A Flourishing Spring

Spring has been great in the Bluegrass this year! Although it’s been raining a lot lately, we’ve had great temperatures and plants are flourishing even better than normal this year. How does this happen?

There are probably several factors that has made this spring vibrant

• Spring arrived about 6 weeks early this year, so warmer temperatures earlier, which gave plants a head start
• Temperatures a few weeks ago were pretty warm, even some days in the mid to upper 70s!
• Temperatures have cooled off again a little bit the past few weeks, which has made flowers prolong
• It’s been raining quite a bit the past couple of weeks making plants lush!

In this first week of May, spring has finally settled in time to be where it normally is in the season I think. Here are a few plants in my yard that are at their peak right now.

This clematis vine has done great this year. It looks beautiful at nighttime with its bright big flowers. The variety of clematis in this photo is not native, however there are some native clematis vines like ‘Virgin’s Bower’ that are very unique. The ‘Sweet Autumn
Clematis’ is not native, and is actually invasive.

Ninebark is a beautiful weeping shaped shrub with white flowers. Their flowers fill the air with a very light scent. I have two of them on either corner of my gazebo. These shrubs were but sprigs three years ago and now are about 4′ tall. We have only thinned them out once which was last fall. The shrub should not be pruned back, or it will loose its beautiful habit. Ninebark is considered native, but isn’t commonly seen growing naturally. There are many varieties, many of them as a purple leafed variety.

These Weigelia shrubs were one of the first plants I bought for my yard five years ago. This year they are blooming profusely and are covered in magenta flowers. Weigelia will get to be a rather large shrub. They do take some maintenance in that they need to be thinned out periodically. In colder winters the tips tend to die back a bit which needs to be pruned out. Although beautiful, they are not native.