Bloom Day — Flower of the Year Already
Giant Coreopsis, Coreopsis gigantea
A couple of weeks ago our Giant Coreopsis started blooming. The flowers aren’t totally exceptional, big yellow daisies with a nice color, but I’ve been waiting four years for them and this might be the bloom event of the year for our garden, in February already. For some reason I really like this plant, the strangeness of a perennial stuck on top of a succulent trunk, and it has been fun and easy to grow it even before the flowers. The key, I think, has been keeping it in a container; for the first few years it looked overly anatomical after dropping its leaves and I felt like I should put it away out of sight where it wouldn’t offend anyone. Last year it developed another trunk, eliminating that effect, and now the second trunk is the one making the flowers.
Giant Coreopsis
The Louis Edmunds Manzanita, a February bloomer, is in the ground next to it. Since I began keeping this blog and following bloom day, I’ve gotten much better at knowing the bloom times of the different manzanitas. Louis Edmunds might be my favorite manzanita.
Arctostaphylos Louis Edmunds
Daffodils and Geranium Bill Walls
That ridiculously warm and sunny January has the garden well woken up. It’s now easier to fit multiple flowers into a photo. Last month it would have been hard or impossible.
Ceanothus Carmel Creeper
February is an interesting month for flowers, so be sure to check in at MayDreamsGardens to see what other garden bloggers have blooming. Thanks to Carol for hosting.
The list of other plants in bloom in our garden is below the fold.
Heuchera maxima (full)
Woodland Strawberry
Sidalcea malviflora (light bloom on 1 of the 3)
Ribes ‘White Icicle’ (light)
Ribes sanguineum (just starting)
Ribes viburnifolium (light)
Fuchsia ‘Gartenmeister Bonstadt’
Favas (light)
Miner’s Lettuce
Both Lemons
Culinary Rosemary (light)
Rosemary ‘Prostratus’ (full)
Galvezia (token bloom)
2 of the Blueberries (very light)
Arctostaphylos ‘Dr. Hurd’ (one cluster, it’s first)
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 at 11:28 am and is filed under garden bloom day, plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 15th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Lots of fun things in your garden so early in the season. Happy Bloom Day.
February 15th, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Love that coreopsis, it’s like an Alice in Wonderland kind of plant… You have a very nice collection of blooms the way it sounds. Now let’s hope for some rain.
February 15th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Your Louis Edmunds manzanita is gorgeous! It really works well with the dark red house behind it.
February 15th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Wow that coreopsis is quite the plant. I’m happy you got some flowers finally. I think we all know what it’s like to wait and wait for something to bloom and the excitement that happens when it does. Looks like you’ve got quite a bit blooming.
February 16th, 2011 at 10:23 pm
I like that coreopsis, too. I started some from seed 3-ish years ago and one of the plants is blooming for the second year. But the others are just green and brown plants with no sign of blooms. Weird blooming habits, but like you say, it’s probably not a plant you grow mainly for the flowers.
February 17th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
We just planted our first Coreopsis gigantea a couple weeks ago, and I already love it! Glad to know it might take a couple years for it to bloom.
February 24th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
I planted the same type of manzanita in November and I was overjoyed to see it blossom – not as prolific as yours but enough to tell me it hadn’t died!