Summer Ground Cover and the Lenten Rose

Looking for a beautiful ground cover plant for your summer shade garden?  Here one, the hardy Lenten Rose.  After it blooms early early in the spring (with the daffodils), this early blooming shade perennial puts on new growth and morphs into a lush dark green ground cover .  Oh, and did I mention they are deer proof :-)

In the summer their leaves become tough and serrated and stay that way through the summer and into the early fall.  This is their no nonsense motherly design to protect their seeds that had fallen from their flowers at the end of their flower cycle.  In the late spring the flower cycle ends.  The seed pods of the flower mature and drop their seeds.  Then the flower stalks decompose the new summer ground cover foliage begins to grow.  By early summer the leaves are dark green and tough.  Mamma says, 'don't mess with my baby seeds!' :-)

If you have a few minutes and would like to learn more about this beautiful shade perennial, have a look at my web site.  Click on the Lenten Rose Almanac tab.  A few years ago I made a short video for every month of the year to chronicle the perennial cycle of this extraordinary plant.  The videos are pretty amateur but I had to do it......somebody had to do it.  Well anyway, enjoy and if you have any questions drop me a line at richard@LenenRose.com