Pre-Spring Flowers Blooming

The flowers that peek their heads out in late winter and early spring have arrived at our house. Have you seen them yet? Enough warm South Carolina days means blooming has begun. Many of these will be OK if we (**gasp**) have another freeze, which is highly likely.

If you need some color in your garden this time of the year, here are a few plants you may consider planting this spring and fall for blooming next year.

Valley Rose Pieris is great in full shade, although it also does well in partial sun. I put a row of these small bushes between the back of my house and my stone patio. It is no-plants' land; I have had no luck growing anything else in these slightly damp, totally shaded conditions until I found Pieris. The rows of flowers are light pinkish-white and bloom in late winter and very early spring. Since they are so slow growing, they work well in small spaces and max out at about 3 or 4 feet tall and wide. The shade probably makes mine grow more slowly, but in this location, that's OK by me.

Pieris is a slightly droopy plant, but not in a sad way! It is beautiful droopy - like a weeping willow tree.

Camellia bushes are beautiful beginning in February and throughout March. They bloom at different times. Mine just started about a week ago.

One of my very favorites is Breath of Spring. In fact, the two shrubs I have now were relocated from my former home. I consider them an old-fashioned plant, which many times are the best kind because they are so hardy! They are in full bloom now. They grow like crazy when the temps heat up in spring and summer, and I have to cut them back a few times to maintain a manageable size shrub. But it's well worth any effort because they are COVERED in small, white flowers for many weeks in winter and early spring. There are so many flowers, you can't even see the green leaves this time of year.

My son and I (future Junior Master Gardener that he is) planted yellow daffodil bulbs last fall. Can you see they are about to burst open with flowers any day now? (Please ignore the surrounding waves of weeds. I haven't made the weeding rounds to this flower bed yet).

And this is a Miss Pitty Pat the kitty cat. I don't think she is admiring all the weeds surrounding her. I think she is admiring a good looking vole to eat.

Happy, happy week,
TCB