Spring Flowers, O Spring Flower, Won’t you last a little longer…

We all love Spring flowers, but the sad reality about all things beautiful is that they are often short-lived, just like joyful moments. While we enjoy our flower patches regardless of their lifespan, we’re always on the lookout for blooms that won't demand too much attention and will last a little longer into the summer. Many of us have a corner in our garden or a green belt outside our homes that is difficult to tend to, but we still want to fill it with flowers. So, is there a way to solve this problem?

The answer, if you ask me, lies in heirloom varieties of Spring flowers. For every plump, royal-looking flower you see at the nursery, there’s a humbler ancestor that may not look as pampered, but is equally colorful—albeit smaller in size. The 'pampered' flowers are actually genetically modified and designed to last for just one season, but they come from plants that have existed in nature forever and are much better at surviving on their own. A great example of this is Verbena.

If you’ve driven down Model Town, Canal Road, or Jail Road (and perhaps other areas) in March or April, you might have noticed purple hues splashed over thin strokes of green in the green belts. If you're a keen observer, you’ll realize that these purple flowers last for quite a while, often lingering until June when most Spring plants have already seeded. This enduring beauty is the heirloom variety of Verbena, the mint-like plant with five to six shades of flowers that look as if they’ve been pulled straight from a Ghibli studio film.

P1 Verbena grows as a ground cover, which means you don’t have to painstakingly make rows like you do for F1 Verbena. Simply mark the boundary, drop the P1 Verbena in, and it will naturally spread across the patch on its own. The flowers of P1 Verbena are smaller and typically a single color compared to the F1 variety, but the color remains vibrant and glossy.

So this Spring, why not give the old little missy Verbena a chance and let her show you her brilliance?