Lavender and Frogspawn

Having failed to find Lavender last week, I tried another garden centre yesterday and had better success. I found some nice healthy looking small "Munstead" Lavenders. These should be slightly shorter than the ones I am replacing (which were "Hidcote").

I bought ten in total - five each side of the path - which gives spacing of about two feet apart. This is further apart than my previous hedge. I think I planted the last one too closely so I hope this is an improvement. I planted them with a good helping of home-made compost, to encourage them to root. You can just see the plants in these two pictures. You can see the alliums coming through as well.

One of the hardy geraniums in the border had spread to be too close to the lavenders. I dug out the side of plant which was not wanted and divided it into several pieces, each piece with a root and some leaves. I planted these in the raised bed at the end of the garden which has the camellia in it. This is a difficult bed to plant because it is dry and shady, so it is worth trying some "free" plants in it.

The recent mild weather has brought on the plants, and there are lots of small seeds germinating in the flower beds. I quite like self-seeded plants because they add informality to the planting. There are plenty of aquilegia, welsh poppies and garlic chives coming through, and I think there may be some fennel seeds (which will probably be eaten by the slugs soon) as well as lots of unidentified seedlings. I will wait until these are identifiable before doing anything to remove them. You never know what might appear.

The effect of the mild weather can be seen in these two pictures of my "Jetfire" daffodils. The first was taken last week, and shows the flowers just beginning to show colour.

This one was taken yesterday, with all the daffodils now fully open and looking at their best.

Mild weather has also inspired the frogs in my pond to mate and there is now plenty of frogspawn about. I am hopeful that these will now develop into lots of frogs to clear up my slugs for me.