The Merry Month of May ... and a new Blog Title

It's no wonder that May is called the merry month. The garden fills out with fresh green growth and early perennials sprinkle it with blossom, gladdening any gardener's heart. 

Most of the small willows I grow have shed their catkins already, but creeping Salix nakamura var. yezo-alpina is still holding up its bright little candles over green leaves fringed with silky hairs.

Hostas are breaking ground,

Hosta 'American Halo'

... and sharing the shady area with them are Brunnera 'Looking Glass', Japanese painted ferns and two Heuchera - 'Sugar Plum' and 'Green Spice' .

Hydrangea 'Kiyosumi', also in the shade, is leafing out in similar colours.

Where there's more sunshine, Clematis 'Willy' is dangling its delicate bells through the branches of its rosemary host.

A more spectacular relative, 'Miss Bateman', has opened a first flower with many more to come.

Gradually the green bars will fade and the mature flowers will be pure white, with that beet red centre darkening to purple. 

Watching these kinds of transformations take place in flowers is one of the pleasures of having a garden. Another one will occur when the green and white bracts of little woodland Anemone nemorosa 'Bracteata' lose their petals to reveal a splash of cobalt blue around the stem. There's one flower already doing that in the bottom left of my photo

The anemone is growing under a variegated dogwood, Cornus alternifolia `Argentea', which is just leafing out. Even on a cloudy day, this lovely tree gives the impression of being bathed in sunshine.

Two bright spots in the garden right now are Geum 'Cosmopolitan', awash with peach-coloured flowers rimmed in red.

...and the tomato-red clusters of Enkianthus 'Red Bells' that look from a distance more like tiny fruits than flowers. 

And on the back fence, my earliest blooming rose, Rosa pimpinellifolia, is making its usual generous May display of heavily-scented cream flowers with golden stamens and is abuzz with bees. Even as the flowers fade, their fragrance will hang in the evening air as we come and through the nearby gate.

This will be the last post on this blog under the name Grand Folly. It was a good name for the adventure of restoring some character to our much-modified house and gradually surrounding it with a new garden of the plants I had already come to love. Ten years on, the garden is maturing and there's little now that I haven't recorded in previous years. 

I am changing the name to A Planted Place, which will allow to me continue recording this garden but also give me more scope to write about other gardens and the interesting plants in them. You will be able to find it under the new title or under my name @blogspot.com