My five favorites are Sweet Purple Violets, Yellow Daffodils, Apple Tree blossoms (those count, right?)Narcissus Actaea (pheasant eye) and old-fashioned, smell good, white, lavender through dark purple, lilacs.

Years ago, some of these may not have made my list of top five, but they all bloom on the farm and were planted by my husband's grandmother. In the past several years, they've come to represent spring to me.

The yellow daffodils are everywhere. They've naturalized over the past 50+ years and there must be literally hundreds.

The lilacs form an 80' long and probably at least 12' tall hedge along the old farmhouse, with a few other large shrubs in other areas. They all bloom at the same time and they're in white, every shade of lavender and really dark purple.

The apple tree is in front of the lilac hedge and magnificent when they bloom at the same time. The entire tree is covered with white flowers for at least a week, humming with bumblebees, before the petals begin to flutter slowly to the ground.

The white narcissus are more rare, found only in a few small clumps, which make them even more valuable to us. They're so delicate and beautiful that MY grandmother loved them when she was alive.

The sweet violets have a great fragrance and bloom in small clusters under the lilacs, along a path by the sheds and here and there in shady spaces. I've put some in the fairy garden, around the bird bath, where the little girls can enjoy them.

Please share your five favorite spring flowers and what makes them special to you :)

Also iris. We have some in the woods where an old house used to be and it is so delightful to see them blooming 'naturalized'.

#3 would be the crossvine. It blooms at the same time the hummingbirds migrate and I know that I can start feeding the hummers when the crossvine blooms.

Since you gave a tree, I'll include one: crabapples. I have several here and love their blooms.

And lastly, the lotus. Such an exotic and exquisite bloom. The flower slowly grows up its large stem until it finally opens. Such anticipation! I love seeing the first bloom on my lotus.

This makes me yearn for spring!

I love them because they do so well for me and provide such wonderful color when the landscape is dull and dreary. And there are so many kinds to try out!

Well, Tulips arn't my only choice now that I think of it. I also love Chinodoxa (Glory of the Snow), Hyacinthoides hispanica (Spanish Bluebells), Crocus, and Muscari (Grape Hyacinth, which smells like grape soda to me, lol).

Haven't had any luck with the Daffs. My neighbor has an amazing patch of them, so I know they grow well here. I think I may disturb the bulbs too much the rest of the year when I dig in the beds. Not much luck with Hyacinths either. I adore the scent of them (every year I end up catching a whiff of their fragrance and go around the yard sniffing like a bloodhound and trying to figure out what it is from before I remember the Hyacinths, lol!), but they always seem to get smaller and smaller after the first year. Last year one of my older bulbs managed to crank out a grand total of two bells on a stem! Lol.
CMK

Annette

k

Tree peonies (herbaceous too!)
Double-bloodroot
Dwarf flowering almond
Hellebores
Deutzia

Daffodils will always be a favorite, and remind me of dd - we have pics of her in front of them the day we brought her home from the hospital.

The others are harder to pin down, and changeable.

Irises, peonies, tulips, lilacs...and a few other things!

I'm getting ready for spring, but I don't think spring is ready for us...

Our spring is very late here in zone 3 but my first perennial to bloom (probably late April, early May) is always Leopard's Bane, then Siberian Iris, and Johnny Jump-ups, by then I usually have a few annuals in the ground for color, then in June the early summer perennials (bleeding heart, bearded iris, lady's mantle, peony, mountain bluet, columbine, Jacob's ladder, poppies, etc. finally start blooming. So my favs are *anything* that's blooming! ;-) Almost all hardy plants are favs here.

I really should plant some bulbs and may in my new garden altho have a lot of squirrels and chipmunks so that eliminates a few even if I go to the trouble of covering them with mesh.

I have a few lilac bushes which have never flowered as the deer always "prune" them but we put mesh around them last fall so hopefully I'll see some blooms either this year or next depending on how much they were "pruned" last summer. *rolleyes* I love watching the deer but they are not my friends when they jump the fence into my house yard and eat my plants.

I'm gonna cheat :)
old-fashioned bleeding heart
sweet violet
saucer magnolia
cherry trees

>:-<