Dicentra formosa, It Lives!

Much stronger plant than spectabilis GT....I find the stems of Spectabilis too brittle and full of moisture and leggy....I'm going to dig mine out in the autumn.

It is amazing me! :-) I may try spectabilis again, in the back of a border under a tree, so I'm not in there messing with it much. Then I don't mind that brittleness, but I know what you are talking about. None of the others have that long reaching wand of broken hearts. :-)

Long winter? did that have anything to do with the volcano? We had one of the coldest springs on record!
Don't know if you will find the same..but I put perennials that I'm worried about losing beside a large stone...or bring a stone near the plant for the winter. Strange as it sounds it has worked for me. passive solar collection!

Very long winter. Coldest average in 40 years, then very long spring, any temps above 0C and last snow May 23, then straight from that day into 30Cs ever since, one day of rain! Its been crazy! Lows of 23. I'm getting cooked. I'll post a pic of the azaleas melted in the afternoon, they look normal in the morning, its ridiculous.

I may try that rock tip. I placed one as a corner stone by my Mugo pone, like he needs it...lol. First year in this garden and still making new adjustments.

Would you believe it's my third in this garden?! and still so many "adjustments"...lol. perhaps it never really ends..but this year is the first that I can say that it looks like a garden and not just a gopher convention! Dig, dig, dig...unearthing rocks is hard work but there are so many that I am able to use them in the landscape. Can't figure why they bothered to bury them in the first place. Hope you get a break with the weather...that sounds just horrible. As I said we've had cooler temps than usual..hope they last because I'm too old for sizzling temps...I wilt like the plants.

I am certainly wilted. :-)

Similar thing in this garden, lots of underground debris, not all rocks. I think my plots was backfilled during house construction so I'll be picking out stuff for years. But a nice rock border made it look like a garden much faster than the back, where its very wild still.

I found that the area I wanted to put into beds beside the stream was the old tip...and I've found apothecary bottles...old glass...broken crockery..shoes...even a brylcreem tube! Charred animal bone too...gahh! The soil is full of ash and that's probably why everything I put in the bed seems happy. It's very sandy and dries out quickly..good thing it's within 6 feet of a stream but the neighbours have been bulldozing around the failed beaver dam...and my water has come down to a trickle...I think this may be a potential conflict brewing..they finally penned up the pigs, now it's the water!