What a difference a fortnight makes!

Today, I went out into the garden to plant some plants I had purchased  last week "to fill the gaps" The only trouble was, nature had already done the job and some of the gaps no longer existed! April is always a fast-growing month, particularly this year, with the cold snap being followed by sustained fine weather. This is a view of the garden today - showing how much fuller the garden is now.

I managed to fit my new purchases in somehow. I put some orange Imperial Fritillaries at the back of the left-hand border, near the bright yellow euphorbia. They match the orange in the tulips and the euphorbia "Dixter" which is also in flower, and the orange in the emerging Japanese maple tree leaves. I am aiming for a bright spring garden, full of yellows and oranges which look good in the spring sunshine. These are the fritillaries in their pots before I planted them.

And these are the euphorbia "Dixter"and the maple tree leaves:

I planted a fancy blue anemone nemerosa robinsoniana in the woodland border near the rose arch at the back of the garden

I also did some "editing", moving a verbascum and a sedum which were being swamped by their neighbours, and some weeding.

My sweet peas, sown in March, had grown quite well, although the ones in the John Innes seed compost did better than the ones in the Westland multi-purpose peat-free compost. I decided to plant them out in the left-hand border, using some home-made compost to improve the soil first. These are the seedlings in the pots:

And these are the seedlings in the ground (with the new fritillaries on the right of the picture):

There were a couple of surprises at the bottom of my garden in the shady corner under the trees. The first was the discovery of a clematis growing strongly next to the apple tree. It had started life in a large pot but didn't thrive, so I planted it next to the apple tree, hoping it would grow through the tree. It struggled for two years, never flowered, and I thought it had died. In fact it has started to re-grow, so I have put in some bamboo sticks to support it and guide it towards the tree.

The other surprise was finding that my New Zealand tree fern was still alive. It is supposed to be tender, and since I didn't wrap it up I feared it would have been killed by all the frost and snow in January. I had a good look at it today, and found new fronds curled up ready to grow. They are covered on hairs.

Two of my clematis are in flower now - not as many flowers as I expected, but at least they have survived their first year in the ground. This is clematis alpina "Columbine"

And this is clematis alpina "Helsingborg" (with a nice view of the tulips behind) The colour is a deeper purple than the picture shows.

I'll finish with some tulip pictures:

Spring Sunshine

After a cool Easter weekend, there has been a very sunny and warm few days, which has brought the bees out to feed on the spring flowers. It was warm enough in the sunshine to sit out and read a book - which is what I did yesterday for the first time this year.

Today I did a little tidying - deadheading the daffodils, removing some dandelions and other weeds, and general pottering. I also watered the pots with a liquid seaweed feed.

The warmth has brought out the flowers which were in bud last week, and the garden is beginning to look very pretty.

This tulip is particularly pretty. It is a little ahead of the other tulips of the same type.

The snakes head fritillaries are now fully out as are the little woodland anemones (anemone nemerosa)

I planted this Euphorbia Polychroma last year and it has established well at the back of the border. I love the acid yellow/green flowers.

Easter Break

I didn't do any gardening over Easter - I was away visiting family. When I came back I did a tour of the garden to see what was going on. Here are some of the highlights:

The first of my tulips is showing colour - a lovely bright red.

My other tulips are not far behind, and should all come out over the next few days if the weather is nice.

This is a small flowering cherry - Prunus Kuriliensis "Brilliant", with a birch tree above it. The cherry is growing in a large pot at the end of the garden.

The rose pruning I did earlier in the year is beginning to produce results. Here is one of the rose branches which I trained horizontally against the fence. You can see how this has encouraged upright shoots along the length of the branch and these should produce flowers.

These are the sweet peas which I sowed a few weeks back. I am quite pleased at how well they have grown.

The sunflowers have also germinated, but I think the slugs have had a go at them. The mouldy nasturtium seeds have (unsurprisingly) not germinated. In my heated propagator, the nicotiana and eryngium seeds have also sprouted. I'm quite pleased with the seeds so far but I'm not good at getting seeds to flowering size - that's the tricky bit.

I've got a number of flowers in bud. This is a snakes-head fritillary - I created a boggy patch especially to grow these. I'm glad they are surviving.

This is a clematis which is growing over my rose arch.

These are erythronium "Pagoda" which thrive in my front garden in a very dry shady spot.

This is a shoot from one of the pink lilium cerneum bulbs I planted in a pot in February. I like the spiky pinky-orange shoots.  Two of the bulbs have come up, but I think a squirrel may have stolen the third one - I found a hole where the bulb should be when I went out this evening.

This is Angelica Archangelica. Last week, it looked dead and a bit sad. This week it has trebled in size. It is a biennial which failed to flower last year so this is its third and probably final year. It should grow quickly to around four feet tall, and flower in May, before setting seed and dying. I love plants that do dramatic things.