Spring is well and truly here, primroses are at their best, trees are blossoming, tulips and bluebells are starting to flower and alliums are on their way. Every day you can spot new growth and it’s always great to get out in the garden with the longer evenings and see what has been growing that day.
April is the time to keep on top of those weeds and little and often goes a long way to keeping them under control. I have ground elder in my main flowerbed and when we first moved in the ground elder roots were a solid mass about 10cm deep, so I cleared the whole bed, dug everything out, kept what I wanted to keep and everything else went. I still get Ground Elder appearing but it is a lot more manageable now and I just have to make sure I don’t mistake it for astrantia fresh growth. They can look very similar.
I’ve been doing daily rounds of the garden and putting Strulch round any new shoots that are on the slug and snail menu. Echinacea, lupins, asters, agastache and gaura seem to be favourites in my garden, but with the help of a combination of Strulch and beer traps near young plants I’m finding that a lot more of my plants are surviving through spring, and as they mature, I am seeing less slug damage.
I’ve been delighted to see that after struggling with Echinops Ritro not only are my existing plants thriving, one of the plants has become three plants. I’ll be nurturing those through the next few months and adding in the new plants I purchased last month which are looking healthy and happy in the new Haxnicks Bamboo biodegradable pots I’m trying out. They say they will break down in 5 years so are a good alternative to plastic. For the moment, I will continue to use the plastic pots I have, but I will be looking for alternatives when I need to replace them.
After a bit of rain, it is now a great time to mulch so I’ve been making the most of the compost Drive Thru at Longacres and have purchased manure, compost and Strulch. My garden is on Bagshot sand, so I try and mulch in the spring and use a combination of compost, manure or homemade compost depending on what I have available at the time, to try and improve the soil structure and help the soil retain moisture.
I’ve been doing this for the last 6 years and can really see the difference compared to the herb bed which I never compost as the lavender and rosemary prefer poor soil.
Another job to do is to edge the flowerbed, I needed to purchase a new lawn edger but how do you choose when faced with a choice?
I ended up going for the Burgon & Ball one as the handle seemed shorter which I thought would work better for me. It has given me nice clean edges (even if a bit wonky) and will help make it easier to trim the edges throughout the summer.
For a challenge this month I decided to tackle part of my dad’s garden as a surprise for him. It has completely the opposite conditions to mine, clay soil, exposed, full sun and rabbits, so it is a good opportunity to learn about different conditions. I purchased a Philadelphus Belle Etoile, lupins and Nepeta Walkers Low to plant up one of his flower beds. It is so much nicer to look out on a garden that has had a bit of TLC and will hopefully thrive over the summer (if the rabbits stay away).
To update on my seedlings, the agastache and stocks are doing well and have been potted on, although they are rather leggy. I haven’t figured out yet how to stop seedlings getting leggy as the windows all face east, (answers on a postcard please…).
The one Echinacea seedling I had turned out to be a weed seedling, but after a month one Echinacea decided to make an appearance and has since been joined by 2 others.
With the garden changing daily my woody area is my little spring haven, with crocuses, daffodils, pulmonaria to start off the season, followed by bluebells, (English and unfortunately Spanish variety),
red campion, and primroses. Please be sure to check back in next month when I’ll be posting photos of my bluebells at their peak and the to see the main flowerbed come alive with forget me nots and alliums.
