As well as the delights of early spring flowers this time of year brings the equal but generally greener attraction of fresh growth – I was spoilt for choice as I rambled with my camera this morning, and know I will have missed lots of goodies. My current favourite foliage is this astonishingly bright example in the blue and white border, unfortunately without a label – it initially looked like delphinium but I know there are none in that bed. I am hoping it is one of my newer additions and if so I can work out what it is – or find the label! Next to it is an emerging geranium, possibly ‘Johnson’s Blue’ – having undergone big changes last year there are a lot of plants with mislaid labels in this border!
New foliage has been enhancing all the roses throughout the winter, and as I pruned mine at the end of last year these new shoots (these are ‘Blush Noisette’) have the freedom to grow at will for the time being. The healthy growth on the right is Papaver ‘Patty’s Plum’, which came as a postage-only offer in late autumn and as I have never yet succeeded in getting one to flower I am still optimistic for this year!
In the woodland the primroses are flowering, but the wild garlic, bluebells and wood anemones are still preparing themselves to show their true colours later in the year. I haven’t split the bluebells since I planted them in 2000, and they have struggled to compete with an invasion of lamium in recent years, so I shall be interested see how they flower this season. The wood anemones are really beginning to form a nice carpet and you can see the roots on the surface of the woodland floor in this picture.
Not all the foliage of note is fresh – I loved this leaf skeleton and also stopped to admire the crinkles on this Aspenium scolopendrium cristata, realising how easy it is to take evergreen foliage for granted.
I love the foliage on the emerging hellebores too, and the fresh new leaves on pulmonaria – and several clematis are showing green shoots on their dried stems – but I shall admire the rest of these without you this time. Thanks to Christina for hosting this Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day – do have a look and see what’s happening in other bloggers’ gardens today.
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Rambling in the Garden 
Super new foliage contrasting with the leaf skeleton and such lovely colours too. Seeing all the new foliage bursting forth makes me think that spring can’t be all that far away, just hope it warms up soon, though the forecast isn’t very promising for next week! Hope all the new shoots don’t get frosted.
Thanks Pauline – bitterly cold here too, but surprisingly no frost for the last couple of days, not since we last the daytime blue skies. Nature’s seen it all before of course!
Nice pictures, I especially like the young rose shoot with fresh light green leaves.
Thanks.These new rose shoots have amazed me throughout the winter – they have been completely unaffected by frost and snow
Thank you for joining in GBFD, sorry I was late getting up my post to link to! You have some lovely things bursting through the soil to give hope of spring coming soon. I do agree that it can be easy to take evergreens for granted but they do add a lot to the garden all year, even when centre stage is taken over by flowers. Christina
That’s one of the benefits of your meme, Christina – reminding me to look at all foliage.
All your foliage examples hold great interest. Will be interested to know what the chartreuse foliage is. I planted bluebells last year but see nothing emerging so far. susie
Thanks for popping in, Susie. ‘Chartreuse’ is a good name for the colour of the unidentified foliage and it is certainly very distinctive. I shall make sure I mention what it is in another post once I have found out!
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