And so it begins

Yesterday I made my first flower purchases of this spring. After work, I went to the Garden Spot Nursery and bought black petunias, white bacopa, and creeping jenny, which may bear yellow flowers in the future.

The petunias and bacopa are for the same barrel as my honeysuckle. I have planted many colors of petunias in there in years past, generally tending to opt for purple. I was planning on buying purple again when I saw this black variety. Last year I had a small pot of black petunias, and they are gorgeous. A change this year for this barrel is that I am adding white bacopa to mix in with the black petunias. They should look very pretty cascading out of the barrel together. Right now, of course, they are tiny starter plants.

The creeping jenny is for around the edges of the two barrels by my water feature. I always put in double impatiens in the center and creeping jenny around the edge, again with the idea that it will trail over the edge of the barrel. Some years it does. Some years I have only been able to find "golden" creeping jenny, with yellowish leaves, but yesterday I found the basic plant, with dark green leaves.

I did not find any double impatiens, so I will have to keep looking for that. In recent years I've had a hard time finding that, but each year I finally have found it somewhere. Impatiens is a flat, five-petal flower, but double impatiens is fuller, with petals more like a mini-carnation.

I did make one earlier plant purchase last weekend, but not flowers for my deck. It was some starters for a shrub called fragrant sarcococca, or sweetbox. That is for a hedge along a certain edge of the property.