I’d like to take you on a late spring garden tour, because May is such a beautiful month in the garden.
And I have some recommendations for good garden plants for small or middle-sized gardens in late spring.
The last tulips
There are some wonderful late tulips for the late spring garden. They bridge the gap between the daffodils and the roses. Many will go on flowering until the end of May, depending what the weather is.
‘Ballerina’ are one of the most long lasting, reliable and fragrant tulips I have ever encountered. They are usually orange, but this year these Ballerina tulips have popped up with a stripe. I think it looks great. I have asked fellow gardeners on Twitter what they think it is. They say that it may be trying to revert to a yellow tulip it was originally bred from.
Bright acid greens
One of the best things about the late spring garden is the bright acid greens from emerging foliage and from plants like euphorbia.
If you don’t care for euphorbia’s stinging sap, then consider Smyrnium perfoliatum. It’s a biennial which self-sows around my garden, but disappears completely from July onwards.
The last of the fruit tree blossom
Add something unusual…
I genuinely think that this Clematis ‘Recta’ is very unusual, as I haven’t seen it in any other gardens. Though feel free to tell me it was very fashionable twenty years ago and is now outdated…
It pops up in a purple-black mound in May, then suddenly explodes into a froth of white flowers in June. These surge across the border, covering several yards. I cut it down to the ground in late autumn but otherwise it doesn’t seem to need any other care.
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