Today Kris Campbell-Defoe from New Paltz, New York (in the Hudson Valley region) is sharing some garden beauties. I love these photos because they focus in on small details, finding the beauty in little things I often overlook. They make me want to walk around my garden and take a closer look at each of my plants!

A delicate spray of blue from brunnera (Brunnera macrophylla, Zones 3–8). Many people grow brunnera primarily for the large, heart-shaped leaves that are often marked with silver patterns, but the delicate blue flowers are pretty great as well. Each individual flower is very small, but they can be produced in enormous clouds when the plants are happy.

A hosta (Hosta hybrid, Zones 3–8) leaf in the rain. The waxy leaf surface that gives some hostas a blueish color is also water repellent, so that rain gets transformed into these beautiful little jewels clustering on the leaf.

Blue flowers of a pulmonaria (Pulmonaria hybrid, Zones 5–8). It is easy to see that this and brunnera are in the same family. Like brunnera, pulmonaria can have silver-patterned foliage and lots of small blue (or sometimes pink or purple, depending on the variety) flowers early in the spring.

An ornamental onion (Allium, Zones 3–8) flower head is just beginning to push open, with the mass of tiny purple flowers ready to push open and form a round head of bloom. So beautiful—and ornamental onions have an oniony taste to their leaves and bulbs, which means deer and most other pests leave them alone.

A different kind of beauty is produced by some very happy potato plants growing away, full of the promise of a big harvest later in the year.

And finally, a wonderful photo of the sky, with a beautiful texture of clouds over the hills of the Hudson Valley region.

Have a garden you’d like to share?

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