The GPOD is on the road again, and today friend of the GPOD Cherry Ong is taking us on a visit to the gardens at the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific (HCP) in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She saw a lot of beautiful things there, which we’ll be sharing over the next few weeks, but today the focus is on spring ephemerals. Ephemerals are those wonderful plants that pop up early in the spring, flower, and then go dormant. For many of them, this strategy is an adaptation to living under the shade of deciduous trees. They get up and do their growing early before the trees above leaf out completely and take all the light. These were thriving under the canopy of trees in the Doris Page Winter Garden.

Wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa, Zones 5–8) is a little spring ephemeral that thrives in woodland gardens, spreading moderately to make clumps of spring blooms.

There are many selected forms of wood anemone. This is the variety ‘Bracteata Pleniflora’, which has extra petals, some tinted green.

The ‘Bracteata Pleniflora’ has made a nice clump.

Who wouldn’t want this in their garden welcoming spring?

This anemone is ‘Vestal’, which has double, pure-white flowers.

A big patch of ‘Vestal’ in full bloom

Erythronium (trout lily, Zones 5–8) is a widespread genus, with species native to most of the northern hemisphere, but surely the prettiest species are the ones native to western North America, with large, showy, nodding, lilylike flowers.

I’m not sure which species of Erythronium this is—perhaps one of the hybrids.

I think this is Erythronium revolutum.

The delicate yellow blooms of Epimedium × perralchicum (Zones 5–9) rise above a carpet of wood anemone.

Have a garden you’d like to share?

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