Mill Pond Garden to host early spring open day April 4

Early spring flowers will be out for visitors to Mill Pond Garden’s open day from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Sunday, April 4.

To subscribe for free tickets, go to millpondgarden.com.

Here is a chance to consider what early flowering bulbs and plants can be added to one’s own garden for longer and more abundant blooms next year.

Sweeps of color will be on display with many species in bloom including early bulbs, tulips, daffodils, rhododendrons, azaleas, ephemeral perennials, and early flowering shrubs. Plants that do well in the Cape Region include spring hellebores and camellias, redbud trees, spirea ohgon, anemone blanda, Virginia blue bells, comfrey, pulmonaria, bloodroot, ipheion, pansies, colored evergreen foliage, and beautiful tree and shrub new foliage. One may see frogs in the frog pond, tadpoles, pond turtles basking on turtle logs in Red Mill Pond, hunting osprey, great blue herons, and many other garden and water birds.

The collection of hellebores and camellias may be one of the most diverse on Delmarva, with 18 different cultivars of camellias blooming in fall, winter and spring, and 31 cultivars of hellebores blooming from Christmas to summer, an excellent library of what does well in the Cape Region for these wonderful, under-used perennials and shrubs. The perennial evergreen hellebores and the medium-sized evergreen camellia shrubs can provide lots of winter color and interest for the cold half of the year, peaking in spring.

Of special interest are the new patented ‘Wow’ hellebores by Brecks of Holland, extremely rare so far in the United States. These hellebores bred for the cut-flower market have larger, up-facing flowers on taller stems in white, pink, red or yellow, and in single and double petals. Mill Pond Garden was one of the first in America to acquire rooted cuttings of all of these, grown now for three years to the beginning of good display quality. The up-facing flowers are a big breakthrough, since blooms on all other hellebores face out or hang upside-down.

Mill Pond Garden is a holistic, public, nonprofit botanical garden on Red Mill Pond outside Lewes featuring a habitat for wildlife and pollinators in a garden of mostly native and/or beneficial and sustainable plants that do well in the Cape Region. It provides more than 1,600 subscribing local households with enjoyment of beauty, expert horticultural information and classes.