Category Archives: spring

at last…

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P1210770…spring has sprung!

P1210766Things are finally happening in the garden: the Amelanchier is now in bloom, the first of the tulips is up — a hanger-on from last year, and the only one in the pot to put in a repeat performance (I thought it worth leaving them by way of an experiment).

P1210759The little clump of violets — which were a freebie, left in a bag attached to a neighbour’s railings — has bulked up and is twice the size it was last year. I am hoping that it will form a mat around the base of the rose, William Lobb, with which it shares bed.

P1210750

P1210748And in the pop-up green house the rocket and sweet pea seedlings are racing away, with runner beans, climbing courgettes (more of which in a later post), cobea scandens (alba and purple varieties), and coriander not far behind.

I’m sorry posts have been rather thin on the ground. I’ve been tied up with the project I mentioned in an earlier post, and on top of that the Bristol 10K is looming. I have become a slave to running and the 5th of May feels very, very close. The time I had in mind for the race (there is no escaping the fact that it is a race, it seems) is, I fear, woefully optimistic. As with the climbing courgettes, more on running anon.

pick of the week

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Having just picked these, I find it hard to believe that this time last year there was nothing worth picking in the garden at all. In fact it wasn’t until mid-April that I was
able to start planting the garden that exists today.

The house is filled with the scent of Hyacinths again, this time Hyacinth ‘Woodstock’.

It’s an over the top bunch, but I like the way that between them, the  Narcissi and stocky Hyacinths manage to prop up the Hellebores. There will be more of all of these plants in the garden next year – they are all on my order list for the Autumn.

The blossom on the first of my four Amelanchiers has finally opened – a cloud of beautiful little white stars. By the end of next week, if not before, all four should be covered in blossom, creating a frothy white screen across the front of the terrace.

NB The tulips in the last post and in this bunch are Princess Irene, I think. Also, I noticed that my last post read as though I had planted my bulbs in February, when what I really meant was that the fear of finding them still in the shed in Feb meant that for the first time I managed to get them all in the ground before Christmas. Glad I cleared that up! 

spring

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They’ve taken their time, and there have been moments when I thought that perhaps I’d killed them, but at long last my Hyacinths (Woodstock) have burst into bloom. I moved the box this morning in order to block one of Sybil’s routes around the garden as she was crushing the new shoots of various plants around the base of R. Veilchenblau.

I’ve never grown Hyacinths outside and I didn’t really know what to do with them, or even where to put them. I thought they might look odd in what I knew would be quite sparse-looking beds, but stranger still in ones and twos in little flower pots – though I think I was wrong about that. So in late November, I think, in slight desperation, I turfed some mint out of this old wine box and shoved the bulbs in. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. This is something to repeat next year, but with more wine boxes.

Elsewhere in the garden other containers are doing their spring thing. I can’t remember for certain what these are, Narcissus Bridal Crown maybe, I need to trawl through receipts and orders to check. It smells delicious and I’d like more for next year.

Out on the street everything seems to be blooming. Spring has sprung and someone has pulled a lever and switched all the Forsythia and Magnolias on. They look quite spectacular – a grudging admission in relation to Forsythia, which is a plant I could happily live without seeing ever again. The Magnolias on the other hand I adore.

I often wonder whether a Magnolia would be happy in the basement area that passes for our front garden. At the moment it looks like a junk yard: a heap of old bikes and a tragic-looking rabbit hutch (vast black and white rabbit long gone). But I have plans.

getting to grips with the garden

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I spent a couple of  hours on Saturday morning weeding, tweaking, cutting back, digging up, dividing, and generally getting to grips with the plants that looked in need of attention. I love unplanned gardening sessions like this, ones that happen because the sun is shining and for once, nothing else is demanding my attention.

This sort of  slightly unfocused pottering is exactly what I need in order to reconnect with the garden when I’ve been feeling a little gloomy about it. As I work, I invariably spot things I’ve forgotten about, such as the little clump of violets above. Someone tied several bags of them to their railings last spring, with a note saying “take me”, so I took some and stuffed them in the corner of a bed without really thinking – I don’t even think I knew what colour they would be.

And I also find myself delighted by the sight of new shoots on plants I feel sure I’ve butchered or neglected – Clematis ‘Madame Julia Correvon‘, pruned to within an inch of her life, or so it seemed, just a month ago, is already on her way up the back fence. And C. Texensis Buckland Beauty, is showing signs of life too. Above is how it looked in July last year, climbing up through the Macleaya. I moved it at the weekend, so this year it will ramble through R. Veilchenblau instead.

Working in this way seems to free the mind and, more often than not, I find that by the end of the morning I have had at least one eureka moment regarding some aspect of the garden. And so it was on Saturday. Halfway through what was meant to be just a two hour session, a rather hazy idea that I’d been kicking about for some time now, came sharply into focus: wouldn’t it look wonderful, I thought, if I planted a row of Amelanchiers in front of the top level of the terracing.

Two hours later I was at Brackenwood Plant Centre wrestling four seven foot trees into the back of the car, along with a tray of fabulous Hellebores which had called out to me as queued to pay. You know how it is with garden centres. I dithered for a moment, winced at the price tag and then I had another eureka moment (aka clever bit of justification for overspend): if I planted them in and around my tulips, the razor-edged leaves of these big, well-established plants, would keep Sybil at bay.

It’s hard to take an interesting or informative photograph of a tree that is still pretty much only one step on from being a twig. But there are lots of buds, so photos of blossomy loveliness will follow soon. Hellebore photos even sooner.

crocus carpet

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The crocuses in the park started to appear in January. Now they are reaching their peak. They are like mushrooms in the way they seem to pop up over night – one morning this bank was just a slope of dewey grass, the next it was carpeted with purple, yellow and white goblet-shaped flowers. On slightly misty mornings, when there is a hint of sunshine and the promise of mild weather, they can convince me that spring is here and summer is just around the corner. But it’s only March so I mustn’t get too excited.

I’ve never grown crocuses (though I have been tempted), because I think they look their best growing in grass, particularly under trees and when they are allowed to encroach gently along the edges of large areas of lawn. Our current garden has just one tree and no grass at all, so I get my crocus fix in St Andrew’s Park when I walk the dog.

signs of life

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The garden is coming to life, and although there is still far too much bare earth for my liking, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that a transformation is underway.

The new Clematis armandii is in flower and, although quite small (and rather early), what little perfume it offers is a treat. Two years ago we had to remove its enormous predecessor and, although essential building work left no alternative, it felt criminal to be cutting down such a fabulous plant. Each year in late March or early April its scent would waft through the windows on every floor of the house. Last year, although in the throws of reinvigorating our garden, I felt as though I had completely messed up – first because we had to cut down the armandii and second, because I managed to kill a lilac. Both were plants I valued for their flowers, their perfume and their role as seasonal heralds. So it’s good to see the armandii back, now I need to replace the lilac.

Every morning I spot more bulbs emerging. Some, such as Iris ‘Katherine Hodgkin’, below, I’ve been awaiting eagerly, checking progress daily and photographing obsessively.

Others I can’t even remember planting…

These mystery bulbs, peeping out from a tangle of old Paperwhite leaves, look a lot like tulips, with a few alliums thrown in for good measure. But when did I put them in this pot, carefully layered beneath the Paperwhites? I’m impressed that I did it – because it’s clear that it was me, it couldn’t have been anyone else – but I have absolutely no recollection of having been so organised. It will be interesting to see what comes up.

These irises – Iris reticulata ‘Cantab’- have been popping up in various places around the garden, and now that they have appeared I can see better where I should have planted them. I can also see that I really need to think about more ground cover.

I was looking enviously at a mass of snowdrops in a local front garden this morning, trying to work out why they looked so lovely (aside from the obvious fact that snowdrops are lovely). Gradually it dawned on me that it was because they were emerging from a carpet of dull bronze leaf litter, rather than dull, in the boring sense, bare earth. Below are the lovely Iris reticulata Springtime which are also in the wrong place.

Elsewhere in the garden I can see that my tulips are pushing up through the soil, and some show signs of having been damaged by Sybil during her high speed nocturnal circuits. I have started erecting temporary barriers fashioned from bamboo canes and lengths of netting, chicken wire and green mesh. They look ridiculous and really unsightly, but I can’t think of any other way to ensure that my precious tulips aren’t trampled. Once the   leaves are up a good few inches, I think I’ll be able to take the barriers down. At least I hope so. If not, my garden will look like a weird zoo for plants. Not the plan at all.

And last, but by no means least, Joe has managed a temporary fix for the computer.

gardening in january part I

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I always find it hard to connect with the garden at this time of year. Exciting catalogues keep plopping onto the doormat, but it’s difficult to remember how the garden looked at the height of summer. The sight of the bare earth, the hideous temporary fix for the path, and the hazel tree that still, to my mind, needs to go, convinces me that it’s a hopeless case. I’m easily persuaded that there’s no point investing more money in what is obviously a lost cause. Autumn’s hangers on, whose presence I valued in late November and December, are now looking increasingly scraggly and give the garden an abandoned air. All in all it’s not very enticing.

But there are signs of life here and there: new shoots pushing valiantly through the mud, fresh buds on the shrubs and the early flowering clematis, so I am forcing myself to draw up plans and make lists. And trawling through the photographs I took last year shows me that even if my plans are pretty minimal, the garden will do what all gardens do, even half abandoned ones: it will grow, bulk up, fill out, knit together and at times look very lovely indeed. At least that’s what it did last year, as you’ll see from the photographs below, the first of which was taken at the end of April, and the last in mid-September.

I think it’s vital to keep a photographic record of a garden’s progress. If nothing else, the  photographs will give you the impetus to get out in the worst weather to tackle boring jobs such as cutting back the Buddleja, or securing dangling vine wires, before it’s too late. It is also satisfying to see how far you’ve come and how much the garden has changed. And, possibly more important than all of that, photographs serve as a valuable reminder that gardens are in a constant state of flux – they change with the seasons, appearing fresh and newly minted one day, jungly and abundant the next, and then suddenly, or so it can seem, it’s all gone to seed and the show is over for another year.

I can’t quite bring myself to post the photograph of the garden as it is today – too grim. But I will, when I write part II of this post – some time next week, I hope. For now I am going back to my catalogues and my rather long wanted list.

green shoots

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Although they sometimes make me think of witches’ fingers as they thrust, Carrie-like, out of the ground, I never get over the thrill of seeing the first signs of life in my bulbs.

This year I finally got round to using my many sugar bowls, jugs and old jars as planters – something I have been meaning to do for years, but one way and another I always miss the moment. In fact this year, although I managed to order the hyacinth bulbs, I forgot to get any hyacinth vases, the ones which suspend the bulb above the water. In the end I discovered that peanut butter jars are the perfect substitute – if you squint a bit at the top picture you can see them in the background.

I have never forced hyacinths in this way before, and the rapidity with which the pale shoots turn intensely green once they are brought into the light is quite startling. There was another surprise too: several slugs managed to eat their way into the bulbs, and out the other side into the water below. So in amongst the sculptural swirl of pale roots, dead slugs lurk like miniature sea monsters. I can’t quite bring myself to photograph them, though I probably should – for posterity, if nothing else. Of course the girls and their friends are fascinated by them, it’s like having a ghoulish fish tank on kitchen table: tap on the vase and the dead bodies bob about.

But these are my favourites – a little dish of grape hyacinths (Muscari) given to me by my friend Sarah who knows I love old china as much as I love plants. Thank you Sarah!

bulbs and blame

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Having taken a bit of break from any form of gardening beyond picking a daily bunch of whatever my scissors are drawn to, the arrival of a large box from bulb specialists, Peter Nyssen Ltd, has reminded me, rather forcefully, that there is still work to be done. And going on the weight of the box alone, it’s rather a lot of work. Planting bulbs is not one of my favourite tasks. On a cold day, with a fine Bristol drizzle, it can feel like a penance. And because the rewards for your labour are many months away, the temptation to throw in the towel (or better still, the trowel), and stomp inside for a more instant form of gratification (cup of tea, slice of cake, good book), is hard to fight.

But having opened the box and reacquainted myself with my order, I am beginning to feel quite excited. I am particularly pleased by the thought of the all the alliums I’ll have in May and June. I need to remind myself exactly what each variety looks like, as in my haste to get the order placed, I failed to make a note of where I was planning to put them. And although some of the bulbs I’ve ordered were a little random, the majority were chosen with a view to certain pairings: a small, blue form of allium to go around the base of R. William Lobb, for instance. Apparently planting members of the onion family around roses is meant to help guard against black spot and, according to some, increase the perfume of the flowers. I think the pom-pom heads of the allium will look lovely with the big, blowsy blue-pink flowers of the rose. That’s if they are out at the same time.

I have also ordered rather a lot of tulips. This feels close to a kind of madness. Where the hell am I going to put them? What crazy scheme did I have in mind, back in August when I pressed the proceed to check out button!? I think I was planning a big bed at the bottom of the garden filled with a mass of dark reds, inky-black purples, with the occasional flash of orange or magenta. But then I have so many little garden notes scribbled here and there on scraps of paper, I never really know which one is most current. I am clearly quite delusional about the actual size of our garden. I have ordered with a stately home in mind, when outside all I have is a sunny postage stamp. I think, in the nicest possibly way, I must lay the blame on Jane Brocket, whose annual tulip-fest is something I start thinking about in early March (this is when I usually discover some mouldy bulbs at the back of the shed, and realise that yet again I’ve failed on my tulip quest). This year, if you follow this link and scroll through post after post of spectacular blooms, you will see that she has very kindly detailed all the bulbs. I made a lot of notes. To be fair,  Nyssen can take some of the blame too – their website has improved immeasurably over the years, and now you can see images of all their stock. This is fatal. How easy it is to fill that bottomless, virtual shopping basket. Many years ago, when we lived in Peckham, they seemed to have images of only half their stock, and placing an order involved many hours poring over my RHS encyclopedia of plants and flowers. My orders were far smaller, though the garden was at least twice the size of our current one.

Here, in its orange net, is the purchase I am most excited about: Eremurus Cleopatra, or the foxtail lily. I’ve grown these before, back in Peckham, with limited success. I think I got them in late, and then had second thoughts about where I’d put them, and so moved them. Not the best start – but they did appear the following summer, though perhaps a little shorter and less stately than I had hoped. It will be interesting to see how they look here. I’ve also got some iris, a few hyacinths for indoors, and, completely new to me, 50 Sparaxis bulbs – a ridiculous quantity, but I have two identical planters which I think will look good massed with these slightly unreal-looking flowers.

pushing up the daisies

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This time last week I spotted my neighbour’s lawn looking magical, scattered with daisies and little white violets. I decided to photograph it once I’d walked the dog, made a cake, vacuumed a few rooms etc etc… But clearly my neighbour was also working through a domestic to do list, and by the time I reached ‘photograph daisies’ on mine, he’d already ticked off ‘mow lawn’ on his. But today they were all up again and this time I got to them before Mick did!