Flowering passions

Physiologically, it’s put down to factors like fluctuating hormone levels as days lengthen, dilating blood vessels as temperatures rise and even a change in what we tend to eat. But science can only take us so far with explanantions before we need art to take over.

Mark Twain best explained it by not explaining it at all: “It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

Certainly for gardeners, spring fever is no stranger. Desperate to shake off the shackles of winter, we rush into new projects, and spend long weekends tidying, preparing and planting.

At these times of intense activity, garden friends that quietly deliver, whatever else we are doing, are especially valuable and we are thinking here of the early perennials.

Those wonderful plants reappear as if by magic each spring and bring colour and foliage to forgotten corners as well as to centre stage.

Such is Pulsatilla vulgaris or Pasque Flower. Cluster-forming, deciduous plants, they produce beautiful violet blue, down-covered flowers and silver-hued foliage.

The bell-shaped flowers appear in spring and early summer.

They are often associated with Easter, hence the origin of the popular name.

Pulsatilla vulgaris produces deep to pale purple flowers, whereas ‘Alba’ produces white blooms and ‘Rode Klokke’ deep red flowers.

Dicentra, of course, is a shade-loving plant with a rather lurid name – this time ‘bleeding heart’.

If you look at the flowers of Dicentra spectablis it is easy to see how it got this name – they are heart-shaped and appear to ‘drip’ a drop of pink blood.

These plants form fairly upright clumps and the neat foliage is a selling feature as well as the flowers.

Make the most of your springtime burst while it lasts. If you use some of it to put in a selection of early perennials, your garden will be the richer this spring and in years to come.