What's Blooming Now - April 16,  2012

The Blooming Continues!

Plants continue to bloom fast and furiously in White River Gardens. Here is some of what you can enjoy now:

Polly Horton Hix Design Gardens
Basket-of-gold or goldentuft (Aurinia saxatilis), found in the south Cutting Garden, has a similar look to candy tuft (Iberis sempervivens ‘Snowflake’) in the Motion Garden.  Both still have some later tulips growing with them.

The north Cutting Garden still has tulip ‘Sky High Scarlet’ in bloom. Along with that you’ll find Salvia ‘Eveline’, a good re-seeder, and Camassia cusickii (wild hyacinth), which is planted as a bulb in the fall.

The Raised Garden has a couple of unusual perennials blooming now. The brilliant-colored Geum ‘Flames of Passion’ will re-bloom again a little later on. Euphorbia ‘Efanthia’ has reddish tones to the newer leaves and tiny flowers in clusters backed by a bright yellow-green bract. And our earliest perennial onion, Allium ‘Early Emperor’, is also making an appearance there.

Shade Garden and Beyond
There are two plants looking amazing in the Ruth Lilly Shade Garden and other partially shaded areas throughout the Gardens: Columbine (Aquilegia) and both Spanish and English Bluebells (Hyacinthoides). The shorter English bluebells are pink, white, and blue, while their taller Spanish cousins are all blue in our beds. The Columbine cross-pollinates freely to create lots of new combinations, but the straight, native yellow and red A. canadensis can easily be spotted in the Shade Garden.

White Shrubs
You can see a predominance of white-blooming shrubs right now. Look for the old-fashioned “bridal veil” spirea (Spirea  x vanhoutei) in the Heritage garden, and  Doublefile viburnum (Viburnum plicatum tomentosum) and Fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) in the Virginia Fairbanks Sun Garden.

Hilbert Conservatory - OMG! Orchids
Here are some of the fabulous plants blooming inside now:

▪   Ceropegia sandersonii  (parachute plant or umbrella plant) is a highly evolved succulent that attracts flies with a terrible scent and then traps them in it complicated umbrella like blooms.
▪   Sunray (Dendrobium gatton) is a very large specimen with a golden fuzzy lip.
▪   Paphiopedilum ‘Casablanca’ is a classic-looking orchid hybrid.
▪   Psychopsis papilio or butterfly orchid is an interesting long-blooming orchid with antenna-like petals.

Here are a few more shots of What's Blooming right now at the Gardens!