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.

No Pain, No Gain

The end of winter is signalled by the annual pruning of the Cornus "Midwinter Fire". This is grown for its bright orange and red stems which glow in the winter sunshine. To get coloured stems next year, it has to be cut down to a short stump each spring.

This drastic treatment also keeps the shrub small enough for the space, and allows me to get behind it to prune the yew and the ivy.

I am adding more red, orange and yellow plants to the border on the left of the kitchen door. This used to have a lot of herbs in it, but over time some of the herbs have died off, and there are gaps which need filling. I bought some achillea "Terracotta" and two oriental poppies "Beauty of Livermere" I've tried both of these before, in different parts of the garden, but they have always been defeated by slugs. There are fewer slugs this year so they may have a chance to establish themselves.

I've had this small hemerocallis in a pot for two years but last year it didn't flower well. I hope that by dividing it up and putting the pieces in the border, they will bulk-up and produce more flowers. Here is the original pot:

The second picture shows a section of the plant where I have cut through the roots and the last picture shows the three pieces in the ground.

This week, I had the first cherry blossom of the season - from a small shrub in a pot. This is the Fuji Cherry, "Kojo-no-mai"

The tulips in the pots have put on a growth spurt, and will be producing flowers soon. This view of the garden shows how green it is beginning to look, after a winter of looking very bare.

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.

Ever the Optimist

Another round of optimistic seed-sowing today. I've tried sunflowers many times - from seed, from small plants and from larger pants in pots. I usually go for a smaller, pretty variety, but each time the plants have been entirely devoured by slugs which is very annoying. I decided to have another go this year - with a variety called "Titan" which is supposed to be very tall and strong.  I also sowed some more sweet peas - a large-flowered variety which was free with Gardeners' World magazine, and some nasturtiums - Empress of India - which I found in my spare seed box. I don't know how old the nasturtium seeds were but they were firm and plump, so I thought I'd give them a go. I hope the small amount of mould on the outside of the seeds isn't a problem.

 

These seeds were all placed into the mini-greenhouse outside. I sowed two other seeds in my heated propagator - some Eryngium leavenworthii - a type of sea holly, and Nicotiana Lime Green. The propagator is kept on my kitchen windowsill. 

 

(The round thing in the picture is the plug of the propagator - to remind me that the nicotiana is at the plug end of the propagator)

I will let you know how all these seeds work out - but don't hold your breath - I don't have a good record with seeds.

Also today, I planted out some plants grown in pots. I planted three pyracantha "Orange Glow" along the ugly wall at the end of the garden. Hopefully, these will grow into a dense evergreen thorny hedge, with white flowers and orange berries to feed the birds in winter. The soil here is quite poor, so for the first time ever, I used some of my home-made compost to improve the soil in the planting area. 

This afternoon, I went out to buy some lavenders to replace the lavender hedge. I didn't find them, but I did find some lovely plants which I bought on impulse.

I've bought fennel and pulmonaria before only to have them murdered by slugs. These are quite big plants grown in "hairy" pots, which you can plant direct into the ground without disturbing the roots, which grow through the pots into the soil. This makes them stronger than other plants (and you don't have to dispose of a plastic pot, so it's more environmentally friendly). Hopefully they will succeed where other pants have failed. The fennel is in the left hand bed, next to the rose arch. The pulmonaria are in the front garden. I used my home-made compost again to improve the soil.

The two plants at the back are more hellebore oriental hybrids. They are both quite different to the others I have. I will probably grow them in pots on the patio.

The plants in the front garden, which is planted for spring, are looking really good now. The Daphne Bholua "Jacqueline Postill" is fully out, and the scent carries for several yards down the street. I am often asked what it is by passers by. It is next to the hedgehog holly, ilex  aquifolium ferox argentea which is very prickly and variegated gold and green.

 

I have one flower on the camellia in the front garden - there are many more buds. I hope the frost is over so that they can open safely. This is Camellia "Jury's Yellow" Which is more cream than yellow but very pretty.

Sowing seeds and cutting the grass

According to Gardener's World, now is the time to sow sweet peas. I don't have much success with seeds as a rule - I'm not good at looking after them and the slugs enjoy them a little too much - but I have managed sweet peas in the past, so thought I'd try them again.

The first task was to clear out and re-cover my miniature greenhouse. This is next to the shed at the end of the garden. The old cover had split across the top. I use the greenhouse to protect things from wind, rain and squirrels. The front panel can be opened with two zips to allow access.

The sweet peas I sowed are an old-fashioned variety called "Cupani" which are small and highly scented. I have been saving some loo roll centres which can be used as pots to provide a deep root run, which sweet peas like. I put six together in a big pot for support and filled the whole thing with compost.

I only had enough John Innes seed compost for one pot so I filled the other with Westland multi-purpose peat-free compost. I put one seed in each tube about an inch deep. It will be interesting to see if there is any difference between the types of compost. I sowed the left over seeds in four small pots and put them all in the mini greenhouse.

 

I don't have a lawn, so am spared the drudge of maintaining one. I do have a number of ornamental grasses, both in the ground and in pots, and they die off in the winter, leaving dead stems, which are quite ornamental in the winter sunshine, or covered in frost. At this time of year, they begin to re-grow from the base, so it is best to cut the dead stems off and tidy them up. This is a selection of my grasses in pots. They look a bit sad now, but will look better once they start to re-grow.