After saying farewell to crowds of tulips in my garden before leaving for a week’s vacation in May, I was shocked to find them still intact when I returned home. Until this spring, I had no idea that tulips were capable of staying in bloom for more than two weeks. Also, I can’t remember another spring in the all of the 23 years I’ve gardened in Colorado when neither my apple tree nor my lilacs were damaged by frost.
Roses were another matter, and there were those unexplainable plant deaths that occur every spring. I’m still scratching my head over a mostly dead wayfaring tree, which, up until now, I would have argued was unkillable.
All in all it was a memorably pretty spring — but success just make gardeners nervous. Recently I found myself surveying my garden and thinking that this is probably as good as it is going to get for this year; it will be downhill from here. A good spring is unquestionably a hard act to follow.
Every year, I’m sad to see spring go until early summer turns out to be every bit as captivating. Partly this is due to our native flora, many of which are too savvy to risk putting out new growth until June at the earliest. As of June 1, my indigo bush (Amorpha fruticosa) had not grown a single new leaf, prompting husband Randy to ask, as he does every year, if it were dead. In a few short weeks, this small tree will green up.
One of our prettiest perennial wildflowers, the desert four o’clock (Mirabilis multiflora), almost never gets hit by late frosts like imported counterparts. Somehow it senses when all danger of frost is past before waking from winter dormancy.
Spring flowers tend to be dainty and demure, but in strong contrast, the first month of summer is raucous and exuberant. This is the season of super-sized flowers like peonies, Oriental poppies, tall bearded iris, star of Persia ornamental onions (with flowers the size of volleyballs), large flowering clematis and the first lilies of the season, the Asiatics.
Other perennials seem to compensate for smaller flowers by growing to great heights. Frothy flowers of meadow rue, like yellow Thalictrum flavum and pink T. delavayi stand at 4 to 5 feet tall, matched by blue-flowered Italian alkanet (Anchusa azurea). All three are put to shame by Crambe cordifolia, which can easily reach 7 feet tall and looks like baby’s breath on steroids.
Of shrubs, roses rule in early summer, forming bowers of blossoms even in parts of town where not another green thing endures. Silver fountain butterfly bush (Buddleia alternifolia ‘Argentea’), with its fragrant chains of lilac flowers, and stately towering yucca blooms chime in where it’s too dry for even roses to eke out a living.
So as we approach the summer solstice, don’t mourn spring’s passing. Instead, get out your party hats. We’re in for a rollicking good time over the next few weeks.
Marcia Tatroe’s most recent book is “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West,” ($29.95, Johnson Books). E-mail her at mtatroe@q.com.
