Green Thumb Sunday: Larkspur in the Rock Garden

My first Green Thumb Sunday, and I’m all a-twitter, like my older sister before her first high school dance–How ‘s my hair? How’s my dress? Do these shoes go with this dress? How do I look? (It turned out she’d done it all wrong–she’d dressed up, and everyone else was wearing blue jeans. Hmm.)

I do realize that posting a day late is not generally recommended. Anyone who wants to go into that can check the previous post.

For my debut GTS post, I’ve chosen the larkspur in our rock garden.

A collaborative effort between my husband and me, this garden is one of the most successful in the yard. It needs almost no care,

and despite growing under a pine (several pines) it’s lush and lovely. I just wish it faced the lawn instead of the alley.

The larkspur, the west’s native delphinium, eschews the excessive height of its cultivated cousins. Where those cousins have a pale, spring-like foliage, the larkspur’s deeply cut leaves are quite dark, as though a touch of the hue from its deep purple flowers had passed into them. Not needing to produce masses of foliage and a huge stem, the larkspur blooms in late spring to early summer, like so many Rocky Mountain wildflowers.

Each year, this plant produces more flower sprays. It’s been in bloom now for several weeks, and while some of the blooms are still perfect, some flowers are starting to go to seed,

and some have already formed the three-pronged pods that will later separate at the tips, dry, and burst.

We see larkspur in meadows and clearings beside hiking paths in Yellowstone and throughout the mountains near Bozeman, its intense purple beautiful against the green of grass or the brown of pine needles. I cannot believe one has deigned to grace my garden with its loveliness.