Young ligularias

I spent the day at the farm yesterday. I had been tempted by the forecast of a cloudy 19 C/66 F but at noon it merely got up to 14 C/57 F with some wind. It felt considerably warmer whenever the sun peeked out, though, which happened quite frequently in the afternoon. I continued to clean the beds next to the house. I managed to get the entire north-eastern bed done, which is an area most frequented for meals or resting outside due to a nice partial shade it gets from the trees and the house during hot summer months. I also transplanted some alchemilla there but didn't take the "after" pictures, so here's what it looked like "before".

The purple leaves are ligularia dentata which seeded itself throughout the bed. The mother plant is the single plant closest to the corner of the cellar window, the rest are seedlings growing wherever the seeds dropped. Isn't that miraculous? Ligularia is such a huge gorgeous plant when the leaves get bigger and then it blooms in the late summer. My sister first saw it when on vacation at the beach and brought it to the farm but she planted it in full sun where the leaves were constantly wilting from the heat. I moved it to northern side of the building (needed a wheelbarrow to carry the rootball) and can you believe how it took off. I didn't count but there are at least a couple of dozen ligularias there now. I'll try to transplant some to another spot, hopefully creating another spectacular ligularia bed.

Behind the ligularia you can see the emerging ferns and lilies of the valley as well as a clematis next to the wall. A small clump of pale green leaves in front of the purple ones is ligularia przewalskii, and the spreading clump of similar looking leaves at the very front is a small blue flowering geranium. A tiny clump of cream-leaved oregano and some August planted iris to the right.

ferns and lily of the valley

The vegetation hasn't advanced very far, as you can see, so I hope to still be able to do some perennial transplanting in May.