Many plants bursting forth to color your springtime
Published 7:54 pm Wednesday, March 25, 2015
A riot of colors springing up as winter slips away is the sure sign springtime has arrived. Daffodils of all types begin teasing us, starting as early as January and February. And, of course, the bursting forth of azaleas is a familiar sight for Tylerites.
Although daffodils and azaleas are some of the bigger stars of the show, they aren’t the only ones to usher in spring. Here are a few suggestions of other flowering plants for spicing up your early spring landscape with color.
Bulbs — Besides easy daffodils, another very reliable and hardy favorite is Summer Snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum), which, despite its name, starts blooming in February with dainty white bell-shaped flowers with little green dots. Grape hyacinths (Muscari) are old-fashioned favorites that not only have long lives, but expand their blooming territory, providing ever-expanding colonies of blue spikes of early spring flowers. Spring Starflower (Ipheon) is another easy-to-grow, low-growing spring flowering bulb with pale blue flowers and a spicy garlic scent. These low-growing bulbs also slowly spread, often seen naturalizing in low-maintenance lawns.
Tulips — Here is another great way to get a lot of wild color in the landscape. Just realize tulips are treated as annuals and need to be purchased and replanted every winter.
Perennials — There are any number of early blooming perennials that welcome spring. Among the earliest are hellebores, or Lenten roses, which begin blooming in late winter and whose flowers continue to provide interest even after they have set seed. They are great plants for dry shade where it can be challenging to grow other plants. Creeping phlox (Phlox subulata) is blooming now, providing a nice ground-covering mat that is covered with rosy pink flowers. There are several named varieties with variations of flower color.
One of my favorite early spring perennials is ‘Texas Gold’ columbine (Aquiligia chrysantha), a native wildflower found in moist, shady areas along a few remote streams in the Big Bend area of West Texas, perfectly at home in East Texas. It blooms for several weeks starting in late March or early April, and is very happy in partially shady spots, making a wonderful show with its large yellow flowers held above its attractive foliage.
There are many types of iris that have graced Texas homesteads for many years, including the common white and blue varieties. They do best in full to mostly full sun, and benefit from dividing and replanting every few years in the fall.
Dianthus or Pinks are a great perennial, sometimes short-lived, but worth having for fragrance and bright colors in the garden.
Shrubs — Many varieties of Japanese camellias (Camellia japonica) are still blooming, and with the many varieties to choose from, it is possible to have these showy evergreen shrubs blooming from early winter into early April. They do great here in East Texas, and you can spot many when driving through the Tyler Azalea and Spring Flower Trail in the coming weeks.
Pearlbush (Exochorda) is an old-fashioned shrub that has pure white flowers, whose closed buds look like pearls before opening. They are a spotlight of white in early spring and then the upright shrub recedes into the background for the rest of the year, going dormant in the winter.
Yellow forsythia is in bloom right now, and this is another shrub that is hard to miss in early spring. (Turfgrass experts say that when the forsythia is in full bloom, it is a good time to treat with a pre-emergent herbicide to prevent summer weeds — if your lawn has a weed problem). I just like their pure yellow blooms, and there are several varieties to choose from that have been selected for improved garden performance.
Flowering quince is along the same lines as forsythia — blooms in early spring, often before they leaf out, and then fade into the background of the landscape. These are old-fashioned favorites that are so easy to grow. I have been trial growing some new varieties that have the trade name Double Take, with variety names including Scarlet Storm, Orange Storm and Pink Storm. They seem to bloom a few weeks later than the old-fashioned varieties, like Texas Scarlet, Cameo, Jet Trail or Minerva. The Double Take varieties have very large double flowers, making a striking show, and are fruitless and thornless — another plus.
Trees — Driving around town and the countryside, you no doubt have seen the rosy pink blooms of redbuds (Cercis). These small native trees make great ornamental plants where a small-statured tree is needed. Breeders have been busy creating many new varieties of redbuds with different leaf colors and growth habits, including weeping and dwarf. As a group, they have a lot to offer the landscape.
Crabapples are another spring blooming tree that may not be as popular as they once were. Newer varieties have been developed to have better disease resistance to some of the common problems that they sometimes get. Flower colors range from white all the way to rosy red. A bonus feature is the abundant small ornamental fruit that follows the bloom.
Of course, we cannot forget the lovely dogwoods that will soon be coming into full bloom, and the showy deciduous magnolias that are finishing up their spring blooming season.
Keith Hansen is Smith County horticulturist with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. His web page is http://EastTexasGardening.tamu.edu. His blog is http://agrilife.org/etg. Find him on Facebook at facebook.com/easttexasgardening.