My garden in May

If April was about the promise of new growth, then this month has been about nurturing that and seeing how far things have come. Unsurprisingly it’s our first May in this garden, and so I’ve been watching new things flower and have realised that we have three young mock oranges, rather than the single and very old one we had in our previous garden. I’m amazed at how many plants we had there, we have here - and without even trying, though of course they are much younger plants than those we had.

But anyway, let’s see what’s been going on in my garden in May.

The lupins we bought at the Newark Garden Show paired up with some bluebells from dad on the edge of the patio, replacing the tulips and before them the daffodils. I’m enjoying having a burst of colour here, though it’ll be interesting to see how and if I can keep this going throughout the summer, especially when the patio space is more in demand!

I’d intended to plant out the bluebells, which dad had planted into an old hanging basket for easy transportation, into our outer beds - but what with life and the weather I hadn’t gotten around to it, and so they flowered where they were planted. As a stroke of genius I realised the hanging basket could perch on the top of the pot, and in fact that worked so well I’m now wondering if this could be a more permanent arrangement. We’ll see.

Elsewhere in the garden there were more signs of life, with an early ceanothus flower just visible if you looked hard enough - though the hellebores were also still in flower - isn’t it great when the seasonal blooms mix and merge like this?

Whilst weeding the gravel - it is an never ending job - I found a larger than the weeds but still small lavender plant, and while we have five or six lavender bushes, I never sniff at free plants so was quick to pot this one up to see if it would survive - and it has so far. The gravel has been a great place for seedlings as along with the weeds I’ve also found many, many small buddleias, some lady’s mantle and towards the end of the month we’ve also had some flowering red poppies.

One of the lupins surprised me by producing a double headed flower, which looks more like bunny ears than a lupin. It’s since flowered and was thankfully the only one that split this way - with more normal looking flowers greeting us when we got back from our trip to Italy. I’d moved them into a more shaded part of the garden before we went and this helped them cope unaided I think.

Just before we went away MOH spotted some small furry fruits on the nectarine tree which I planned to grow against the old brick farm wall - I was grateful that my longer term plan looked as if it would come to fruition (sorry!), though not really sure if they would last for long. And while there were fewer when we returned, there were still definitely some on the plant, and they were larger, so who knows, at some point this summer MOH and I may share a small nectarine, or two if we’re lucky.

It’s always a thing for me to check on the garden when we’re back after a holiday, and it’s no different in this garden. It’s interesting to see what’s grown and appeared in that time and often it’s more pronounced as you’ve been away. I did have a small smile when I spotted this pale yellow antirhinnum in flower - it clearly planted itself in one of the pots we brought with us, as did the taller toad flax (which if it hangs around with be a purple cone of flowers)

I’d brought the two potted peonies further into the border and away from their winter shelter spots and was pleased to see that each had a bud, just the one but that’s more than I thought I might get after disrupting them ahead of our house move. Whilst walking through the now overgrown shrubs I realised I was brushing past an in flower mock orange - I recognise that smell anywhere. When I looked more closely we have two further small bushes, so that was a really great discovery.

The rowan tree has filled out, and the local bird population has been feasting on some of the berries already; the buddleias has also shot up from my rather brutal prune earlier this month - it’s easily back to where it was before, and ready to flower. My discovery here when clearing some of the lower branches is that this was intentionally planted, rather than self seeded as I thought. I know this because on its main stem it has a paper label, and not many self seeded plants have those!

It’s growth is so vigorous though it was crowding out a smaller hebe, now it’s cut back again in part I’m hoping that there’s enough light and space for the smaller plant to come through.

The lettuces survived snuggled down in one of the trugs, as did the gravel lavender and lady’s mantle. One of the lettuces looks almost ready to eat, and the others could probably benefit from a slightly larger pot - so that’s something to add to my to do list.

Another thing on that list, apart from regular checks on the nectarines, is to sort out these herbs. I’ve finally realised where I can put them - and it’s in one of these trugs, so it wasn’t a huge departure from their temporary home - but my plan is to relocate the planter so it’s easy to access from the kitchen - more on that next month, hopefully.

The crab apples have also come on and small apples have formed where once there was blossom - this year I’m determined to use them, and not to leave them on the tree so long. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll use them in the kitchen or on a wreath, but use them I will.

And like any garden there’s still much to do, and much to learn - but I’ll leave you with a fully flowering ceanothus bush, whose flowers always remind me of those blue bobbly liquorice allsorts, though in all honesty, I much prefer the flowers! (Though just to be clear, I’m happy to eat most other liquorice allsorts).

Sunflower watch: sowing seeds into Wool Pots

I was given a free sample of these Wool Pots - an alternative to plastic plant pots - to try for myself, and so I’m marking this post as an ad, as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

It’s been a fair while since I’ve sown some seeds, and far too long really. There’s been a number of reasons why I haven’t, but one of the big factors was the lack of success the last time I tried - well, not with the seeds, but with the actual growing on. That was a lot to do with the lack of light in our old garden given the tree canopy, which because of lockdown was way behind its usual pollarding schedule.

And then we decided to put our house on the market, and our priorities were to sell the house, and naively I thought it would be relatively quick, so I wanted to avoid moving more plants than we needed to - and no, I wasn’t planning on leaving them for the new owners! All in all moving house ran over two growing seasons, and so when we arrived here in July planting seeds couldn’t have been further from my mind.

I don’t have a greenhouse here (yet), so it’s not ideal for sowing seeds but I was keen to get growing again. Dad also gave me some seeds for a multi-headed sunflower and so with seeds, wool pots and the will to get sowing, what could go wrong?

And yes, the wool pots are well named - they are made of wool, and are pots!

They are knitted from washed wool… and while knitting plant pots sounds strange but the makers assure that Wool Pots are strong, naturally biodegradable, environmentally friendly and plants love them. The company aims to raise the awareness of the plastic problem in horticulture and let people know there is an alternative, and show them a solution. Wool pots are also proud members of the Campaign for Wool and are thrilled to be helping farmers find a new market for their wool.

Rather than bring the seeds indoors, which is an obvious way of giving them some heat, I kept them in the garage opting to use my heated propagator, and bring them out into the sun during the day, which was a fair bit of faffing but it did result in a majority germination - with five out of eight pots producing seedlings, though some were slower to germinate than others.

As the days went on, the seedlings started to grow their true leaves, not just the seedling leaves. It’s worth noting that the wool pots should have space between them to prevent the roots merging into each other - the space enables ‘air pruning’ and will make it easier to plant them on when the time comes.

But my biggest concern now that they’d germinated was when to leave them outside, but thankfully the weather decided to improve to help with that. With the seedlings nestled down in one of my currently half-empty pots, and in a more sheltered part of the garden I braved it, and they all survived!

In fact they’re all doing really well, with more leaves developing and getting taller too. Now instead of bringing them out of and into the garage each day, I’m checking that they’re not growing into each other - and so far so good.

I’m sure it won’t be long before I need to work out where to plant them so that they can grow to their full potential. And the best bit, is you can pot on the whole wool pot - I’ll share how I get on when the time comes.

* With thanks to Wool Pots for providing a sample of their innovative project for me to try.

My garden in April

In my previous update I shared how our garden was reawakening, bringing colour with daffodils and the start of the tulips, this month that continued and although the weather hasn’t been great the garden has been stoic - the tulips have done their thing and made me smile during the windier days, and the blossom has been fab. I’ve so many more photos, so that’s another sign that the weather is on the up!

I’m glad I captured the tulips on the patio being blown about - it made me smile, though I’m guessing the tulips weren’t quite so keen! I wasn’t sure if they would right themselves as even once the wind stopped they stayed bent, but after a while they did straighten up again, though some of them stayed a little wayward - as tulips do!

The trees have started to flourish this month, and some more than others but I’ll come onto that. The crab apple tree started with the deepest pink blossom, which faded to pale pink and then white as the flowers opened. By the end of the month most of the blossom has gone - either naturally or helped by the wind, so I’m hoping that we’ll have plenty of crab apples to harvest later in the year.

I had concerns about one of the field maples, we have three in the outside border. The central one wasn’t in leaf as much as the other two and so I sought some advice from the RHS, which I didn’t realised I could do until now. The advice confirmed my suspicions and some remedial work has been needed, so we did that one sunny Saturday morning with much trepidation. It’s early days, and of course the tree is now much smaller than the other two which is a shame, but a healthier tree is a much more preferable result. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more good news on this in future, but for now please keep your fingers crossed.

There’s better news elsewhere in the garden though. The small nectarine tree which I brought home from dad has thrived over the winter, and last month I shared its blossom. This month I finally braved my knot skills and made a frame for it from bamboo canes and twine. And I was quite impressed with how it turned out.

I checked to see how it was doing towards the end of the month, and look, there looks like there may be tiny fruits starting to grow. There’s a few on each branch (but this is the best photo I have), so who knows what I’ll be able to share later in the year.

The potted acer outside our back door is full of leaves now, and I think could probably do with a trim - but it seems happy where it is as I’m not sure I remember seeing so many leaves on it before. I’m not complaining though.

See what I mean about how joyous the crab apple blossom is?

With a brown bin collection due I decided to make the most of that and a sunny morning, and took my secateurs to the buddleia bush. At one point I thought this whole bush would be for the chop, but after seeing how many butterflies and bees it brought to the garden I had a change of heart, so I pruned it instead. And then it all grew back, and so I’ve cut it a little bit harder this time. I’m under no illusion though that I won’t be cutting this again, and again though!

I bought some seedling lettuces at the garden centre this month, and then realised I no longer have a greenhouse. I also realised this again after I sowed some sunflowers, but more on that another time. Of course I know I don’t have a greenhouse, but it’s only when you have small plants (or seeds) that you realise how useful a greenhouse would be. Instead though the lettuces have been sheltering low down in one of the pots we brought with us from London, in one of the more sheltered spots I’d found. I potted them on and then nestled them into place, and they’ve done really well so I’m hopeful we’ll be eating red lettuce this summer.

I love raindrops on plants, especially on lupins - and this month as well as the wind, the lupins we bought at the Newark Garden Show, got to experience that first hand too.

In other good news the silver birch whip which we picked up from our council back in January is alive. I wasn’t sure what it would do, especially as I put it into a pot rather than straight into the ground, but when I checked it I was really pleased to see leaves at the base and midway up the stick of a tree. There’s buds all the way to the top of the plant, so with a few more nicer days I’m sure there’ll be more leaves to come.

The small apple tree which we brought from London is also back in leaf. I’ve been wondering where we can plant this and coming up blank as the gaps we have are a bit too close to the house, or as the tree grows would block views we currently enjoy. Talking through the start of our garden plans with MOH we realised that the back wall might also be an option for this tree, though it is much more mature than the nectarine tree above I’m going to look at it more closely to see if that too can also be trained to grow along a frame. I suspect that it would benefit from refreshed soil and some weeding in any case - as over the past few years it’s been left to fend for itself standing on the step outside our old shed.

While checking to see how the pots had overwintered I was pleased to see the redcurrant plant which hadn’t really thrived in our previous garden was in leaf, but more surprised to see that one of the peonies has already started to grow though its circular support.

I can’t wait to see how our garden develops in the next month, I’m sure I’ll have much more to share next time round.