Spring flowers

My, you are spoilt. All this rich and vivid colour appearing on the blog. We ought to be back in dreary pictures of soil and weeds just to balance out the zap and fizz.

But this is spring and even though everywhere you look it’s alarmingly lush, I might as well show what I see what I’m up and out each day.

This wisteria sits at the front of the house and is Very Well Trained.

Never has a plant been more carefully watched and hacked.  We all know how wisteria can take over a garden, a wall, a house, a life.

This one has fabulous scent, outrageous colour and for some reason it keeps on flowering and flowering and hasn’t made a dash for it all over the wall.

The Virginia creeper does that.

When you turn the corner and arrive at the house you meet the last vestiges of the white garden planted by Madame Reinhardt back in the 90s.

The white wisteria carked it.

Lets have a glimpse of it in its heyday for a mo.

Those white viburnums trying to grow higher than the house also had the chop when I laid waste to the others. It’s doing well, albeit in a very restrained way. I must remember to photograph it for you.

The white lilac is still undecided whether it will recover from the 90 per cent haircut it received two years ago.  Ditto the mock orange (Deutzia). I decided they ought to return to small manageable shrubs rather than 20 foot high trees.

But the alyssum just goes and goes. As do the small number of white triumphator tulips and Thalia narcissus I planted here.  Please remind me to plant more this autumn. I always forget.

The muscari are making a return flowering. And in fact they are reliable returners. Just when you despair of any bulb making a comeback – up they pop.

And here is an annual surprise. The rose in the courtyard (another inherited plant) is flowering again.

I cut one of its three main stems down to the ground this year, in the hope it will cause a miraculous rejuvenation. There are buds; there is growth.

There may be a future for this straggly plant after all. I threaten it with loppers every year. And after 12 years you can tell I’m a softie.

And speaking of rejuvenation.

Here are the quince trees on the bank above the Dry Garden. Flowering like mad.  Looking gorgeous. They form the main filler in my bouquets of flowers every week.

What a shame they only turn all this fruiting flower frenzy into so few quinces.

And only every second year.

Maybe I ought to make a list of all the things I promise to do each year and don’t.

  • Plant proper quince varieties.
  • Cut down the courtyard rose.
  • Cut down the damn apple in the barn garden which is only good for incubating grubs.
  • Make better compost bins.
  • Cut back the rambling rose just beside the quince to encourage more flowers.
  • Tidy my potting shed….

Well, yes.

Far better for you all that I just shove photos of flowers at you. That is what spring is all about.