With the weather still on the cool side, many of the spring flowering plants are lasting longer than usual, and the early summer flowering plants are slow to start. The bedding plant season has been ruined again, as the weather is not favourable for the seasonal gardener. They need sunshine for to put then in the mood before they go out and buy bedding plants. Not like us mortals that brave all weathers winter and summer to tend our gardens.
The alpine plants just love the cool damp conditions at this time of year and they think they are at home. Azaleas are lasting much longer than usual and even Trilliums have stayed in bloom for ten days longer than last year.
The Calceolaria hybrids that I bred from Biflora and John Innes have survived the winter outside and are in full bloom. The six different forms that I picked out from the batch of seedlings last year, would appear to be coming true from seed, The first lot have just started to flower and are looking promising, with my favourite one, a long pouched yellow with red stripes looking identical to its mother,
Lewisia brachycalyx is still producing the odd bloom, and as this is the last day of May it is the latest that I can remember them in bloom The Brachycalyx hybrids (which by the way flower all summer) are still producing surprises. The latest one to flower has beautiful lemon flowers with pink stripes at the edge of the petals. It sounds awful but in fact it is very nice as the pink is very pale and fades to nothing at the centre of the petal.
All the Calochortus (Prairie tulips from North America) are in bloom now, a lot of them for the first time, and I am particularly attracted to a nice pink one called palmeri. These are all grown from seed and have taken five years to flower. I will have to make a careful check of all the labels and collection numbers to be sure they are properly identified, as it is very embarrassing when mention a name to someone and get contradicted.
Tritonias although quite hardy in this climate, had to be brought into the greenhouse to protect them from the heavy rain showers, which were decimating the flowers. Last year I left all my stock plants outside, and while they flowered satisfactorily they did not produce much seed, and I get very upset if my plants don't produce seed. After all that is the primary reason that they produce flowers n the first place.
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