April highlights

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“April brings the primrose sweet, Scatters daisies at our feet.”  Sara Coleridge “The Months”

For a number of years I have considered that April has always seemed to have the best weather of the year being warm and reasonably dry but not too hot. However, this year we have had a very wet April which followed a very wet March. Fitting in mowing the lawn has been very challenging.

Primroses and daffodils have given way to tulips as the month has progressed with a brief showing of Pulsatilla vulgaris, the pasqueflower. The tulips have been planted in my new raised bed area which I had hoped would make them too high for the deer to eat them and thankfully that has proved to be true. In the vibrant beds I planted Red Georgette and Foxy Foxtrot, in the cool beds I planted World Friendship and in the white tones I planted Queen of the Night and Honeymoon.

Lots of other blue and white bulbs in the garden provide a less flamboyant display, including Scilla (chionodoxa) forbesii Blue Giant, Scilla siberica Spring Beauty, Anemone blanda blue, Anemone blanda White Splendour and Ipheion Alberto Castillo.

In the woodland garden Erythoronium dens-canis and Dicentra / Lamprocapnos are the stars of the month. The bulb of Erythoronium is oblong and resembles a dog’s tooth, hence the common name of dog’s tooth violet and the name dens-canis, which translates as dog’s tooth. Formerly known as Dicentra spectabilis (which is the name that I know it as),  Lamprocapnos spectabilis has a number of common names including bleeding heart and lady-in-a-bath.

Spring flowering shrubs include Amelanchier lamarckii, Ribes sanguineum Pulborough Scarlet, Chaenomeles japonica, Forsythia intermedia Minigold and Prunus incisa Kojo-no-mai. Kojo-no-mai means ‘flight of the butterflies’.

Bergenias, known as elephant’s ears, are very easy to grow and provide all year round interest and I like planting them alongside ferns and epimediums for the contrasting leaf textures. Pulmonaria prefer the more moist areas of the garden.

Exochorda macrantha The Bride is a great shrub for brightening up a shaded area when it is smothered in white flowers along its arching branches.

I have a number of dwarf azaleas throughout the garden. I have introduced a number of them into the scree bed. The scree bed is slowly changing its character. Originally I had planned for it to have mainly alpine plants and I incorporated a lot of stones to help improve the drainage. However, over time it has proved that it just isn’t working out and the soil still becomes very wet in winter. So I am slowly replacing the alpines (moving them to other parts of the garden) with dwarf azaleas, conifers and other small shrubs.

Some of the perennials on my new raised beds are starting to point on a show. Lathyrus vernus, the spring pea, is a particular favourite of mine – it is a non-climbing perennial sweet pea which a beautiful bushy habit. Euphorbia martini has looked stunning all through the winter. Saxifraga arendsii form mats with a moss-like appearance with either white, pink or red flowers. Iberis has a common name of candytuft and in the language of flowers it symbolises indifference!

My first attempt at growing potatoes
May highlights

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