Photo: Lorene Edwards Forkner

I realize Valentine’s Day was last week. So let’s consider this post an homage to gardens, our favorite labor of love.

photo: Yoksel via unsplash

Bleeding heart

We’ll start with the low-hanging fruit. With heart shaped blooms, bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectablis née Dicentra spectabilis) is for tried-and-true romantics. Tender blooms and delicate foliage on this shade loving woodland perennial belie a sturdy constitution. Don’t let the plant’s summer dormancy dampen your affection for this sweetheart of the spring and early summer garden.

Photo: Benson Kua via Wikimedia Commons

Cupid’s dart

Supposedly cupid’s dart got its name from the Greeks who used the plant as a potent ingredient in concocting love potions. A sun loving perennial that’s native to the Mediterranean, you’ll fall for the plant’s numerous lavender blooms in summer. 

Photo: Agnieszka Kwiecień, Nova, via Wikimedia Commons

Exotic love

Exotic love is a lush annual vine with fleur-de-lis leaves and arching wands of tubular blooms that begin a brilliant crimson before ripening to lemon yellow and soft vanilla. Plus you get to say you’re growing exotic love.

Photo: Bernard DUPONT via Wikimedia Commons

Photo: Vinayaraj via Wikimedia Commons

Love-in-a-puff 

Love-in-a-puff is another showy annual vine. Demure tiny white flowers balloon into lime green lantern-like seedpods filled with black seeds, each marked with a perfect white heart. I mean, come on! You can’t make this stuff up.

Photo: Lorene Edwards Forkner

Forget-me-not

Of course we can’t forget, er, forget-me-not (Myosotis oblongata), an easy-to-grow hardy annual with true-blue blooms and a vigorous reseeding habit. Frankly, I’ve long considered for-get-me-not to be a bit annoying. Not necessarily a nuisance, just disappointingly wan and prone to mildew. That is until I took a walk with a friend and saw this front yard given completely given over to a wash of baby blue that blew my mind. (See what I did there?) 

Photo: Lorene Edwards Forkner

Love-lies-bleeding

If all this talk of amour and devotion seem a bit saccharine, you might prefer love-lies-bleeding (Amaranth caudatus), a slightly sinister name for a lovely plant flocked with flamboyant late summer blossoms with the texture of chenille. This drama queen appreciates heat; it’s best to sow the tiny seeds directly in the garden once the soil has warmed. And now you know where cozy bathrobes come from.

Photo: Lorene Edwards Forkner

Photo: Lorene Edwards Forkner

Love-in-a-mist

Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) is also known as devil-in-the-bush. Multi-petaled blooms in summer appear in shades of pale blue, indigo, rose or pure white above finely cut foliage, ostensibly the “mist,” followed by decorative, and not the least bit devilish, horned seedpods. While the flowers are fleeting the seedpods persist and may be cut for summer bouquets or dried for winter arrangements. Best of all, this hardy and independent annual readily reseeds, becoming an enduring garden companion year after year.

Reading back through this post, I fear I’m guilty of using too many compound adjectives, but then gardening, like love, is complicated.