It's hard to believe, but we're already entering late Spring! So, I thought it would be a good time to update what’s blooming in my sunny & shady perennial gardens since my last gardening post!  The view in my gardens change nearly every day – I love it! Gardening is so peaceful... the connection with the earth... I really can feel the positive vibrations from the plants - it uplifts me!

So back down to earth.  A few of the photos below are of flowers newly planted this Spring (sweet william, stratheden, scabiosa, & yarrow), so they may be blooming out of turn.  I’ll have to wait until next year to see where they fall in the blooming cycle – I usually end up moving things after a year or so depending on height and bloom time.

So here’s what’s in bloom right now (courtesy of my iPhone)!

First, the sunny garden:

Cranesbill with Stratheden (one of my favorite spots in the sun garden)

Alstilbe

Sweet William

Daylily

Coral Bells (these grew so TALL this year!)

Yarrow (with Phlox not yet in bloom, behind)

Scabiosa

Next, the shady garden: 

Oxalis

Lamium (this is a super-quick spreader... I wouldn't mind if it took over most of the shade garden - so pretty!)

Rose

So, what's growing in YOUR garden? I'd love to know!

Back in the beginning of March I posted about the very first signs of Spring in our perennial gardens – the snow melting and flower sprouts bravely pushing up through the mulch.   Fast forward just two months – see how much exciting growth has happened in our gardens - - -  Thank you Mother Nature!

The kiss of the sun, for pardon. The song of the birds, for mirth.

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth.

~ Dorothy Frances Gurney

 (Thank you to @OnBradstreet for sharing with me this perfect poem)


Clematis (my favorite climber)

 
Columbine (with Foamflower behind)

Coreopsis (with Hosta)

Poppy (our newest addition this year)

Salvia (with Liatris & Daisies behind - not yet in bloom)

Iris (so beautiful, yet so fleeting - they last only a week)

Wild Strawberries (Mother Nature's surprise for us, it grew in this year in place of grass!)

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Vernal Equinox occurs this year on March 20^th at 1:32 pm. It marks the day of the year when the amount of sun and the amount of darkness are exactly equal. Though, more importantly, the Vernal Equinox signals the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring in our hemisphere!

Here in New Jersey, 16 days out from glorious Spring, we’re already starting to see the first signs that it’s on its way.

Firstly, it nearly hit 50 degrees!

Now, though the thermometer reads like Spring, we still have snow in our back yard and through the woods. But, out in the front yard, which is Western exposure, we only have one tiny patch remaining:

Our first robin made her appearance a few weeks ago, just as the snow was starting to melt.  I don’t know where they go for the winter, but they surely are the first harbinger of Spring. And just today we lovingly observed the Canada Geese pairing off. 

As for our gardens, the narcissus are well up and heading towards budding. Although, to be fair, they’ve been up since an unseasonably warm day in January, because in New Jersey weather is just weird sometimes (can anyone say snowpocalypse 2010?), and a few days in January felt more like October.

Our tulips are pushing up through the old mulch in a couple of places, and even our daffodils in the back yard (in the shade), are coming up!

 
Our favorite garden store is open for the season, and yes, we did drive by already, though they don’t have anything much out yet besides mulch.  Wait a week though, and that will change, for sure.  I can’t wait to fill our poor winter bare wine barrel planter with some color!

Once the snow is completely gone, we’ll be out with rakes to get rid of the old leaves & sticks that have built up on the beds, trim back any branches that didn’t make it through the snow, and put down mulch. Sadly, we lost a rhododendron at the end of the season last year, after nursing it through the summer, so I’ll be replacing that first. I’d like to put in a stone path this year through the front bed, and figure out some low-light, low-growing, green ground cover for the “lawn” part of our tiny back yard.  We'll be installing a new bird (squirrel) feeder in the back, and, trading out our snowman garden flag for one that has spring flowers on it. 

We just can’t wait for the warmer days of Spring: the return of song birds, the sweet smell of lilacs, the rainbow colors of tulips, and many glorious afternoons spent in the garden!