The sure cure for a gardener's wintertime blues is a vibrant spring garden. Fortunately, blooming is the first thing on the agenda for many plants when they emerge from winter dormancy, so early-spring color is not difficult to create in any type of garden.
Begin with easy-to-grow spring-flowering plants for guaranteed success. Combine spring-flowering bulbs with shrubs. Add spring-blooming trees, such as flowering cherry and dogwood, and it's a cinch to orchestrate a garden blooming in harmony. There is a bonus to all this spring splendor. The hidden benefit is that the garden becomes an enchanting place to carry on the activities of preparing for the coming growing season. Spring is a time of digging and dividing crowded perennials, setting out summer annuals, and planting new shrubs and trees. And, because the spring scene was planned and planted months ago, it's the result of late-summer and fall backaches that seem like ancient history when you're rewarded with flowers in spring. Like magic, garden plants are poised to take off as soon as days lengthen and the soil begins to warm.
Choose the Mood
Spring-flowering bulbs are the stars of the early-spring garden. Follow your personal taste and the style of your garden when deciding whether to grow them in naturalized drifts or in formal arrangements. Most gardeners like to use small bulbs, such as crocus, snowdrops, and squill, as surprises, casually tucking them into the soil around shrubs and small trees. On the other hand, hyacinths and tulips have a uniformity that lends them to formal front-yard displays. You can extend the show by coupling these and other spring bulbs with cold-tolerant pansies in similar or complementary colors.
The Colors of Spring
When choosing shrubs and bulbs for early spring color, be careful where you plant white-flowered varieties. When white blossoms are injured by frost, they invariably turn an unsightly brown, and they show every small bruise and bite. The same damage is usually less noticeable on pink or lavender blossoms. There are exceptions, such as white bridal wreath spiraea and the flowers of serviceberry, which always manage to look fresh and pristine, but in general, choose varieties with colored flowers when it comes to early azaleas, tulips and lilacs.
Any color in the rainbow is welcome after a long stretch of drab winter days, so experiment.The evergreen ground-cover bugleweed, grape hyacinth, and other spring bloomers mix and match easily with the vivid yellow flowers of daffodils or brightly colored tulips. You can also choose bulbs with flowers in Easter-egg pastels. If your garden includes spring-flowering shrubs like yellow forsythia or pink azaleas, lighten the scene with drifts of flowering groundcovers, such as white-flowered candytuft or lilac-flowered moss phlox. And after long winter months of longing for spring, who can help plucking a few early blossoms to enjoy indoors? For this very reason, try to grow a few extra daffodils, hyacinths and tulips to cut and bring indoors to enjoy in a vase of water. To avoid gaps in the flower garden, you can plant extra bulbs at the rear of a bed where the harvested blossoms won't be missed.
Flowering Boughs
Many spring gardens are built around flowering trees, and with good reason. When a flowering cherry, dogwood, star magnolia, or redbud is covered with colorful blossoms, they always steal the show. And even if your yard is small, you can probably find a good place for one of these compact, spring-blooming beauties.
You can cut branches from flowering trees and shrubs to use in your indoor arrangements. They combine beautifully with the flowers of bulbs, and you can mix in bits of greenery from emerging vines to fill the vase. When flowering cherry or forsythia branches are gathered just as the flower buds are opening, they will usually keep their good looks for more than a week in a vase.
One of the first spots to consider is the area just beyond one of the front corners of your house. When small trees or large shrubs are situated so that they visually pull the corner of the house outward, they often make the house appear larger and also visually tie the house to the surrounding landscape. As long as they are set at least 12 to 15 ft (4-5 cm) away from exterior walls, they will not block views or crowd the structure.
Do not assume that you need to flank both sides of your house with matching trees unless you want a strongly formal look. Instead, choose two different plants for these strategic corner positions, such as a flowering cherry on one side balanced with a bushy smokebush on the other. Nonflowering trees with showy foliage or interesting bark, such as Japanese maples and river birches, are also fine trees to feature in your spring landscape.
Late-Winter Sun
Take advantage of the sun that filters through the branches of large, deciduous trees before they leaf out. Later in summer, the area underneath will be a lush shade garden. But now it can be a temporary display area for spring-blooming perennials, shrubs, and bulbs.The late-winter sun that filters through the bare branches is often sufficient to nurture hellebores and early daffodils. Daffodils are made for the shade, but plant tulips in sunnier sites. Their blossoms will twist to face south or west if they lack light. The edge of wooded areas is also the perfect place for azaleas and rhododendrons. Surround these shrubs with woodland phlox, trillium, and Solomon's seal. They will set the stage for strategically placed hostas and large deciduous ferns. These shade lovers emerge in time to hide the fading foliage of spring bulbs, allowing them to yellow and slip into dormancy unnoticed.
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