Nectar Green-Thumbs: 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"