My Favorite April Blooms

It's hard to pick favorites.  Every day as I find a new bloom it becomes my favorite.  I know my two roses have been shown many times before, but really can you ever see too many pictures of such beautiful flowers?  Belinda's Dream and Knockout Radrazz have been blooming since February.  This month they have been more beautiful than ever.  The Florida Gold sedum is blooming tiny yellow flowers which were a complete surprise to me.  The blanket flowers were a little late in showing off but late April brought an abundance of blooms.  Bleeding Heart clerodendrum is a new addition to the back fence in the shady corner and it is doing a great job of brightening that dark spot.  The pentas which have been a mainstay for color at My Garden Path were knocked to the ground this winter and are only just now putting out leaves about 6" above ground.  Tall red pentas were purchased and planted earlier this month to give the butterflies a reason to return.  Those pentas are such workhorses.  They just pump out blooms constantly.  When the purple, pink and white ones finally grow back to their former glory butterflies should abound once again.  I love to grow several different salvias and this Victoria Blue is a favorite of mine which just started putting out its long purple plumes earlier this month. 

I hope all my gardening friends are enjoying many, many blooms in their April gardens. 

Sunny Blooms

Sunny garden areas at My Garden Path are very sparse but there are a few spots where sun loving plants grow and bloom.


The Tampa Vervain, Glandularia tampensis, which was purchased in February of this year is blooming non-stop.  The Sedum Florida Gold is showing some growth as well.

This little Bulbine frutescens was recently purchased and planted because of a post Ami at Southeast Florida Garden Evolvement wrote.  I think I flunked color placement by putting orange next to red, but I think the butterflies will like it.  That little plant is really only a portion of two plants I split apart to spread out in this area of the garden. 

This Bulbine, shown below,  is one of four I planted in February.  It was nipped by cold on the tips and it and its brothers have just been sitting there doing nothing.  So, I bought the ones that are now blooming to give these guys some competition.  Hopefully, now that I have some blooming Bulbine I can leave these alone long enough to let them recover if they will.  They appear to have a tighter clumping habit than my new ones and I wonder if they could be a different type of Bulbine.  If they ever get off the mark and grow and bloom it will be interesting to see if they have a different flower.  That's my butterfly magnet passionvine, Passiflora incarnata, in the background.  It dies to the ground every winter but returns every spring and soon takes over the trellis, the fence, and anything that stands still near it. 

At the beginning of February I planted my first two rose bushes.  This Knockout RADrazz is very small, I purchased it in a one gallon container, but it keeps up a steady stream of blooms. 

Plants are growing, birds are singing, a few butterflies have flitted past along with one or two bees checking out the emerging flowers, My Garden Path is on a path of renewal. 

Rose Fever

I have been obsessed with finding Old Garden Roses to put in one of my few sunny patches of garden ever since I saw how cold resistant they were during the record freeze we just came through.

Of course, I wasn't able to delay gratification and I bought a Knockout rose while on another errand at my local big box store.  She is blooming and so even though she isn't my original intent, I love her.

My wonderful, thankfully strong husband dug out the 2nd 20+ year old hibiscus for me to make room for one of two Old Garden Roses I've been researching.  Those are his legs at the top right.  That was one big stump to dig!

Saturday, I drove 40 minutes to a rose nursery in south Tampa, Hardin's.  What a great place!  I was given much information on roses and helped to pick just the easy-care one I needed to go with a Louis Philippe for which I AM going to hold out.  This one is not currently blooming but is a nice healthy plant and a good size as well.  This is placed in the now filled-in crater left by the hibiscus.  Still needs companions and mulch, but this is much better already.  Belinda's Dream  She isn't an OGR as she was bred in 1988, but she is an Earthkind(trademark) rose which is especially easy for a beginner.  I hope.  Hardin's sells all their roses on Fortuniana rootstock which makes them well suited for Florida's soil.  Ok, so a week or so ago I decided I wanted 1 OGR to put in this spot.  Now I have 2 other roses and a perfect spot for my Louis Philippe in the future.  I have to stop my rose obsession now because I'm out of room in my only sunny, well draining soil spot.  Can't wait to show pictures of Belinda's bloom!