Happy Valentine’s Day Gardeners!

At Lauren’s Garden Service we want you to LOVE your garden! Having a garden that offers interest in all seasons of the year, has some unique plants that perform well and is reasonable to maintain is every gardeners’ goal. To celebrate this holiday of love (self love, garden love, romantic love, Earth love, sister love, garden love and plant love to name a few) I’ll go over some plants you can use in the garden that match this theme of love. Heart shaped, pink and red.

One of the most obvious plants that comes to mind is Bleeding Hearts! I’m pretty sure if someone calls you a bleeding heart its not a compliment and if your heart is actually bleeding that is not a good thing. But for our purposes, hearts and pink, red and white colors in the garden are a great thing! This is a perennial that grows in shady areas with moist but well drained soils.There are a few different types of bleeding heart. Old fashioned bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis, now called Lamprocapnos spectabilis) has been a long time garden favorite from Japan and is known for its showy, gorgeous early spring bloom. The native varieties are cutleaf bleeding hearts (Dicentra eximia and Dicentra formosa) which have nice fern-like feathery leaves.

Dicentra eximia– Fringed or Cutleaf Bleeding Heart

Dicentra eximia has light pink flowers and will bloom in the spring and continue blooming into the fall. It will tolerate part sun and shade and grows to a height of 12-18 inches.

 

Dicentra formosa– Cutleaf or Fringed Bleeding Heart

The ‘Luxuriant’ (Dicentra formosa) variety of cutleaf bleeding heart also blooms in spring and has a darker pink flower than the Dicentra eximia. Luxuriant will bloom throughout the summer in cooler climates but our Baltimore humid summers won’t usually allow that. The leaves will die back in the heat of the summer and re emerge (and rebloom) as temps cool. It needs to have consistently moist but well drained soil and will not tolerate wet winter soils.

 

Lamprocapnos (Dicentra) spectabilis– Old Fashioned Bleeding Heart

Red Old fashioned bleeding heart is used for a deer resistant, spring color shade plant in woodland perennial gardens. This is the non native variety which has a more showy display of flowers but blooms in spring only. Foliage tends to disappear in the warm/hot summer temps but reemerges in fall and again in spring. This bleeding heart also prefers consistently moist soils in the hot summer and dry soils in the winter. It will self seed!

 

Cercis canadensis– ‘Hearts of Gold’ Redbud

Redbud leaves look like lovely hearts. Having a ‘Heart of Gold’ is definitely a good thing and is the very reason I fell in love with my husband. I suggest using redbud, especially the Hearts of Gold variety, to people who are looking for plants to put in their memorial gardens to create a nice space for loved ones who have passed. The leaves start out a golden yellow color and progress to chartruese as the summer goes on. In our hot Baltimore summer redbud would prefer consistent well drained soil moisture if placed in full sun or a part shade location.

Astilbe arendsii ‘Fanal’- False spirea

This is one of my go to plants for color in a part shade/shade garden when you need deer resistance. The deep red summer flowers of astilbe are a treat when grouped in larger clumps. I like to combine them with Brilliance Autumn Fern and Caramel heuchera for some foliage/texture variation in a part shade garden. All of these plants will enjoy consistent soil moisture in well drained conditions. It’s not a native but its a stand by for shady deer tolerant garden areas.

Asarum canadense– Wild Ginger

Wild ginger is a great native perennial ground cover that does well in shade. It has heart shaped leaves and a beautiful red flower. It likes moist soil and will spread well in your garden. The flower is a beautiful little surprise found in the early spring only by searching under the foliage. Wild ginger is deer resistant and forms a lovely texture when massed in the woodland shade garden. I combine it with creeping phlox, astible, brunnera, Espresso wild geranium, tiarella and heuchera.

Viola walteri ‘Silver Gem’

Silver Gem violets are a beautiful perennial ground cover violet with silvery heart shaped leaves and purple spring flowers. They are an early source for pollinators in the spring. They are drought tolerant and form a nice silvery mat of groundcover in the shade garden.

Calycanthus floridus– Sweet Shrub or Carolina allspice

This is one of my favorite spring flowering deciduous shrubs. It had a gorgeous strappy maroon-red flower that often goes unnoticed until smelled. Once I smell the sweet fragrant scent in the spring I go looking for the bloom and its always a large glorious site to behold! This is a native, deer resistant shrub that will tolerate clay soil and part shade- SOLD! It does relatively well with little care and grows from 6-9ft tall.

Enjoy your daydreaming about gardening times to come this spring, summer and fall. Make some plans to fill some empty garden spots with hearts. Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours. Here is one of my favorite poems for the occasion:

Kind hearts are the gardens, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the flowers, kind deeds are the fruits. Take care of your garden and keep out the weeds. Fill it with sunshine, kind words and kind deeds.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow