My first perennial this year was a White Wedding Hydrangea, also three Spice bushes, more catmint, a Phenomenal lavender and a New Jersey Tea bush. I’ve planted more, but bought them last fall, so I don’t know if that counts.

A planned purchase @Cecily Grace zone6 or an "off the cuff" acquisition? Did you get more than one WW?

Not perennials but I did buy a flat of sweet pea starts......does that count? My seed starting facilities are nonexistent and it's been too cold to direct sow (which is what I usually do). So I bit the bullet and planted 6 different varieties. I'll supplement with my seeds as well and keep my fingers crossed they come up in time to beat the summer heat.

And just today, I oversaw the planting of an entire landscape. Not mine - a client's - and more trees and shrubs than perennials, to be honest. But still some great looking dicentra, hellebores, tiarellas, brunneras, grasses and ferns. Can you tell it is a shady woodland garden?

On another note but since the subject of hydrangeas has come up....... My poor waterlogged Pistachio is officially toast. Still have not been able to upend the container and dump both the layer of standing water, the soggy, mucky soil and the dead plant. Other matters were more pressing since it was pretty clear the hydrangea did not survive the abuse. I'm still trying to decide what to replace it with - another Pistachio, which I love, or that new white cascading one I can't remember the name of. No room for both.

Sweetfern

Two blooming hellebores and a jasmine polyanthum from Trader Joe's, and a bunch of bulbs from LIDL (agapanthus, Ismene sulphur queen, triteleia laxa queen fabiola, crocosmia, and freesia), Most of the bulbs are already sprouting including crocosmia that I have previously struggled with (and had 0% success sprouting). I must say these were all a steal and much better quality compared to purchases at nurseries online or even in store from big box stores.

My growing year started with a pretty depressing state of affairs. All of the late fall purchases -spring blooming bulbs (tulips, daffodils, fritillaria, muscari) and four hellebore starts with very good roots that I kept in my mini greenhouse on the balcony rotted to mush. That's a good $135 sacrifice to the winter gods. The only survivor is an Itoh peony. Among the older stuff, one of my four roses is dead and another is just half alive. One of two hydrangeas is dead. Another batch of spring bulbs that was kept in the fridge for ~3 months and then potted up has also gone ahead and rotted ~40-50% within a matter of weeks. I dug them up, washed and put them in glass pots with river stone. Thankfully I got a handful of blooms.

I received my 11 bare root echinaceas Supreme Cantaloupe yesterday!

An order from Bluestone delivered last week and now inground: dianthus, fothergilla, bleeding heart eximia, balloon flower and centaurea amethyst in snow.

Three achillea Firefly Sunshine (Bluestone) and two nepeta Purrsian Blue (local nursery) were planted in the last week of March.

Only sprouting seeds. I often find myself feeling quite dithery at this time of year, looking at many tiny plants and waiting to see what has survived or not. We have had the wettest spring in my memory, so I have been in a holding pattern. I had a few plants from my youngest offspring, who have been moving house, including a few returns I gave to them...so my Splendide thalictrums will be reunited, along with tiarellas and more hardy geraniums. I do have a terrific bulb display going on though. I don't expect to be buying anything for ages yet as I have a ton of work to do at the allotment and garden.

I bought a flat of butterflyweed starts and a flat of guara starts for planting, and a flat of coleus, a flat of torenia, a flat of mandevilla cuttings for my baskets and barrels- those have been potted up and are awaiting their final planting.

On the way are dwarf lilies, helleborus, weigelia, a blue Pugster buddleia, hollyhocks, more Joe Pye, dahlias, and cannas.

Lest you think I spent a fortune- I am yard poor and always must buy tiny starter plants unless I find things locally.

We did a fairly massive restructuring of one mixed bed last fall after moving our fence and ran out of time cold-wise, so most of my work this month has been moving, dividing, and rearranging already existing things. Finally most of my perennials have reached dividing stage- that only took 10 years, lol.

Went for a browse at lunchtime and came back with Baptisia Plum Rosy. Got my eye on a few more things. Try not to impulse buy, but last year regretted not getting a few Spigelia Little Redhead when I saw them.

Spigelia Little Redhead

I love these plants!

I tend to only buy stuff when it is in front of me...so plant fairs or garden visits. I don't like to plant in spring because of irrigation issues and low rainfall, so anything I do buy in the summer tends to wait it out in pots in my very small garden, I do still have a heap of things I should have got in last autumn too (buddleja, salvias,, so I am being really disciplined (ha) at not ordering anything new, just dealing with stuff I have been slow to plant. A bit like only making clothes from your stash, I dare not start adding more things to the already squeezed garden.

Reading your plant lists is not an ideal pursuit for me (cos greed and plant lust).

" I do still have a heap of things I should have got in last autumn too, so I am being really disciplined"

I have a semi-loosely followed rule that I may not order more plants until I have planted the ones already here. Unfortunately, I do not play by the rules.

While it is well and truly fun to make an enormous plant order having 100 plants sitting here awaiting digging work is not much fun at all. On my best days I try to get all of my holes pre-dug so getting things into the ground is easier and quicker.

I don't have a square inch of space so I haven't bought anything and almost certainly won't all year, other than a few things for the window boxes and pots. After many years I know that my garden has little sun, lots of snails, alkaline soil and the remains of various concrete paths just below the surface, I have stopped fighting it and just let the tough stuff that survives do its thing. At the moment I am harvesting wild garlic. It grew here long before the houses were built 200 years ago, so I rather admire its tenacity. Sadly, unlike the garlic, the lesser celandine and Arum maculatum which also thrive cannot be converted into yummy pesto.

Ah Floral - this sounds very like mine (old concrete, builder's rubble)...except I added a zillion pots which I am trying very hard to reduce. Since a very large horse-chestnut (just outside my back wall) died, a few years ago, the once shady and quite lush little courtyard turned into a desert overnight. I have added ceonothus, lilac, indigofera and coral bark acers so I do have a bit more shelter. And lots of alchemilla, campanulas, geraniums and welsh poppies.

I don't like wild garlic at all but I do make a nice pesto out of the sorrel which grows all over the allotment.

Dont foresee buying any perennials this year. I know, no fun : (

Beds are pretty much full now. Ive been out moving/div things around before the good rain comes...I hope.

Annuals yes, just a few to add to the ones I overwintered in the sunroom.

Have fun you all!

Yes, annuals really don't count. I hardly ever buy annual plants (although I would if I was only wanting 1 or 2 plants such as a couple of courgettes). Grown and gone in a season - there is always space for some (lots) of them and I admit, they are my main source of stress free entertainment (unlike finicky perennials which can take years of care).

newest

Jay - is that a double bloodroot? Gorgeous!

No perenniels for me this year yet. I did get my mulberry tree that I mail-ordered and a bare-root Desdemona DA rose should be arriving any day now. And a shipment of mason bees -- mine got almost all but wiped out by an ant infestation when I moved the bee houses two springs ago. I'm sure the bees were fine but just decided to nest elsewhere out and about wherever out there, so I'm slowly building my tended population back up. (I did move the bee houses again, no ants last year thankfully).

I'm working on culling things, too -- I purposely over-planted when I built my beds, I can't stand a bare look, now that things are almost to the point of maturity there are over-stuffed spots that need to be thinned out.

I will buy annuals in the next month or so -- too early for that now.

A couple of weeks ago i bought a Sweet William and a scabiosa, and within two days the deer had eaten them both. Also bought two apricot heucheras, they are doing fine.

I guess I'm a little late to the party but I just got an order in yesterday.

I bought an echinacea Marcella Rainbow (enabled- er, uh inspired by someone here - FrozeBudd? Rouge? mxk?). Can't wait to see this one in bloom!

Also got a dianthus Appleblossom Burst (not much experience with dianthus but it was a good sale!)

Rounded out my small order with a viburnum Brandywine and a Dandy Man Color Wheel rhodie.

Trying to restrain myself this year. Have a big project with replanting the front foundation bed, as well as continuing on a large shrub border along the boundary for privacy, so trying to save my pennies for that. That didn't stop me from wintersowing way too many annuals though...

:)

Dee

I splurged on an itoh peony, Copper Kettle from a seller on etsy.

Also in the order, Veronicastrum ’Cupid’ and an ornamental rhubarb .

these are potted up and I am getting them outside during the day to harden off.

Fun to read everybodys choices :))

I got some Mexican portulaca, regular portulaca, some other flowering succulents, and some annuals. I also got this enormous champagne and cherry pink fuschia, don't remember its name.

Long list here! I purchased 4 Itoh peonies from Home Depot - (1x) Cora Louise (pink) and (3x) Bartzella (yellow) (one for my mom, my sister and myself), clematis, Mary Hunt from Brushwood, bareroot roses and mums from a local nursery, hellebores from Trader Joes, lychnis, growing a bunch of stuff from seed - agastache, delphiniums, rudbeckia, salvia, foxglove, snapdragons, rose campion, hollyhocks, lion's tail, lisianthus (started in Jan 2023), alyssum, geranium (annual), yarrow, monarda, bachelor buttons, echinacea (native) and poppies. I also have peonies (7 of them that I bought at the Philadelphia Flower Show in March) and lugged back in my suitcase.

I also have some Pugster butterfly bushes coming in the mail this week - purple and pink ones, along with some coneflowers.

Now if only it would get warmer here. It's 35 degrees and the cold won't let up! My poor beautiful magnolia blooms on my yellow and pink magnolia were great for maybe 2 weeks and the cold just zapped them. Now they are brown crusty bits. Thank goodness that my lilacs are budding up!