer, as well.  I really like the tall spikes of midnight blue flowers!  It attracts the bees and they seem to love it, even though to me, the plants have an unappealing smell. The upside is that the deer avoid it for that reason.  

Blue sage will self seed quite a bit, too, so you get several new little plants every year which you can transplant to other flower beds or dig out to give to other gardeners, if you are so inclined.  

After it finishes blooming I cut it back and in a couple weeks it has a second flush of blossoms, although not as abundant as the first. 

Blue Sage- 'May Night' variety

I also have a pink sage similar to the' May Night', but it is about 2 weeks behind in growth and blooms later and less abundantly. I think part of the reason for that is the location. It doesn't get nearly as much sun where it is. Both the blue sage and pink are in their 3rd summer. 

Last year I planted a white variety of sage as well and it only had 2 stems of flowers then, but it is growing quite well now and I have high hopes that it will do better this year.  The bed where it is located is one of the last to lose its snow in the spring so that does cause it to grow slower...

Sea of white daisies

The shasta daisies are opening their buds now and each day more and more of then are blooming. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have had to dig up about 8 or 10 clumps of daisies this spring to make room for other things in my garden. If you let them, they will take over and crowd out everything else. They are extreme self seeders!

The next thing to bloom was the bearded irises. The first of them just popped open today!  They are a beautiful light blue and white.  (photo to follow...   :)