March flowers

Not much happening - and most of it yellow.

That's been my general verdict on this month's flowers: though tinged with a great deal of relief that our 'false spring' in the unseasonable warmth of a couple of months ago hasn't, after all, kiboshed the real one.

Was there ever such a spring-like colour as yellow? It shines out at you wherever you look: gleams and sparkles and cheers the soul. Perhaps that's why it's so much more welcome at this time of year than, say, in mid-summer when yellow flowers just seem brash: after all, we all need a bit of cheering up after the winter.

So now is the time of the spring bulb: there isn't much else peeping out just yet. But bulbs, above all, should have the place more or less to themselves anyway: that way you can admire them without distraction, to your heart's content.

Some of the hosts of golden daffodils
cheering up the slope at the back of the garden at the moment

Ranunculus ficaria

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'

Another mystery daffodil: could be 'Jetfire'?

Chionodoxa forbesiae (I think: lost the label. Again.)

...and the flower buds of the same:
almost as exquisite as the flowers themselves

Primula vulgaris

Mahonia japonica

Leucojum vernum

Narcissus 'February Gold'

Viola odorata

Eranthis hyemalis

Muscari armeniacum

Crocus tommasinianus

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens - thanks Carol!

Wordless Wednesday: Early

 

March flowers

Spring has sprung: and all over the garden flowers are spangling lawns and peeking from borders. I'm not sure why spring flowers are almost all tiny: perhaps it's to do with the energy involved in getting to flowering stage before most plants are even waking up. But they're all the more exquisite for their diminutive size.

I can't take credit for the flowers in these pictures, or indeed for most of the flowers in my garden over the next few months: I'm taking the softly, softly approach this year as I really have no idea what I've got just yet, having only had the acquaintance of my garden since last September. And big fat buds are emerging from the ground in the most unexpected places so I suspect there will be more than a few surprises. So far, it's all looking very promising. Very promising indeed.

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn': still going strong, but now joined by sumptuously pleated leaves in a brooding shade of slatey-green just breaking their buds

Primula vulgaris - or a selection thereof: these have rather deep yellow centres to be a wilding (though there are plenty of those in the banks hereabouts) but they are close enough not to offend

Scilla sibirica: this is one of mine, one of a few big wide pots I planted up with bulbs the autumn before last, and still going strong. The blue of the scillas backlit with sunlight is enough to stop me in my tracks every time I walk past. They play havoc with the school run.

The early bumblebees are enjoying the last of the Mahonia japonica flowers

and the slugs have been munching my Anemone blanda - though there are plenty more buds coming through

Chionodoxa luciliae: another star of the big sunny pots of bulbs that lift my heart

One of my favourite daffodils: Narcissus 'February Gold', small, early to flower and with a deep tangerine corona which glows in low spring sunshine

Leucojum vernum: I was wondering what the big clump of healthy, strappy leaves just outside my back door were: then they started producing lovely clear white flowerbuds about a week ago. Never been able to grow them before (they like wetter soil): I'm chuffed to bits.

Yes, I know. It's a weed. But you can almost forgive lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) its rampantly invasive nature and infuriating ability to thumb its nose at your efforts to weed it out when it sprinkles the lawn (and the borders, and the hedgerows) with its lovely droplets of pure sunshine.
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens - thanks Carol!

Good tulip, bad tulip

Right, that's quite enough cheerfulness, time to start complaining again.

My tulips are lovely, and I feel a little mealy-mouthed saying anything but delighted things about them, but they are not as they should be.

As usual I popped a slew of extra tulips in last autumn to back up what might or might not have survived the winter: I have pretty good tulip-overwintering soil, being sandy and free-draining, but you never can tell.

However the tulips I put in were not, you might say, the tulips they purport to be.

For example:

Tulipa 'Apeldoorn'

Good tulip:


Bad tulip:



Tulipa 'White Triumphator'

Good tulip:


(with thanks to Crocus for the pic)

Bad tulip:


And even worse tulip:


Tulipa 'West Point'

Good tulip:

(Crocus again)

Bad tulip:

The 'Queen of Night' are looking like they ought to at the moment, but there is an ominous streaking to my 'Orange Cassini' buds. And the 'Ballerina' and 'Spring Green' aren't open yet so I shall be interested to see what we end up with there.

It's not that I'm complaining exactly: I still have a spectacular display of rather lovely tulips (except the split 'Triumphator' - I really do detest those). But they ain't what I ordered.

To their credit the bulb company have apologised profusely and I shall be enjoying a free supply of 450 tulip bulbs this autumn. But I do have to wonder what happened.

Did they think most people wouldn't know their 'West Point' from their 'President Kennedy' and don't care anyway ('it's yellow, innit?')

Or is there some wierd virus mutation thing going on here? Is the purity of tulip bulbs becoming muddied by the endless hybridising and the multiple-million bulb turnovers of the big Dutch companies?

Answers on a postcard, please...

A little update

You may, or no doubt may not remember that I went shopping in January and cleared out the entire stock of past-sellby-date bulbs at my local garden centre.

So I thought it's high time I let you know how they all performed. And besides it's a good excuse to post some pretty spring flower photos.

	Pot 1: Chionodoxa luciliae followed by Oxalis adenophylla No sign of the Oxalis yet but I'm sure they'll make their presence felt shortly.
	Pot 2: Puschkinia scilloides libanotica and Narcissus lobularis Happily overlapping, and I have lost my heart to N. lobularis: such utterly heartbreaking delicacy.
	Pot 3: Chionodoxa again, mixed colours this time, followed by Anemone blanda The first colour mix I've ever actually liked!
	Pot 4: Crocus chrysanthus var. fuscotinctus followed by Scilla siberica with a final flourish from mixed Ixia The crocus flowered through March: wonderful they were too, and the Scilla were just budding up as they faded. What a combination, and I've got the Ixia to look forward to still.
	And pot 5: Anemone coronaria 'St Brigid' possibly but not probably overlapping with Tulipa 'Rococo' No overlapping going on just yet, but I'm so excited about these. And who could fail to be with such intriguingly wierd buds unfurling before your eyes.

By way of conclusion: they've all flowered at the end of the stated flowering times (i.e. if it said on the label "Flowers from Feb-April" they started in April) - but they've all, amazingly, flowered.

This is so what I'm going to do next year as well. I do love a good bargain!

Plant of the month: March

Crocus chrysanthus 'Snow Bunting'

Like jewels warmed by the sunshine, the crocuses are waking up.

I have many in my garden: deep purple and profligate Crocus tommasinianus, purest yellow C. chrysanthus, pale violet hybrids of uncertain descent.

But the most beautiful crocus in my garden is one which I only planted for the first time last year, despite many years of coveting its silky white blooms. I now wouldn't be without it.

C. chrysanthus 'Snow Bunting' was bred by the legendary E. A. Bowles, who was something of a crocus buff in his time and produced about 14 hybrids, all named after birds. Most can be found in the National Collection, held at Myddleton House in Enfield.

I have a dozen 'Snow Bunting' in a deep blue ceramic container just outside my back door, rather fancifully planted with some dark bruise-coloured pansies in a vague sort of black-and-white concoction.

Never mind the cliché: it looks utterly fabulous and has me smiling every time I walk out the door. Even when the sun isn't out (i.e. most of the time) the crocuses still look elegant with threads of purple running up the outsides of their closed buds.

But the other morning, the sun came out and hit them full on. I think the only things more excited about it than me were the bees: they couldn't get enough of those joyous butter-yellow throats. And nor could I. The scent filled the air - I've always had to get down on my hands and knees for that exquisite perfume before, but not this time.

It's moments like this that spring was invented for.

Upside-down tulips

You know all those dire warnings always to plant your tulip bulbs (and indeed any other type of bulb) the right way up, so the pointy end goes upwards and the basal root plate is pointing down? Ever had a crisis of confidence over those fiendish corms like ranunculus or cyclamen when it's sometimes impossible to tell which end is up?

Well I thought I'd put your mind at rest. Last autumn my little girls were given a packet of tulips (praestans 'Fusilier', in case you're interested) and we had a lovely muddy session in which they enthusiastically planted them all in their little gardens outside the wendy house. I did tell them which way up to put them, but, well, when you're seven you get a bit carried away sometimes.

So - I was weeding that bit the other day and accidentally dug up one of the tulip bulbs (a bit of an occupational hazard at this time of year I find). And this is what I found.

Now, doesn't that make you feel better? No matter which way up you plant a bulb, it seems, it manages to sort itself out perfectly well, thank you very much. So next autumn, sling 'em in and as long as they're not waterlogged or pulled up by squirrels, things will turn out just fine.

I re-planted this one right away. Upside down, of course: it seems to like it that way.

Bargain hunting

Off down the garden centre on a hot tip this weekend to find spring bulbs slashed to just 50p a packet!

I bought the lot, or at least one packet of every variety - that was 11 packets of bulbs for £5.50. For the first time in my life I think I understand the feral look in the eyes of those ladies you see elbowing each other out of the way in the January sales.

Got home and had a happy hour divvying them up into likely combinations according to predicted size and blooming times to go into containers on my patio.

I'm in good company planting them this late in the season, and in fact it seems I'm a bit slow on the uptake - it seems everyone else is well clued up on this bit of late-winter bargain hunting. The general consensus seems to be that since they're a month or two late in the planting they'll also be a month or two late flowering - but they will flower eventually. So I made a note of the dates they were meant to flower too so I can do a little experiment and find out just how late it makes them to plant at this time of year.

Now I have the following to look forward to, whenever they decide to show up:

Chionodoxa luciliae followed by Oxalis adenophylla

Puschkinia scilloides libanotica and Narcissus lobularis

Chionodoxa again, mixed colours this time, followed by Anemone blanda

Crocus chrysanthus var. fuscotinctus followed by Scilla siberica with a final flourish from mixed Ixia

Anemone coronaria 'St Brigid' possibly but not probably overlapping with Tulipa 'Rococo'

The relative timings are, of course, a lottery, and who knows what will come up when. But that's half the fun of it. Come to think of it, a lot more fun than doing it when you're supposed to.

Spring has sprung

This is what's been cheering me up over the weekend.


Yep - the sun is out, the birds are singing, the ground has finally dried and I'm gardening again!


As you can see I haven't quite got round to the mulching yet but who cares?

I'm just happy to be outside again.

Anyone else noticed how particularly wonderful the snowdrops and crocuses (croci?) have been this spring? Is it something to do with the weather, or is it just me being so punch-drunk with seeing sunshine again that everything looks more sparkly than it ever has done before?

Beauty in unexpected places

This was the scene a few weeks ago at a road junction where I live. It's the most unpromising place - a corner between one main road and another pretty busy minor road - and it had roadworks opposite and traffic to right and left. But in the middle was this stunning display of spring sunshine. I wasn't the only one taking photos - it would put a smile on your face in the worst traffic jam ever!

Plant of the month - March

Hyacinth 'Delft Blue'

I had always thought of hyacinths as the sort of flower your grandma grows. That is, until I saw them in the late great Christopher Lloyd's border at Great Dixter. As regular readers will know, I'm a big fan of Mr Lloyd's, so anything that's good enough for him is good enough for me. When I went, he had 'King of the Blues' in his Long Border, and it truly zinged out at you from among the spring flowers - not gaudy, as some over-bred primroses are, for example, but just pure, joyous blue.

I couldn't find 'King of the Blues' so had to opt for 'Delft Blue' - a more commonly-grown type but nonetheless superb for that. At this time of year its uncompromising china blue stands up beautifully to the butter-yellow daffodils all around it - this is not a wishy-washy plant, and all the better for it. You can force them to grow indoors - the usual excuse is to enjoy the scent at close quarters, but to be honest I find it overwhelming and a little sickly in the house. Far better to have it scattered on the wind so you catch a little puff of it as you pass by - one of those utterly blissful moments that gardening is all about. It seems grandma knew a trick or two after all.