Garden Delights

The new gardening year starts in January and February from a nice comfortable armchair by the fire. This is the time to start looking at seed and plant catalogues and videos to get ideas for your summer garden and flowering tubs and baskets. This, after all, is usually the quiet time of year in the garden, (sometimes due to never ending rain, as in 2001).  I always keep notes of which plants were successful the previous year and where they were situated, so hopefully I can incorporate these with new ones and create successful displays.

Of course if you are a very organised gardener, then the fruits of your autumn planting will be pushing up through the compost in the tubs you have prepared ready for spring.  This I think is a lovely time of year with the new growth starting to burst forth and remind us that warmer times are  just round the corner.

I’ve never had much luck with snowdrops. Over the years I have planted hundreds of bulbs but I still only ever manage to get a handful flowering. I think the slugs must have eaten the rest! However, I am more successful with Crocuses, primulas and primroses and even a few cowslips in the shadow of a tall hedge.

During some milder days in early February our frogs were back in the pond, mating.  A sure sign that spring is on the way.  Soon their spawn will lie in gelatinous masses round the shallows, providing free meals for our fish.

One of the many roses I inherited from my Mother is Mr. Bluebird.  This is always the first rose to flower in my garden, usually around March and then repeats later in the summer. Although an old fashion container rose and now superseded by more vigorous and disease resistance types, it does have a charm of it’s own with its unusual colour and it’s early flowering.

May is a lovely time of the year, with the first of the warm sunny days which bring out the clematis Montana Rubens which clambers over the fence next to our french door. This really is a sight for sore eyes with it’s thousands of beautiful pink flowers covering the fence on both our side and our neighbours. This is complemented with tubs of bulbs and flowering azaleas and the first flowers on the Baby Masquerade rose.  If the weather permits there is nothing nicer than sitting on the patio for a coffee, or a Barbecue, surrounded by all these blooms.

geranium "ibericum"

clematis "Hagley Hybrid"

lilium "limelight"