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Helen Chesnut’s Garden Notes: Explosion of colour brings joy in trying times

Not too hot. Not too cold. A little rain. Some sunny days. Recent conditions have brought close to perfect growing weather — Goldilocks gardening time.

Not too hot. Not too cold. A little rain. Some sunny days. Recent conditions have brought close to perfect growing weather — Goldilocks gardening time.

Is it just me, or have others noted an unusual load of intensely coloured bloom on flowering trees and shrubs this spring? Perhaps flower-bearing plants seem more vibrant this spring mainly because we’re at home more and living with fewer distractions.

Still, my flowering cherry tree has been so packed with pinkish-white double blossoms that I half expected limbs to break. Plantings of bergenia have flowered more prolifically in a more vivid pink than ever before. Even a lewisia, a longtime inhabitant of a clay pot, has outdone any former spring display with an impressive, picture-perfect bouquet of coral and pink flowers.

Alternating rain and sun, together with moderate temperatures, has brought life surging up out of the earth, as though to remind us, in the midst of a challenging time, how powerful and sweet it is to live.

Bergenia is one of those plants that is easy to take for granted. You just know it’ll always be there with its rosettes of big, evergreen leaves — undemanding of a gardener’s attentions, hardy and vigorous.

The plants do catch our attention in early spring when thick, red stems rise above leathery leaf clumps and seem to stand at attention as they bear clusters of deep pink flowers.

The unusually fine showing of bloom on my main bergenia planting can probably be attributed partly to a major renovation of an immense lacecap hydrangea that had overhung the bergenia planting. The severe thinning and cutting back of the hydrangea exposed the bergenia to increased amounts of sunlight.

Bergenia is known to grow almost everywhere, in fairly dry soils and in moist ones, in rich soils and pure sand, in full sun to deep shade. Though viewed mainly as a shade plant, faithfully putting on a showy display or ornamental leaves in deep shade, for really good flowering the plants need at least some sun.

Sharing. This ominous spring has had an effect on my life that is almost opposite to its effect on most people I know. I’m long accustomed to living and working on my own, at home, and spending several days at a time occupied in the garden and in my office without seeing anyone. Now, almost everyone else is living in similar semi-isolation as I’ve been welcoming unaccustomed numbers of people to the garden each week.

Some are friends whose many usual activities are cancelled. Most have no gardens of their own and enjoy spending time working in mine. It won’t last, of course. Group meetings will resume at some point. But it’s ironic that the times have reduced, not increased, isolation in my case.

Then there are two close neighbours who are planting food gardens for the first time and are looking for help. That’s involved much coming and going between their gardens and mine, while we maintain appropriate distancing — easy to do outdoors.

This sort of thing is probably going on in neighbourhoods all over the island as seasoned gardeners lend a hand and offer advice to those growing food plants for the first time.

Each time friends and neighbours visit, for advice or to work, I look around for little gifts from the garden for them. Sometimes it’s spring greens; other times it’s flowers.

Marilyn’s specialty is weeding paths. It’s a puzzle to me, but she declares that she loves what many would view as the ultimate in crushing boredom. It’s very likely the meditative nature of the work that appeals.

Marilyn was enchanted with the fragrance wafting from a Korean spice viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) shrub, in bloom at the centre of the back garden. She took a few flowering stems home for her apartment.

The next time she came to do path work, she expressed sadness that she and a group of her friends were unable to celebrate together the life of a mutual friend who had died.

Instead, they planned to have a “virtual” ceremony with candles, flowers, and remembrances expressed. I was more than pleased to supply Marilyn’s flowers: more of the richly scented white viburnum together with sturdy bluebells and dark pink bergenia, in a little bouquet that I hoped would bring a bit of spirit-lifting consolation to a sad and worrying time.