Spring 2025 Garden Chores, Blooms

How's your spring gardening going? This is my fourth year of nurturing my Zone 7a cottage garden. 

It wasn't even four hours since I had gotten my summer annuals in the ground when a hailstorm hit on May 5th. - sinko de my annuals. 😢

It was the night of April 8th that we were still under frost warning and I had to cover several of my peonies and already blooming lilac with frost cloth.

It wasn't even eight hours after I had my corner area of lawn amended (where the earth had settled beneath the removed pin oak tree), and a neighbor's dog cut loose from his leash and got so tangled in my "ribbon barrier" that he literally bent and broke the metal poles holding the ribbon.

And apparently, my lawn sprinkler's a chick magnet because this little chicky was chasing it. 

And let's not forget that ice storm we had at the beginning of January, where I literally went outside to try to tie together boxwoods that were getting split apart with the weight of snow and ice.

Such are the challenges as I start the new gardening season. At least I haven't cut myself and needed stitches this year...yet. Bring on the challenges!

Even though our spring has come a couple weeks later than last year, I started working in the garden on the occasional randomly warm day in each of the months of February and March, trimming back butterfly bushes, St. John's Wort, clematis and spent hydrangea blooms. 

Below is the St. John's Wort and how massive it gets, even with two hard prunes each year. More on this plant in a bit.

As my garden is starting to fill in with plantings from the last three years, I started finding that a woodland hyacinth plant which was already in the landscape was beginning to take over with its bulb offsets and seed spread. This reminded me of the lily-of-the-valley saga from two years ago. So, I made a focused effort on ridding five yard waste bags of this plant. For as small as this garden is, that was more than I wanted. 

I did leave one patch (and a couple singular plantings) of this plant for its spring flower effect.

Back to the St. John's Wort. I had daffodils and woodland hyacinth growing within the plant after the February pruning. I wanted to dig it out and pull out the unwanted plants, then divide and replant the original. It was too hard by myself, so I dug out a foot circumference of the plant instead. You can see the disturbed ring of dirt in the collage below where I had dug it out.

This is one of the plants in this landscape which I thought was originally oversized. Apparently it's another one of those plants that can also take a beating as evidenced by one month of growth (bottom L frame of collage above), so it stays in its trimmed down version. It will bloom sometime in June. Just in case I had butchered it beyond regrowth, I stuck a few cuttings in a container. It's viable (bottom R of collage above), but I'm afraid of planting it elsewhere in my landscape.

Another big chore I undertook at the end of April and first of May was trimming all 19 boxwoods and holly. Using a king sheet split half as a wraparound beneath each bush made short shrift of collecting the cuttings and shaking them into yard waste bags.

As you can see by the collage above, I had many containers of annuals still to plant at this point. I'm happy to say they're all planted!

From this point on, it's all glamour shots of what's bloomed / blooming so far this spring:

Daffodils - most of which I've dug up existing random plantings throughout the landscape and transplanted for more en masse effect. I did even more this year, anticipating greater impact for 2026.

Sugar Baby Forsythia, a dwarf variety planted last fall, came out right on time for Spring's arrival.

Lungwort: originally underplanted beneath the Hinoki cypress removed in 2023, was transplanted first to my girlfriend's landscape. A division came back to me last July when she sold her home and moved. I'm happy to say it's come back. Hopefully it will thrive in the shadiest spot I could locate in my garden.

PJM rhododendrons (an azalea hybrid) replaced two small boxwoods in 2024, and came back nicely this year.

Two hellebores (Wedding Party Confetti Cake) planted in 2024 showed their first blooms this year.

My lilac (original to the landscape) flushed out beautifully this year after an untimely pruning in fall of 2023 that left few blooms in 2024. Even as an experienced gardener, I made the mistake of pruning after blooms had set on the old wood.

After the heady fragrance of lilacs for nearly two weeks, my peonies started blooming. Gosh, I love these flowers!

First to bloom are my Coral Sunset, which start out very brilliantly coral, and gradually fade to a creamy ivory / peach.

Next comes Cora Louise and Bartzella varieties of peonies.

Then what I believe I've identified as Chestine Gowdy began blooming, as has the Karl Rosenfield.

Poppies are blooming,

Weigela and Baptisia, 

Salvia, 

Irises, and drift roses, 

and just beginning is the Jackmanii clematis.

And...the amended grass is growing.

My annuals are also planted. I'll share those another day. For now, this gardening chick is ready for a little break!

What's in your garden? How's your spring weather been? Spill the dirt, I love reading about other regions and what's happening in yours.

Thanks for visiting, and feel free to leave your comments. I do try to respond when I can recognize a reader. If you show as anonymous, please help me by identifying who you are. Happy gardening!

Rita C. at Panoply

Parties I Share With: Pieced Pastimes, Love Your Creativity, BNOTP, My Wee Abode, French Ethereal SYS, Karins Kottage, Follow the Yellow Brick Home, County Road 407 Farmhouse Friday