2 stars out on Sunday

I was out having a bit of a tidy on Sunday & a couple of beauties caught my eye.

Japanese anemone

A light in a dark place

I bought it & planted it out late last year, & crossed my fingers. I had no idea if I'd put it in a suitable location. I had not a clue what soil type it preferred. Then we had a long cold Winter. & then a bit of the boundary wall fell off & landed on it. Talk about a rough ride.

But it's made it through all that trauma & has just started flowering under its own steam. Hooray! A late season glow in The White Corner.

Common frog

Can I go now?

I found this fella at the bottom of the raspberry canes whilst doing the annual tidy-up. Every year we spot a frog in the garden: sometimes in the compost; even in the greenhouse! This always confuses us as we don't have a pond...

After posing for its close-up, this healthy hopper headed toward the house. Aha! Hubby's hunch was spot on - there's a rainwater drain & soakaway in that corner, right under the raspberries. Suddenly it all makes much more sense.

& while we're on about the raspberries, The Alnwick Garden loop method for corralling long canes worked brilliantly. I heartily recommend it.

No Lilac flowers this year, then...

As the whole of Spring packs itself into just a couple of weeks, I'll stick my neck out & say the Lilac is not going to bother flowering this year:

Lots of green, but no lilac

Its compatriot 3 gardens over is in full pomp right now, but there's no flower buds on ours at all.

I suspect this is the result of another dodgy pruning incident :/

I know that Lilac is pretty robust - I've hacked it back pretty hard in the past with no real bother, but I don't ever recall having a no show like this.

But last year I did my usual thing of pruning it when I could be arsed, rather than when it should be done, & I guess sometimes there's a price to pay.

A bit of online digging indeed suggests that Lilac is best pruned immediately after flowering, so I'll keep an eye on the neighbours' blooms & give ours its annual haircut when theirs goes over. Won't be long now, which is handy as all that green is making a bid to dominate Stinky Dog Corner.

Ah well, fingers crossed for next year.

New Lilac on the block

And talking of the future, the white Lilac root cuttings from my mate have made it through the Winter:

Go little cuttings!

Yay! More residents for The White Corner. However, now I've learn about Lilac's bullying ways, the plan is to plant it on the other side of the wall, on the Council land. Not only will this complete the hedge, but it'll return that area to similar form of a few years ago:

When we moved in, The White Corner had 2 Conifers & a Lilac running along the bottom wall. But as they grew bigger & bigger, they started pushing the wall over. So a few years ago, we had a tree surgeon take them down & grind out the stumps. Our mate rebuilt the wall, & I've been slowly replanting the area since.

It was all quite a change for that bed as it's gone from deep shade to full sun, so some long term residents haven't survived all the drama. And we do miss the huge Lilac that was on the end - not only did it screen us from the street, but it always put on such a great Spring show.

Hopefully the new white Lilacs will grow up big & strong, just like the old one, and will have a bit more room to do it in too.

End of April catch up

Crikey, nearly a month since my last post. Is it because I've been too busy doing actual gardening? Of course not.

But that doesn't matter as it's been a fairly sunny round here this April. Admittedly some of the showers have been a tad, erm, white & lumpy, & the temperature has been up & down like the Assyrian Empire. But the garden has clearly decided Spring is here & is just getting on with it. That's the spirit!

So how's everything getting along while I've been maximising my quality sofa time?

Bay cuttings

When I pruned the bay last year, I had a go at taking cuttings from the trimmings.

2 pots, 3 stems per pot, over-Wintered in the greenhouse & they seemed to be going well. But I've been as slow to get started as Spring has & the other week Hubby spotted the cuttings were wilting. With the weather heating up (a bit) they weren't getting enough water. So I've moved them outside & given them saucers, to help them keep some of the rain they catch.

Some green left on the Autumn's Bay cuttings

As you might be able to spot in the pic, at least 2 of the 6 cuttings still have green in their leaves, so hopefully they'll strengthen as Spring progresses.

Magnolia flowers

The week before I put the stairs into Stinky Dog Corner, I bought a couple of trees: a Himalayan Birch, for the top of those steps; & a Magnolia for The White Corner, bottom right of the garden. To be honest I didn't think the Magnolia's flower buds would survive a March planting, but 3 or 4 look like they might just hang on in there. Yay!

New tree: Magnolia Manchu Fan

Old bulbs

In The White Corner, the Magnolia joins some other white plants put in previously. A few years ago I started thinking about playing with some colour theory to make the garden feel a bit longer: strong colours nearer the house; paler ones further away.

So a few years ago, I declared (in my mind) the bottom right end of the garden The White Corner, & I put in some white tulips & pale daffs.

Tulips & daffs in The White Corner

I love the pale green on these tulips, & the flowers are huge.

So, normal sized daffs, fairly large tulips, large tulip-shaped magnolia flowers... yep I've just realised that my colour/distance illusion is going to be shattered cos it's not accompanied by an illusion of scale: large flowers in strong colours nearer the house; small flowers in paler colours further away. Doh!

Hellebore

Also new to The White Corner this Spring, planted underneath the Magnolia, is a white Hellebore... Well it was white when the flowers were new. I didn't realise the flowers would change colour as they aged & set seed.

White (& pink & gold) Hellebore flowers

Bonus!

Dwarf narcissus

Dwarf Narcissus in the Eye bed

The bulbs I planted late last year are going great guns & have brought much joy between the snow showers. The daffs were 1st up & have put on a beautiful show regardless of what the weather has thrown at them. Fair play.

New tulips

2 sorts of tulips went in at the same time as the dwarf daffs. The orange Shakespeares have come & gone & to be honest I was a little disappointed - their colour wasn't as punchy as I'd hoped. Hopefully the Synaedas will be more zesty when they make an appearance... & that should be an "if" cos none of the tulips currently maturing are orange... they're all purple:

The Queen Of Night tulips are starting to colour up

Wow! Looks like these Queens are going to be suitably regal. The purple edges look very much like the dupion silk of my wedding dress.

New Alliums

Last of the new bulbs are the Alliums. I've had them before but they don't seem to stick around in the beds, so this time they're all in pots so I can keep a good eye on them.

The first Allium flower head makes an appearance

The leaves are suitably & noticeably oniony, which I really like. Hopefully when the flowers explode, this tall slender pot won't get toppled.

Onions

I planted them! I found a little time a couple of weeks ago to get them in the ground:

They're alive! The shallots are sprouting! Yay!!!

I've got 2 of these module trays, plus I planted 10 out in the central Twisty Hazel bed. Most of them have started to sprout, one so vigorously it was pushing itself out of the ground... I maybe shouldn't firm down the soil in the seed tray so enthusiastically...

Salads

Hubby's done a great job of keeping an eye on the Greenhouse Gutterbeds:

Lower pipe: over-Wintered coriander & parsley.
Upper pipe: this Spring's mixed salad.

The parsley & coriander in the lowest row have struggled through the Winter - not really vigorous enough to harvest, but hanging on in there. I guess if we plant them out into the main greenhouse bed they might make for a good early crop.

I'm really good at buying seeds I never plant, so this time Hubby's stepped in & put some Spring salads in the middle gutter. A mixed leaf selection closest to us, some little gem lettuce in the middle & some flat leaf parsley at the far end. Hopefully we won't have to wait so many months to harvest these.

Weeds

& of course the early weeds are making a Spring dash too, but I did manage to get in some mid-week weeding recently. My compost bin's never hot enough to properly deal with serious weeds like dandelion & burdock, so I usually put them into my Council garden waste bin. But this time I thought I'd give Alys Fowler's soggy rotten bucket suggestion a go.

Bad-asses in the bucket

But Hubby came in this afternoon & cheerily announced:

"Whatever's in the bucket is sprouting nicely..."

The leggy buttercupy things are loving it in there. I've given them another mushing but if by next week the bucket looks more like a pond, into the Garden waste they go.

Hopefully, at some point soon, I'll get out there & sow some more seeds, & fill the gaps the weeds have left.

Can I keep on top of the weeds this year? Only time will tell.
Let battle commence!