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My winter-blooming jasmine is finally blooming ... the very first flower in this year's garden, but when it appears, you know everything else is not far behind. This photo was taken at Hillwood Museum & Gardens in Washington DC, planted where the jasmine looks best, spilling over a wall.
Another sure-fire sign of spring is Helleborus foetidus, with one of the earliest spring blooms, these ones pale lime-green-yellow. I LOVE this plant and try to put it in every client's yard. The fine-cut evergreen foliage is attractive year-round, and the plant spreads slowly as well, eventually filling in all of those bare spots.
photo: WaysideGardens,com
My yard also has two Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas), not yet as big as this one, which you can order from Wayside Gardens. The buds on my trees are not quite ready to bloom, but when the lovely yellow flowers appear, you know that spring is just around the corner.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why everyone I know seems to hate forsythia. Too boring? Too pedestrian? Too many of them around? BUT -- there is nothing as incredibly beautiful in spring as a glorious flowering forsythia hedge, like this one at Dumbarton Oaks in DC. If you don't like them when the flowers fade and the green leaves appear, then do what the Brits would do: plant some clematis at the base of the shrub and let them flower and spill over and through the forsythia from late spring to early autumn. Just takes a little imagination.
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