Carol Klein is delighted by emerging perennials
Perennial and bulbs are beginning to emerge from sulking soil, filling us with expectation
This has to be the most hopeful time of the year in the garden. Especially in a spring like this, which has had so many false starts, to see new shoots of perennials and bulbs emerging from the sulking soil fills us all with hope.
When the tight crimson buds of peonies push through, you can almost hear the swoosh as they lengthen. Thalictrums are on the move, too. T. flavum
glaucum will eventually have shoulder-high stems clothed in grey-green leaves with clouds of fluffy lemon flowers, but at this moment there’s just a hint of things to come as its fringed purple shoots launch themselves upwards.
Its daintier cousin T. delavayi, which will eventually bear clouds of tiny purple flowers, is also on the move and, even at this stage, you can sense the delicacy of the refined maidenhair foliage, which will eventually accompany those flowers.
Many umbels, too, are hoisting their filigree foliage towards the sky, adding to the richness of the foliar display. My favourite, and racing ahead of the others, though it’ll eventually flower after they’ve finished, is Selinum
wallichianum. Its leaves spread out from a central crown until they form great doilies, as finely cut as the most delicate lace.
Chaerophyllum hirsutum has a more humble entrance, its new shoots clothed in its first, ferny leaves that lie along the surface of the soil as though they were waiting for an instruction to rise up and show themselves.
Euphorbias are straining at the bit, the bright limey-green of
‘It’s right now that the pink-tinged new foliage of epimediums join a multitude of other emerging shoots to announce winter’s over’
their cyathium leaves (false flowers) emerging precociously as though they can’t wait to show you what they can do and just how bright they can be. You feel like saying: “Hang on, take your time; you’ve
got all spring to show us what you’re made of!”
New foliage is so pristine, so young and tender as to be almost transluscent. When beech leaves eventually emerge (it won’t be long now), they display this quality, tissue paper-thin, with spring sunlight passing straight through them. In their case, they’re protected until they open by bud cases. Some plants, though, retain last season’s leaves to protect emerging shoots. One that does it very efficiently is Epimedium versicolor.
Its new growth, both leaves and flower buds, starts to push through in March and April. The old leaves could be cut back earlier, in fact you could shear them back if you did it in January or February, but one of the attractions of the plant is the glory of its evergreen leaves. During the winter they take on a burnished, rubescent glow and their dense clumps are one of the outstanding features on the shady side of our garden in the coldest months.
I often leave the haircut far too long and by the time I’m prepared to sacrifice them, the new leaves are almost as high as the old and so too are the heads of dainty, pale-yellow flowers that give this its varietal name. In full, it’s Epimedium versicolor ‘Neosulphureum’. Its sister plant
E. versicolor ‘Sulphureum’ has really yellow flowers, while the type has small red flowers.
The new leaves of all epimediums are a wonder, though some are evergreen, many of the Japanese varieties of
E. grandiflorum are herbaceous, and it’s right now that their dainty, pink-tinged new foliage joins the multitude of other emerging shoots and leaves to announce winter’s over.