April & May Blooming Spring Flowers (zone 6)

Purple Salvia

Lately I've been having some issues with my vegetable garden (read: rabbits). So I've focused my energies even more than usual on my flowers. Here's what happened this spring at our place that got me excited and happy. 

The salvia I planted a few years ago is strong and did well this year. I even had some seeds carry over into a second flower bed. We had little salvia transplants coming up and blooming! 

Creeping flox and Pink Rhododendron

The creeping flox was beautiful in April/May. It was super thick and healthy. I love the rhododendron we planted behind it because it works well with the flox, and it blooms early before the other rhododendron varieties bloom. This is one of my favorite parts of the art of gardening, timing all of the varieties so you have constant beauty throughout the spring-fall seasons. It's like a jigsaw puzzle of location, species, and climate that you have to figure out, constantly modifying as you go.

Pink Peonies

My peonies were awesome. I had bouquets (mixed with boxwood sprigs) all spring. They are such a hardy flower in zone 6 (easy to take care of, don't need much of anything), and yet their blooms are to-die-for.

Azaleas

I do have a slight deer problem with my azaleas. They come up the hill and snack on the branches. You can see the blooms are more plentiful on the right side (stair side) than on the left side (grass side). This is because of the deer. I need to put up fencing next year to prevent this.

Purple Irises

The irises were gorgeous. Last year we put a leaf mulch down to contain weeds, and I think it helped this year in the early spring. I need to continue mulching to prevent excessive weeds in the huge, curved bed that the irises occupy. 

Purple and Pink Salvia, Red Azaleas, Lilies and Sedum growing

The textures and various heights here (I think) work well together. This front flower bed has a lot in it, but everything is grouped in like units. All salvia is together, all the lilies are together, etc. I think this makes for a prettier garden when you group plants of the same variety together.

Hot pink Dianthus

The hot pink dianthus is seriously neon, the pink is SO bright! I love it! Dianthus truly fills into crevices, it's almost like a floral ground cover, but more vertical than horizontal. I just bought another coral pink dianthus that is supposed to be super fragrant. I'm hoping it will continue to fill in the cracks around the staircase.

All of these blooms are done by now (July), but I wanted to recap the beautiful spring we had in the garden. I'll do another post soon so I can document the June/July blooms that are now in full swing!