Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the Garden

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Celebrate with us by exploring some “St. Patrick’s Day” themed plants.

Start your day with a lucky shamrock, Ilex glabra ‘Shamrock’ to be exact. A slow-growing, upright-rounded evergreen shrub in the holly family, this selection is ideal for hedges and screening shrub borders. Several plantings can be found forming the corner bed of the Pollinator Garden and screening the Wister Parking lot from the view along College Ave.

A native shrub, ‘Shamrock’ provides great winter protection and berries for our feathered friends. While the berries provide a great food source for birds, they are not very showy. This shrub’s greatest asset lies in its ability to adapt to sun or shade, wet or average gardening conditions, while maintaining evergreen through the winter.

Bursting with brilliant yellow and green, typical St. Patrick’s Day colors, Garden is  Adonis amurensis in the Harry Wood. This cheerful early spring flower captures the fun, festive nature of many St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Making a statement on the spring ephemeral parade, the cheery buttercup flower will set festive tone of the day along with its feathery, finely-divided fern-like foliage. Going dormant in late spring, the bright golden flowers typically hit their stride in March.

During March the pot of the gold at the end of the gardening rainbow is Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Barmstedt Gold’. A cross between H. japonica and H. mollis, this upright-spreading cultivar has golden yellow flowers with reddish calyces. Bring your “pot of gold” inside to enjoy the pleasant fragrance from the cut branches. This selection is a real treasure for your winter/early spring garden.

I wish you the luck of the Irish today and hope you find early spring gold in your garden too.