The shrubbery

I am pleased. It’s only June but the shrubs (sixty of them? I’ve never counted) in the shade garden are all fine and putting on growth.

I have even put the job ‘prune shrubs’ on my list. I never expected to be actually thinking of shaping them in their first year.

And a word about bulbs.  I have tried many a bulb here. And the star of the set is definitely the muscari.

It flowered for a long long time. Great dots of blue through the mulch and as a background to the new young plants.

And they even die beautifully.  I have had three months out of these small plants. I msut ask Andrew whether I ought to dead dead them.  I’m probably exhausting the bulbs and they won’t return next year.  But it’s almost worth it for the months of pleasure.

After all, we put a huge amount of effort into planting tulips which are, frankly, annuals.