Action stations for spring
Julia Atkinson-dunn has always loved a spring flower show but it has been a struggle bringing those blooms to her garden.
Amid my garden overhaul and the establishment of new beds, I’ve been given a priceless opportunity to plan and plant this autumn for a year-round display. spring show has always been my weakness, as my pathway into creating a garden was led by a focus and fascination of summer-flowering perennials.
In my first years, I tried haphazard planting of anemones and a scattering of muscari but there were too few of them for a nice effect and mistakes I made in planting forced many of them into uncomfortable conditions in shade. The muscari has never really tried to naturalise, and the anemones, in their tortured state, were all terrible colours that I regretted immediately.
From there I dabbled in tulips and daffodils in pots. Again, too few were planted for the lush vibe I envisaged, and I inevitably lost most bulbs as I forgot ‘‘who was where’’ and repurposed pots for summer.
All in all, my skill at bringing spring to my garden has been lacking. So, to right my wrongs, I have done my best to map out spring heroes that will melt into a summer/autumn show. I amalso trying to create two distinct colour stories that will move from one to the other with the seasons.
For summer, I amtrying to curate airy beds with a focus on tall sculptural forms, awide variety of flower/seed head shapes and a romantic scheme of pinks, violets and rust reds, with splashes of yellow broken up by white and the softness of grasses.
My list includes gaura, echinacea, knautia, Verbena bonariensis, sanguisorba, coreopsis, penstemon, Dierama pulcherrimum (Angel’s fishing rod) and fennel, among others.
With this main list in mind, it has been somewhat mind-bending to take into account the staggered flowering of all the spring plants that precede them, and how they might play in with the bolstering green clumps of these perennials preparing to flower next.
Spring, with a shifting backdrop of blossom from my large old cherry tree and plums, will concentrate on freshness. In my mind’s eye, I can see a canvas of textural green with accents of yellow, white and blue.
I imagine daffodils scattering softly around the islands of Phlomis russeliana, which will shoot up acid green towers before bursting into bright yellow balls of bloom in late spring.
Their large, soft leaves at ground level will meet low spikes of dwarf daffodil ‘‘Hawera’’ and delicious jonquil ‘‘Grand Monarch’’, which will be first to bloom. Somewhere I will find my forgotten bulbs of sweet little white ‘‘Thalia’’ and gorgeous ‘‘Mt Hood’’ to sporadically add to the mix.
Inspired by my visits to Flaxmere and Saddlewood gardens in Hurunui, I amgratefully importing gifts of fancy aquilegia from each one respectively to take over the mid-spring display.
I have only had the common mix of self-seeded purples and pinks in my garden and am excited about the elegance of these new ones.
I will plant Aquilegia caerulea ‘‘Mckana Hybrid’’ with its long spurred, primrose yellow blooms in stands with Aquilegia vulgaris ‘‘Clementine White’’, which sports delightful little concertina flowers.
Intermingled with these taller, foliage-heavy plants, I will support the delicate long stems of Ixia elivira ‘‘Duck Egg Blue’’ and create clumps of zingy Iris hollandica ‘‘Blue Magic’’ (Dutch iris).
Despite my best intentions, I can’t really be sure of the timing of each plant’s flowering or if the whole story, so to speak, will be occurring in any kind of unison. So I’ll cross my fingers and hope for the best as I plant the aquilegia, bulbs and corms next week. The opportunity to get them in the ground now while the perennials are still visible, with no risk of digging up forgotten plants, is too great to ignore.