flowering plants for spring
In March the promise of spring is now clearly visible in our gardens. The sun gently warms the soil and it lights up the fresh, green foliage of newly emerged plants.
Finally, after the still winter months, our gardens are starting to wake up, encouraged by delicate sunlight.
As we begin to examine our gardens more carefully during these early spring months, we may notice spring flowering plants sprouting up from the soil.
We can see bursts of colour in our gardens after quiet wintertime, which fill us with joy.
From shade liking, woodland, ground-covering plants to bulbs and shrubs, there is a fantastic array of spring flowering plants for any garden situation.
It doesn’t really matter how big your garden is, there are many varieties of plants that will liven up your space, adding colour and create a cheerful environment.
Plants that will bring colour
One of the best flowering plants for spring are bulbs.
Narcissus, tulips, hyacinths, crocuses, irises are the most familiar. To enjoy these plants in spring you need to think ahead and plant the bulbs during the autumn or winter months.
If you have a small pot or a container, you could create a layered bulb display, so called bulb lasagne, where each bulb will flower in succession, starting from the early flowering ones.
Lungwort (Pulmonaria) is another example of a great flowering plant for spring. Its flowers, which rise on short stalks, are bluish-purple or mauve pink in colour that catch attention, and will brighten up a shady corner of a garden.
Additionally its pointy, often speckled foliage, will contrast beautifully with ferns and Hellebores. This is also a great ground-covering plant.
When thinking about introducing more vibrancy into your garden for spring it is worth considering early flowering shrubs.
Forsythia is a shrub that is associated with spring. It is one of the first shrubs that blooms in around this time.
Forsythia’s bright yellow flowers appear along the branches, dotting them with tightly packed blooms. The flowers appear before the foliage.
This fiery yellow display of bright colour clearly stands out in a garden, especially amongst the background of fresh young green foliage of other shrubs.
To add a more unusual shaped flower to a spring display of colours, it is worth considering Dicentra plant, commonly known as Bleeding Heart.
Its rose-pink, heart-shaped flowers hang from long, elegant, arching stems.
The finely dissected, light green foliage of Dicentra will complement any spring border, especially when planted amongst ferns.
Consider so called weeds
I would also encourage you to not forget about some of our more common plants, which unfortunately attracted the label weeds.
Dandelion is a perfect example of one of the best flowering plants for spring that will deliver a pop of yellow in a garden border or a lawn. Don’t remove it, as it will also provide much needed food for insects during the first weeks of spring.
With the days becoming longer and the soil gently warming up, plants in our gardens are starting to put on their annual display of colour.
This is also a fantastic time to observe the changes that happen in our gardens, especially the shapes and colours of early flowering bulbs, shrubs, and perennials.