Six on Saturday: My Garden in Mid April
Spring has well and truly sprung over the past few weeks, and despite some seriously chilly winds, the garden is looking very colourful. And what could be better than a bit of glorious sunshine on a Bank Holiday weekend. Perfect timing to spend a few happy hours in the garden.
If March was all about the daffodils, then April is most definitely about the tulips. I’ve posted so many tulip pictures on Twitter I won’t dwell on these too much, but I have a mystery orange tulip i’m trying to identify. I’m pretty sure I didn’t buy this intentionally as it’s planted in my back garden and I don’t ‘do’ orange in the back garden. Any ideas what it can be? I was thinking maybe Lambarda?
One of the highlights of April so far has been the appearance of a few butterflies in the garden. A pair of Peacocks seemed very taken with the yellow wallflowers and I hope this is a sign of things to come. I’ve got plenty of bee and butterfly friendly plants and as I expanded the borders at the end of last summer there’s room for one or two more. I’ve already picked up a few new perennials from Bluebell Cottage Garden and Arley Hall Nursery so this could be weekend to get planting.
But back to the spring borders and a lovely mix of blues and yellows (with a little bit of pink in the background). As this is one of the borders I widened, I’ve let the forget-me-nots run riot this year to ensure that I had plenty of spring colour. I think they look great with the pale yellow of Narcissi ‘W P Milner’, and the foliage of the Philadelphus coronarius ‘Aureus’ provides am incredibly bright backdrop in the shady corner.
The Climbing Hydrangea in the foreground is full of flower buds and I acquired a second one of these at the Arley Spring Plant Fair last weekend. The new one is a variety called ‘Silver Lining’ which hasn’t been around that long and has beautiful variegated foliage.
Climbing through and over this Hydrangea petiolaris is my Clematis Montana. Every winter I wonder whether to keep it as it looks so straggly and untidy without flowers or leaves. But then the buds start to appear and my resolve is weakened.
And for my final plant here’s, the lovely Lamprocapnos spectablis….. better known as Dicentra or Bleeding Heart. I’m growing it in a container temporarily just to make it easier to take photos of the beautiful heart shaped flowers. I seem to be planting more and more in containers these days which means more onerous watering duties but enables me to cram more plants into the garden.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my Six on Saturday. For more ‘sixes’ take a look at the site of the creator of this weekly collection. His Six on Saturday is always an excellent read.
