Ah Spring-time, my favourite season! The weather has started to get warmer, the days are getting longer and lighter, the sheep have started lambing and the first flowers are appearing. There's just so much joy when you see the first Daffodils, that pop of yellow against the green grass. Last Autumn I potted up some Daffodils that I got from Sainsbury's, they always do big bags for £3 and I tend to pick up at least one bag every year. I'd love to expand my collection and grow more varieties such as Minnow, Erlicheer and Manly, spreading them throughout the garden. Each year I get more and more ideas of what to do with our outdoor spaces and it's exciting to see them evolve over the years as I add more flowers to our collection.
After the Daffodils we the Tulips which are one of my all time favourite flowers (of which there are a few). This year we only grew Apricot Beauty in pots as our flowerbeds are currently undergoing some TLC but we already have a long list of Tulips we want to purchase in the Autumn for next Spring. These include, Angelique, Vovos, Pink Star, Blue Diamond, Black Knight, La Belle Epoque and White Elegance. My goal is to have loads of pots full of annual Tulips and to have perennial Tulips, that come back every year, in the flower beds.
Also in the Autumn we planted a few crocuses (Pick Wick) in our lawn and they looked so lovely but unfortunately they didn't last very long because we had so much rain in February and March. I also think that I didn't planted enough so I will definitely be adding more this coming Autumn and hopefully I'll get to enjoy them for longer next year.
Like every April, our Magnolia tree burst into flower! I absolutely love having this tree in our garden and I would definitely recommend planting one in your own garden if you have the space. We were lucky enough to have it already in the garden, as a young tree, when we moved in and it grows so much each year. This year we did prune it as some of the branches were crossing and causing damage, hopefully it should be much happier now.
The Aquilegias we bought earlier on in the year are sprouting really well and I've now planted them in the ground, these will be a beautiful deep purple. I bought these, like a lot of my other flowers, from Farmer Gracy which is one of my go to companies for bulbs, tubers and bare roots. I love Aquilegias because they are easy to grow and look after, as well as self seeding everywhere, they are the perfect cottage garden flower.
All my Dahlias are now potted up and wrapped with copper tape to protect them from the slugs. We have planted out a few already and I'm so excited to see them in full bloom in the summer. Unfortunately we have lost a few to slugs when I planted them out, even with protection, but I'm hoping and praying that they'll be resurrected.
We finally have the first Alliums starting to bloom! They work so well in our borders and add a lovely pop of purple that stands above a lot of our other flowers. The Alliums pictured below are Purple Sensation and it is my go to Allium. I would also love to add some of the non purple varieties such as White Giant and Mount Everest. It's one of the best May flowers in my opinion!
So that's all the flowers in our greenhouse and flowers beds but at the top of our garden we have a wildflower area which was started purely accidentally as we actually neglected this part of the garden for a while. As a result, I started to notice lots of buttercups and cow parsley appearing so we've left it wild for now and it looks so lovely and wild. We usually cut it all back in the summertime and do a mass weed to keep it somewhat tamed.
This April I bought two pots of Nepeta to add to two of my flowerbeds but my cat ended up eating them (there's a reason they're called catmint), so I took myself back to the garden centre and repurchased them. I've kept them in the greenhouse this time to get a bit bigger and stronger before I plant them out and I'm praying that once I do my cat will leave them alone. They're so beautiful and they are well loved by pollinators and a great alternative to Lavender.
Every year I grow Lunaria (below) and it gives a beautiful flush of white flowers in May but I mainly grow it for the seed pods as they dry beautifully and are often pricey from the flower wholesaler. This plant does well in part shade so it's a great option if you have a shadey area of your garden. It's a pretty low maintenance plant which allows me to focus more on higher maintenance plants such as my Dahlias.
Vegetables
Flowers will always be my first love but this year we're growing a few vegetables including broad beans, courgettes, spring onions, garlic, sweetcorn, carrots and our many tubs of potatoes. Pictured below are our pots of potatoes and we planted two varieties of first early's so they should be ready to harvest in the next couple of months along with our garlic.
Our broad beans are going great guns and we will be tying them in soon. We will also be planting out our courgettes next to them in our little veg area. Our garden is undergoing a lot of work and particularly structural so I'm excited to hopefully have next year a veg bed/veg garden. Growing vegetables has been very hit or miss for me and every year it's very much trial and error but slowly and surely I'm learning and discovering what grows well and what doesn't.
Well that's it for now, thanks for reading. Hope you all had a lovely spring and now we look forward to summer and all summer blooms!
Beth
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