Bleeding hearts, brunnera, hostas

In these strange days, the Minnesota State Horticultural Society (MSHS) has been hosting a great series of free webinars. I've been able to attend a few of them and have been impressed with the topics, the presenter, and the host. (I'm a member of MSHS and receive their Northern Gardener magazine, which I love.)

The webinar on April 29 (Genera Gems: Brunnera & Dicentra) was especially pertinent to my interests! Until now, we haven't spent much time thinking about (or doing anything about) the north bed. It's not a side of the house that we generally see or use except to access our rain barrel and swap the storm windows/screens twice a year. The neighbors see it more than we do; their driveway runs along it. The flower bed has lots of brunnera already - they're lovely leafy plants with a cloud of tiny purple flowers in the spring. The webinar presenter said that brunnera and bleeding hearts are natural pairs: they like the same soil conditions. Since we already had one, I decided to add the other!

Bayside Garden Center enabled online ordering, so I placed an order for two bleeding hearts ($9.95 each), some soil acidifier (for the blueberries), paper lawn bags for yard waste, and a pansy bowl (the "frizzle sizzle mix" at $14.99) for some spring color on the front porch. We waited for our pickup time and retrieved the web order from a cart in the parking lot. Easy!

The bleeding hearts are now in the ground on the north side. We also split some of the hostas on the north side of the garage (the shade garden) and transplanted them to join the brunnera and new bleeding hearts. Hopefully, these changes will add some variety for our neighbors!