I have always thought of my paternal grandfather as a practical, gentleman gardener. When I was a child he was head gardener on a country estate in Buckinghamshire, playing his part in the steady decline of a once great walled garden and its modest range of glasshouses. It was the end of an era, a glimpse of 400 years of history drawing to a close. I thought it was magical. Grandpa Cooper taught me how to force rhubarb, thin grapes, pollinate peaches, maintain a rotary mower and grow asparagus, skills I’ve rarely had the opportunity to use, but which I hope might come in handy one day.

Like his attire, grandpa’s gardens were neat, tidy and structured, harking back to the Edwardian manner of doing things. Consequently I never considered him an artistic man, until this week. My dad had been looking through my late grandmother’s old photographs and found, at the bottom of a box, a few scraps of crumpled paper on which my grandfather had sketched spring flowers. My dad recalls these were once part of a larger collection of drawings which we assume is no more. We think they were sketched when Grandpa Cooper (Dennis) was at night school in the 1930s. Despite their age and condition I think they are rather good; naive perhaps, but full of colour and movement. I wish I had the time and patience to equal them.

I am delighted the sketches have reappeared. They’ve not only revealed a gift I didn’t know Grandpa Cooper possessed, but brought back many fond memories of the years when my love of gardening began to grow. Hopefully they will now be preserved as a reminder of my grandpa’s artistic talent, no longer hidden away from view.

We all have hidden talents. What are yours?

Narcissus: daffodil, daffadowndilly, jonquil, Lenten lily

Daffodils are synonymous with Easter. In England they are associated with Lent and occasionally referred to as Lenten lilies. Legend has it that the first daffodil bloomed on the night of The Last Supper in the Garden of Gethsemane to comfort Jesus in his hour of sorrow. Whether one is religious or not, there’s no question that daffodils symbolise rebirth, herald the arrival of spring and generally spread joy and hope wherever they grow. Hence I plant hundreds of them each autumn, yet always wish I had planted more.

Giving me enormous pleasure in my garden right now is a diminutive daffodil named N. ‘Elka’. She bears pearly white petals surrounding a lemon yellow trumpet on stems about 12″ tall. The trumpets fade gently as each flower matures, eventually becoming the same shade as the petals. A new daffodil variety, N. ‘Elka’ was named by Cornishman Alec Gray (also responsible for the ubiquitous N. ‘Tête à Tête’) after two lady daffodil growers called Elizabeth and Kate. They must be very proud of their namesake.

N. ‘Elka’ quickly earned an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society thanks to her hardiness, early flowering and weather resistance. Such low growing varieties are best suited to sinks, pots or the front of borders, so this year I’ve planted N. ‘Elka’ in a shallow bowl on our garden table to follow the deep purple blooms of Iris histrioides ‘George’ AGM, and keep me smiling until Tulip batalinii ‘Bronze Charm’ starts producing its luminous apricot flowers in a couple of weeks’ time. All three bulbs are hardy, charming and perfect for pot culture, flowering in close succession. Put them on your list for ordering in late summer. Avon Bulbs is a one-stop-shop for this cheery little trio.

Wishing You and Yours a Very Happy Easter. TFG.

One can never plant too many spring-flowering bulbs. However tedious the chore may seem in late summer and autumn, planting spring bulbs is one of the most reliably rewarding gardening activities I know. Bulbs are, by-and-large, inexpensive, readily obtainable, easy to grow and pest free. Chosen with a little care one can enjoy colourful flowers and delicious fragrance from late December until May.

Neither of our gardens is blessed with much open border space, which means most of my spring bulbs must be planted in containers. This is no bad thing. Planting in pots, troughs or window boxes offers endless opportunities to experiment with bulbs of different varieties and colours without disrupting the rest of the garden. It also means containers can be tucked out of sight before they start to bloom and again when they start to wither and die, although a decent amount of sunlight is a prerequisite for growing most types of flowering bulb.

I’m incapable of doing anything by halves and like to plan big. Despite having two very small gardens, each autumn I plant forty or more terracotta pots of varying sizes with over a thousand narcissus, hyacinth, tulip, crocus, iris and fritillaria bulbs. This takes several weekends from late August to early November, but it’s worth the effort. As soon as the first flower buds start to show colour in spring I move the pots into position to create a bulb theatre – a rather grand description for an assemblage of planted containers arranged to display flowering bulbs to their best advantage. Bulb theatres can be small-scale, or vastly ambitious, subtle or showy: the choice is yours. The glory of growing and displaying spring bulbs this way is that individual containers can be shifted about as each ‘goes over’, creating new scenes each time. Gardens are, after all, theatres for plants, and we are the directors. And provided one is fit and healthy this serves as marvellous exercise and an opportunity to enjoy a front seat in your very own playhouse.

Getting Started

There are no real rules for creating a bulb theatre, but here are a few pointers:

• Order your spring bulb catalogues in plenty of time: late May, directly after Chelsea, is often when they are published. Choicer varieties will sell out quickly, but if you are brave enough to hold back until September you may bag bargains. In my experience, mail-order companies offer a wider range and larger sized bulbs than your average garden centre.
• Choose carefully to get the best results:
  • Even two or three pots can reward with weeks of colour and scent if you select varieties that flower at different times. Crocuses, snowdrops and narcissi such as N. “Cedric Morris” and N. “Rijenveld’s Early Sensation” can be in flower at Christmas, whilst Tulipa “Queen of the Night” and Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus will see you through until early May.
  • Choose bulbs that produce plants of different heights for a dramatic tiered effect. Alliums and Fritillaria imperialis (crown imperial) are perfect for the back of the stage, with miniature irises, scillas, crocuses and snowdrops to the fore. Cultivars with an upright, sturdy habit that don’t flop around work best in a bulb theatre, unless they are positioned in the front row where a little laxness may be tolerated.
  • Pick a colour theme for your bulb theatre if you want to create a masterpiece rather than a melee. Sacks of mixed colour bulbs may seem like a bargain but will at best place a limit on your artistry. Bags of single colours cost little more and give you control over your palette. I’ve gone for a mix of oranges, purples and plums for the last few years, but combinations of two or three colours, for example yellow, white and pink, or red, magenta and lime green, work well too.
• There’s no need to restrict yourself to bulbs. Evergreen ferns, euphorbias, hellebores and wallflowers will add a different dimension to your theatre and help to break up and vary the display.

Planting and Growing On

• Bulbs of narcissi should be planted in late August because they start to produce roots whilst the soil is still warm autumn. At the other extreme, tulips should not be planted until the weather gets cold to prevent diseases from weakening the bulbs. Tulips can be planted as late as December and will still produce a good display. Planting bulbs of the same variety a few weeks apart can also stagger the flowering period, although bulbs have a habit of catching with one another up over winter.
• Bulbs of different types can be layered within an individual container to create an extended display period or give a greater density of flowers (Sarah Raven refers to this technique as creating a ‘bulb lasagne’). As a general rule, larger bulbs should be planted deepest in a pot (but still with at least 6 inches of compost beneath them), covered with compost, then overplanted with mid-sized bulbs and finally small bulbs and corms. This method requires a lot of bulbs, but the result will pack a punch for weeks, if not months.
• Use a free draining, multi-purpose compost for spring bulbs. The last thing you want is for your precious bulbs to be sitting in a soggy growing medium, so avoid soil-based composts unless you live in the drier parts of the UK or have a particular concern about your pots being blown over in a gale. I’m a fan of Westland’s Jack’s Magic, which is a blend of peat and wood fibre. Peat is naughty, but bulbs like it.
• If you have a problem with squirrels unearthing your bulbs then cover the top of the compost with chicken wire, tucked down the inner sides of the pot, before top-dressing with coarse grit. This should deter all but the most determined critters and even then they will need a good dentist.
• Until signs of life can be seen, usually in January or February, pots can be tucked away in a garage, shed, unheated basement, under a hedge or in a cold greenhouse. They certainly do not need to be on show, but if they are a planting of winter pansies, violas or cyclamen will provide a little interest before the main event begins. Avoid growing on in exposed locations where pots might freeze. Potted bulbs are very much more vulnerable to cold damage than those planted in the ground.

Curtain Up!

• As soon as you can see an inch or more of growth appearing above the top of the pot it’s time to think about moving your pots into position. Larger containers should be placed at the back of the display to give height, with smaller bowls and pots to the fore. Hyacinths and some narcissi tend to flop, so prop with pea sticks before it’s too late.
• During drier spells, don’t forget to water your containers, especially if they are small. Bulb flowering can be impeded by irregular moisture levels. At this stage it’s a pity to let all your hard work go to waste. It shouldn’t be necessary to feed potted bulbs until the flowers begin to fade, and only then if you plan to transplant bulbs into the garden for future seasons. I use bone meal or blood, fish and bone.

• Guard against early attacks by slugs, snails and greenfly. In warm springs lily beetles can destroy pots of fritillarias within days. If spraying any kind of insecticide avoid doing so when bees are active, and avoid slug pellets if you have birds in the garden that are likely to feast on poisoned slugs and snails.
• Now it’s time to enjoy all your hard work. As soon as the mercury rises your bulbs will grow rapidly. Cooler weather will prolong blooming whilst a warm spell can see potted bulbs go out in a blaze of glory. Either way they will be a joy to behold.

After the Show

• Once the flowers begin to fade, daffodils and tulips should be deadheaded. This ensures the plants put all their energy into producing big bulbs for the following year, rather than seeds.
• When the foliage starts to yellow, it’s time to move containers somewhere light but inconspicuous to die down completely. Never remove or tie up old foliage as the plants are still generating energy which will be stored in the bulb.
• Even your finest endeavours may not guarantee a display of similar magnitude the following year. Big bulbs exhaust themselves and may diminish or divide into many smaller bulbs, resulting in smaller flowers or just leaves the next year. Apart from some daffodils, I would not recommend leaving bulbs in pots to flower again. Either plant them out in a quiet but bright corner of the garden where they can build themselves up to flowering size or put them in the bin. Tulips are never worth the bother of replanting. Be thankful for the happiness they gave you and start again with fresh bulbs from a reputable source in autumn.
• Bulbs left in pots need a dry summer rest, with the exception of snowdrops than like moist conditions year-round.

My bulb theatre favourites

Back of stage (not backstage!)

• Nectaroscordum siculum (Sicilian honey garlic) – ugly leaves but elegant, lofty, bee-friendly flowers.
• Fritillaria imperialis “William Rex” – handsome, compact crown imperial with brick-red flowers.
• Tulipa “Queen of the Night”, T. “Redshine”, T. “Menton”, T. “White Triumphator” and T. “Brown Sugar” – these are all magnificent, strong, tall tulips for the back of a bulb theatre, but would look pretty frightful all mixed together!
• Narcissus “Cragford” and N. “Geranium” – both tazetta class daffodils which means one thing – glorious scent!

Centre stage

• Hyacinthus “Woodstock” and H. “Gypsy Queen” – deep violet-purple and peachy orange respectively. I always wish I had planted more.
• Narcissus “Jetfire”, N. “Tresamble”, N. “Felindre” and N. “St. Keverne” AGM. The latter is an absolute classic, yellow daffodil and is worth planting out in lawns or borders post flowering.

• Tulipa “Purissima”, T. “Flaming Spring Green”, T. “Havran”, T. “Prinses Irene”, T. “Recreado”, T. “Exotic Emperor”, T. “Request” …. I could go on!  All mid-sized, stocky tulips for centre stage.

   

In the Footlights

• Crocus “Advance’, C. “Herald” and C. “Snowbunting”.
• Narcissus “Baby Boomer”, N. “Elka”, N. “Jack Snipe”, N. “Baby Boomer”, N. “Segonvia” and N. “Toto”.
• Tulipa batalinii “Bronze Charm”, T. “Czar Peter” and T. “Early Harvest”. The latter is always one of the first bulbs to flower, sometimes in late January for me.
• Iris histrioides “George”, I. reticulata “Harmony”, I. histrioides “Lady Beatrix Stanley” and I. reticulata “Katherine Hodgkin”

 

Favourite Bulb Sources

Weather wise, the start of 2016 is beginning to feel like a re-run of 2015 – a mild winter followed by a chilly spring that refuses to get going. A number of false starts and we are back to cold nights and cool days again, today combined with squally showers. It is April after all. Yet there comes a point when, fuelled by longer daylight hours, most plants decide to forge ahead regardless of the temperature. In our coastal garden an enormous Geranium maderense “Album”, measuring over 7ft from side to side, is preparing to explode into its characteristic atomic cloud of blossom. The bees will go crazy for the myriad white flowers. Blue tits are supping on the nectar-rich flower spikes of Melianthus major and I can see nibs of icy-white in the leaf axils of Iris confusa. This is especially pleasing as I planted these exotic looking irises in November and had no expectations of flowers so soon.

Meanwhile the pots making up my bulb theatre are already disappearing beneath a proliferation of foliage and plump buds. Flowering has been incredibly patchy, with five or six varieties of narcissi yet to bloom and only Tulipa “National Velvet” showing so much as a blush of colour. All this bodes well for late April when we should be rewarded with a spectacular crescendo of colour to rival anything we’ve enjoyed before.

I adore crown imperials (Fritillaria imperialis) and will happily overlook all their faults; the foxy smell, the appeal to lily beetles and the randomness of their appearance above ground. For this spring I have planted F. imperialis “Sunset” (top of post), F. imperialis “William Rex” and F. imperialis “Maxima Lutea”. The former is the only one to flower so far and is very much living up to its name.

Back in early October I published a post entitled “Planting A Narrow Border for Spring Colour”. I am happy to report my little project has cheered up the path to our new house for weeks already and will have done its “thing” before the builders trample it under foot. The pansies and violas were an out-and-out disaster. Those that didn’t rot away at the base before Christmas have been chomped back to their skeletal frames by the snails. Everything else has been a triumph, starting with Tulipa “Early Harvest”, which was in bloom at the end of January, and now Narcissus “Professor Einstein” and double yellow N. “Apotheose”. Ipheions (spring starflowers) abound in neighbouring gardens, poking out between paving slabs and emerging at the base of walls, so I have supplemented existing clumps of an unknown pale blue variety with violet-blue Ipheion uniflorum “Froyle Mill”, a solitary flower of which can been seen at the bottom left of the image below. When the straggly leaves are crushed by my wheelbarrow they smell potently of garlic.

While the garden cruises towards May with minimal interference, there has been frantic activity behind the scenes. I have planted or replanted almost 40 dahlia tubers – too many for my garden, even with my “cram it all in and hope for the best” planting policy – and taken countless cuttings, most of which should properly have been taken in autumn. My gingers and cannas have all moved up a pot size, some now requiring industrial scale black plastic tubs that will satisfy their ambitions of world domination. Both my tiny propagators are bursting at the seams with tomato seedlings, castor oil plants and colocasias, all of which will be desperate for pricking out or potting on soon.

All my fun is about to come to an abrupt end with the start of our house conversion project. I had made a temporary and rather luxurious potting shed out of the half-gutted kitchen at Polegate Cottage. This will be one of the first rooms to be ripped apart to make way for our little garden room. The windowsill which is currently home to succulents and seedlings will be no more. The old metal sink in which I have washed a thousand pots will be relegated to a skip and the cupboards still crammed with nerine and lily bulbs waiting to be planted will be torn out and used for firewood. It was fun whilst it lasted. I am sure we’ll enjoy the new garden room more, even if it isn’t full of compost, grit and seed packets.

Needless to say I am drawing things out in the hopes that the builders will arrive just as it’s safe to start standing plants outside without fear of cold damage. The greenhouse is full to bursting, so there is no room at that particular inn. We have visitors coming next weekend so I have broken the back of what needed to be done, whilst at the same time managing to do something of a damage to my own spine. A week of rest and relaxation is what’s required!

Wishing you all a good week in your gardens. TFG.

I don’t have many dislikes. Of those I do, chief among them is waste. Rather ambitiously, one might say naively, I spent £300 on spring-flowering bulbs in September. A lucky few were planted in early October or early November between business trips, whilst the rest were stored safely; cool and dry under dust sheets in the dining room. I wrote a post concerning how late one could plant bulbs in mid November, fully expecting that I would get my own in the ground imminently. Events conspired against me. They were eventually salvaged from the builders’ debris just before Christmas, by which time I had neither the time or the inclination to do anything with them.

With the festivities over, I must procrastinate no further or risk wasting an awful lot of expensive bulbs. They are mostly tulips, but there are some narcissi, hyacinths and irises too. Many are new varieties that I am excited to try for the first time. Thanks to careful storage, most bulbs are still in good condition; a few are starting to feel a bit dehydrated and some others are producing anaemic shoots. The only precaution one needs to take when planting this late is to avoid breaking any of the tender shoots when firming the bulbs in.

I was determined to plant as many as I could this weekend and will report back on how they fare.

In avoiding waste, I often end up spending more: well, that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it. Off I went to the garden centre, planning to buy some ericaceous compost, and back I came with a boot full of rescue plants from the clearance section: a large, vigorous skimmia, two junipers, a tray of Christmas roses (Helleborus niger), three rosemarys (2 x R. ‘Roman Beauty’ and 1 x R. ‘Majorca Pink’), a bergenia, sweet box (Sarcococca confusa) and Loropetalum chinense ‘Ming Dynasty’, a shrub I always admire when I am in China. I will use these to start the process of disguising the rather ugly edifice the builders have left behind, unrendered and unpainted, before I decide on which climbers I will plant in spring to hide the patchy brickwork.

My first task, completed in cold, penetrating drizzle, was to plant up a couple of window boxes with evergreens and Christmas roses, underplanted with Narcissus ‘Winter Waltz’ (below) and Bellevalia paradoxa. Chilled to the bone, I retired inside to sit by a roaring fire, venturing out again on Sunday morning to be greeted by spring-like temperatures, birdsong, and the hum of an enormous bumble bee – the first of 2017. Mr Bumble was painfully camera-shy, but he wasn’t going to miss out on a hearty brunch of hellebore pollen.

Today I have ploughed my way through approximately 20 bags of bulbs, including Narcissus ‘Geranium’, N. ‘Avalanche’, N. ‘Merlin’ and N. ‘Tresamble’; Tulipa ‘Slawa’, T. ‘Maliaka’, T. ‘Lasting Love’ and T. ‘David Teniers’. I was surprised and encouraged by how few bulbs showed any sign of mould or shrivelling, although all looked much happier snuggled into a pot of John Innes no. 2 than they did in a brown paper bag.

However cold or warm the winter, however early or late they are planted, spring bulbs possess an amazing capacity to catch up and flower when nature intended. It could be a few weeks before Mr Bumble can return and enjoy plundering my daffodils for nectar, but in the meantime there will be a smattering of sweet box, Salvia ‘Hot Lips’, hellebore and Correa ‘Marian’s Marvel’ to snack on. At this time of year, one can’t afford to waste a thing.

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It was possibly a little too early to go out snowdrop spotting. In another year it might almost have been too late, but January and February have been cold and the flowers have responded accordingly. We arrived at Goodnestone Park just before midday and found the carpark already half full. A handful of hardy-looking types huddled near the garden gate, their scarves held aloft by a stiff easterly breeze. Even this far inland, the wind off the English Channel has a ferocious bite. As we flung open the car doors we caught a lung full of country air, laced with a heady cocktail of ozone and cow pat. No hint of the sensual perfumes held within the garden’s sheltered confines here.

Since lady Fitzwalter passed away in autumn 2015 the house and gardens at Goodnestone have undergone serious renovations. The Palladian Mansion has had a facelift and its interior has been tastefully decorated in manner befitting the paying guests that will now occupy its airy rooms. It is heartening to see Goodnestone’s magnificent sandstone portico gleaming in the low winter light, and freshly painted shutters at the windows. Occupation of the house may now restrict access to parts of the garden. This is a pity, but the grand old building must pay its way.

In the grounds, the focus seems to be on major structural work such as clearing woodland boundaries, removing low, decaying branches and pulling overgrown vegetation away from the ancient garden walls. It’s not glamorous stuff, but almost certainly necessary. One hopes that the flair and finesse Lady Fitzwalter brought to Goodnestone will prevail again, once the garden’s fragile infrastructure is secured. In front of the house, mirroring clumps of Betula utilis ‘Snow Queen’ have been planted at either end of the lower terrace, linked by an avenue of yews. These should be striking additions to the garden when they become established.

Peering through the windows of the enviable greenhouse, one could see young pelargoniums, helichrysums and marguerites potted up in readiness for May, when they will be set free into sheltered confines of the walled garden for visitors to enjoy. A poly tunnel was already planted out with various salad leaves, suggesting it’s very much business as usual in Goodnestone’s gardening department.

Back outside, the woodland garden provided shelter from the chill wind. It had snowed in Broadstairs, but nothing had settled. At Goodnestone little patches of thawing snow sheltered in gutters, among rocks and between stacks of logs. The ground was boggy underfoot and we soon had mud halfway up our legs. It was good to be out of our sanitised urban world for a change.

We’d expected to see snowdrops and aconites. These were present and correct, if not tightly braced against the cold weather, but it was the daphnes that stole the show. Their lanky frames were weighted down by a profusion of richly perfumed blossoms, garlanding every branch. It was so chilly that we struggled to catch the scent of sweet box or witch hazel, but not so the daphnes – their intoxicating fragrance carried as clean and clear on the air as a fine soprano. They were so lovely that I kept having to go back for another hearty sniff. (Daphnes will tolerate chalk, the prevailing soil type at Goodnestone, and so ought to do well in our Broadstairs garden too.)

An abundance of mature, winter-flowering shrubs, as well as colourful dogwoods and honey-coloured grasses suggests that Lady Fitzwalter planned her woodland garden as carefully for winter as she did for the spring, summer and autumn. The famous walled gardens are much quieter at this time of year, biding their time until spring comes. Any action here is happening beneath the soil surface.

With cold hands and ruddy faces we returned to the car, passing up the opportunity of tea and cake in order to collect yet another load of logs to keep our trio of woodburners roaring at home. Our first garden visit of 2017 under our belts, Him Indoors exclaimed ‘which one are we going to next then?’. Having established that he hadn’t suffered a stroke or some kind of memory loss, I quickly suggested Sissinghurst and put a date in our diary. Opportunities like that don’t come along very often.

Goodnestone Park’s 2017 open days are as follows:

• March: Sunday 26th: in aid of NGS from 12 – 5
• April – September: Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Bank Holidays from 11 – 5. The tea room is open May – August on garden open days. Open for the NGS on Saturday 27th May from 12 – 5
• October: Sunday 1st – in aid of NGS from 12 – 4

I recommend checking the garden’s website before making a special journey, just in case.

Wishing you a fabulous week ahead. TFG.

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I’ve been out of town this weekend, enjoying the delights of Surrey’s innumerable hostelries in the company of my university friends. It’s the 19th year on the trot we’ve held a spring reunion. The occasion took place on Good Friday until we grew up and family commitments started to take precedence. Now we are more flexible about the date. The rendezvous has nothing at all to do with plants, and everything to do with beer and recounting lewd tales from the years we lived together. None of these will be repeated here lest I go down in your estimation, which I most certainly would. Truth is, you had to be there to find them even vaguely humorous.

Either side of the boozing and storytelling, I did get to spend time in our London garden. By now it is crying out for some tender loving care, having been cast into darkness since October. A blackbird has ensured the soil surface has had a good picking over (too good in places) and the earthworms have taken care of any remaining autumn leaves. Mr Fox has caused a lot less mischief this winter, although his presence can still be detected. It may well be that he finds the freshly raked vegetable beds too irresistible to ignore, creating havoc with the oriental salads, radishes and opium poppies I have sown today.

Frequent showers meant there was no need to water my seeds in. Precipitation alternated between rain and hail, which made the going tough, especially since I still had a slightly sore head. I can’t imagine why. Inspecting hellebores is an excellent hangover remedy, or cure for mild depression. I was happy to find some of those I thought I might have lost, flowering in dark corners of the garden. All of my hellebores hail from Bosvigo in Cornwall, including one with bright yellow nectaries and primose yellow petals purchased last year. It hasn’t come back quite as strongly as I had hoped, despite a lot of pampering. Meanwhile the reds, plums and blacks have come on a treat, each plant now surrounded by a miniature lawn of seedlings. I will grow some on to see if I have created any worthy new hybrids of my own. Please excuse my fingers in the photographs below.

The snowdrops are coming to an end, but G. ‘Seagull’ is still going strong. It’s hard to believe that the single flowering bulb I purchased for £20 in 2015 produced three blooms in 2016 and now eight in 2017. That feels like a good investment to me. Success with snowdrops, but not one single aconite from the clutch planted last year. Perhaps something ate the bulbs as the conditions should have been ideal for aconites. Clumps of blue Anemone blanda I planted at the same time have returned with gusto all over the garden; a surprise given our soggy soil. You win some and lose some in gardening, and often there’s no rhyme or reason to what survives and what perishes.

An early night is on the cards, but not before I sort out an order for clematis to be sent to Broadstairs. These will line the path to our back door and provide company for a venerable old viticella named ‘Etoile Violette’. I am tempted to stick with viticella types as they flower at such a useful time in the summer and seem to tolerate draughty conditions. The forecast for the week ahead is for mild and wet weather, which should create perfect planting conditions for next weekend. You never know, I might have sobered up by then.

I’d love to hear what signs of spring you’ve noted in your own garden this weekend, and wish you a happy week ahead. TFG.

It’s all going on in the garden right now. The plants have had a sniff of spring and now they are intoxicated, thrusting out of the ground, sending tendrils hither and thither and scrambling up in search of light and warmth. They’ve discovered the powerful drug that is spring. The energy that was quelled by cold, short days has been unleashed: the advance of the gardening year is unstoppable. Sadly I am not. An hour in the garden this afternoon and I decided that I was neither doing myself nor the garden a lot of good. My cough is incessant – that is annoying – but I am hot and bothered one moment and ice cold the next. Hence I am taking my own advice and sitting down in the garden room to write this post with a nice strong cup of tea.

Most striking this week is the speed with which the daffodils have bloomed. I am already in love with Narcissus ‘Winter Waltz’ (above), which is new to me this year and going great guns outside the front door. By the back door I have two pots of N. ‘Cragford’ grown from bulbs saved last year. Their scent is wonderful. I continue to marvel at the stamina of Correa ‘Marian’s Marvel’ (below), flowering for its sixth consecutive month. So few shrubs possess this kind of staying power. A new, larger pot beckons when the show is finally over: the current one dries out and blows over far too easily.

Plants that looked sallow and sullen all winter are starting to perk up nicely. Calceolaria integrifolia ‘Kentish Hero’ is among them, having spent winter in the greenhouse looking jaundiced and ugly. All of a sudden the foliage is apple green and vigorous again. Dark leaved aeoniums respond instantly to sunshine, turning darker and more lustrous by the day. Unfortunately a convoy of green caterpillars has munched its through most of the leaf rosettes, despite me mounting a weekly patrol. Fortunately Aeonium arboreum ‘Velour’ has escaped the worst of the caterpillars’ chompings and has swiftly regained its handsome colouring.

Keeping with the reddish theme, a Skimmia japonica ‘Rubella’ I rescued from the garden centre in the January sale is in full bloom. The flowers smell good and are rich in pollen. I know this because I brushed against them this morning and ended up with bright yellow calves. I spied several bees foraging for food as I attempted to capture an image of the mass of tiny flowers. Skimmia will tolerate our chalky soil if planted with lots of organic matter, but generally prefer acid conditions.

Instead of pottering and taking photos I should really be tackling serious jobs, like ridding the back fence of a Hybrid Tea rose that’s been completely overwhelmed by its rampant rootstock and moving the slab of stone that was once our doorstep. The builders steadfastly ignored every instruction to remove it whilst they were working on the house, in the way that only builders can. I now refer to it as ‘the tombstone’, propped against the wall as if age had toppled it and scrubbed out the epitaph. I would make a feature of it were it not precisely where I wish to plant the Magnolia grandiflora ‘Exmouth’ waiting patiently alongside.

Meanwhile the greenhouse is sheltering five healthy new clematis, including pink C. texensis ‘Princess Diana’, purple and white C. texensis ‘Princess Kate, red C. viticella ‘Kermesina’ and white C. ‘Forever Friends’. Having arrived last weekend they have already grown six inches and will need to be planted out before they start clinging inextricably to the staging.

Tomorrow is another day and hopefully there will be more gardening and less coughing to be done. My tea now finished, I think I can hear the doctor ordering a gin and tonic. It’s not just the plants that enjoy being intoxicated.

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With April bright on the horizon I am already having to get a wiggle on to keep up with what needs doing in our garden. Within a fortnight that wiggle will have become a jog, and by early May I’ll be sprinting just to stand still. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.

At the coast, having prepared out our front / old garden for spring last weekend, all that remained to do was set up my bulb theatre. Apart from two pots crammed with Narcissus ‘Winter Waltz’, all the other bulbs are weeks behind where I’d expect them to be owing to me planting them so late. Nevertheless, hundreds of daffodils, tulips and hyacinths are pushing bravely through their gravel mulch and will be in flower before I know it. Who cares if they are late, so long as they are please me?

I took the opportunity to bask in the spring sunshine by using our garden table as a potting bench. During the week I received several streptocarpus, begonia and impatiens cuttings from Dibleys, all of which required potting on. I was impressed with the condition in which they arrived and expect them to grow big and strong. I am especially excited by Impatiens niamniamensis, the Congo cockatoo, which has all the right exotic qualities for our seaside garden.

After Desert Island Discs it was time to give our back / new garden some attention. We attempted to move the old front door step, otherwise known as the ‘tombstone’, and it promptly cracked, like a bar of Dairy Milk, right across the middle. In an unusual display of energy Him Indoors proceeded to smash it to smithereens and to the tip it went. Meanwhile I was left with a narrow bed of sterile looking chalk and old bricks to plant up. After removing as much raw chalk and debris as possible I added a couple of sacks of well-rotted farmyard manure, a few handfuls of blood, fish and bone, and gave the whole lot a good turning over with a spade.

In went Magnolia grandiflora ‘Exmouth’, which has made its way to Kent, via London, from deepest Cornwall. At its feet I planted six Amaryllis belladonna and three Eucomis montana, all from Broadleigh Gardens in Somerset. We need plenty of herbs in this garden, the front / old garden having become increasingly shady, so in went Rosmarinus ‘Majorca Pink’ just below one of the sashes. R. ‘Majorca Pink’ is a tall, upright rosemary. One day we should be able to pluck a sprig or two just by opening the window and reaching out. As a temporary measure I have plonked in a few plum-coloured polyanthus and Narcissus ‘Tete a Tete’ purely for some colour whilst everything else gets established.

Having blown over again this week, I decided to transfer Correa ‘Marian’s Marvel’ to a heavier pot. Correas do not make a big root system and so don’t need an especially large pot, however they do look appreciably better upright rather than on their side. If I had a pound for every flower this plant has produced since October I would be living it up in a five-star hotel in the Bahamas right now, and still it keeps going.

Next weekend things speed up. I have a fence to paint, four clematis to plant, a wild rose to dig out, more hardcore to take to the tip, dahlias, gingers and cannas to pot up, seeds to sow …. the list goes on. If I think about it too much, I will grind to a halt. The trick is to keep on running.

Wishing you a happy week in your garden. TFG.

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If I were to win the lottery, The Salutation is the house I’d want to live in. I’d spend every spring and summer there, before overwintering in Capri, or the Caribbean; I can’t decide which. It’s probably not a choice I’ll ever be called on to make, but I like to think about it nevertheless.

Our first visit to The Salutation each spring is one I always look forward to; foremost because it’s an opportunity to admire the garden’s fine structure before it becomes shrouded in foliage and flowers. Whilst Edwin Lutyens would surely recognise today’s layout as his own, The Salutation is an unusual combination of informal features, such as Lake Patricia and the Woodland Garden, and the elegant formality for which the architect is famed. Packed into three acres on the edge of Sandwich, every inch of the garden is on show, which must be quite a challenge for the gardening team lead by Head Gardener Steve Edney.

Over winter there have been some minor changes to the layout; the removal of some hedges; the creation of a new area just off the long border, which I suspect might be an extension of the tropical garden; and a major overhaul of the space surrounding the potting sheds and greenhouses. Everything was looking particularly spick and span when we visited last weekend to renew our season tickets and get some fresh air.

The Salutation’s tulips and hyacinths are way ahead of my own, basking on the warm, dry, south-facing bank that skirts the long border. The scent of hyacinths was intoxicating, and the hum of red-tailed bumble bees so loud it was almost deafening. Accompanying the bees with their coarse calls were innumerable seagulls, a reminder that the English Channel is not far away. In December 2013 the briny came too close for comfort when it flooded a significant part of the garden, including the Long Border. Four years later, apart from the unevenness of the path, one would never know the garden had been inundated with salty water.

Within moments Him Indoors had taken to a garden bench to consult his phone, which these days appears to be superglued to his hands. It seems gardens are no distraction from the allure of Facebook. Behind him in this picture are several clumped banana plants, still carefully wrapped in fleece and hessian lest they experience a late, damaging frost.

Having taken the obligatory shot of the Queen Anne inspired facade from the end of the double borders, and not a good one I’m sorry to say, I ventured into the Woodland Garden.

Since the great flood, the Woodland Garden had been left to its own devices, becoming slightly down at heel. Over winter the garden’s winding paths have been spruced up. There are new vistas into the rest of the garden and evidence of new planting.

Every year I marvel at the quantity of blue and white Anemone blanda that flood out of the Woodland Garden onto the lawn, surging like a floral tide towards the perennial borders.

At the Holm Oak Walk one is reminded exactly who designed this handsome garden. The immaculately clipped evergreen columns, their simple underplanting of roses and lavender, the mighty oak gate in the garden wall, presided over by an exaggerated key stone, are all Lutyens’ signatures. When either side of the Holm Oak Walk the gardens are frothing and fizzing, this stately axis remains calm and quiet.

I never seem to hit the White Garden at quite the right moment. As much as I like the concept of single colour gardens, this one doesn’t do a lot for me. The layout is clever, with deep, box-edged borders and narrow paths, but even the addition of plants with black foliage doesn’t lift the slightly melancholy air. A tall specimen of Daphne bholua ‘Peter Smithers’ provides delicious scent on the way out.

I would much rather be on the close-mown bowling green, where the borders to either side are stuffed with an artful mix of foliage and flowers sharing similar reddish tones. At this time of year there is less to see, but an edging of Bergenia cordifolia ‘Winterglut’ provides both burgundy foliage and waxy, magenta-pink flowers in spring. I spotted a couple of rogue Muscari macrocarpum ‘Golden Fragrance’ in one patch, a bulb I have tried and failed to grow, but which is lovely enough for me to try again.

The Yellow Garden, at the end of the circuit, is crowned with a circlet of narcissi in spring. More hyacinths have been added, which is as good for the bees as it is for visitors. This is a lovely idea that anyone with a lawn might replicate: and it relieves one of the obligation to cut the grass until all the bulb foliage has died right down.

The clock ticking on the car park we were in and out of the garden within an hour, but not without acquiring a pot of Moroccan spearmint (Mentha spicata) and a single stick of Clerodendrum bungei, a plant I have hankered after for years. It’s a shrub that throws up suckers hither and thither, but with large corymbs of pink blossom in late summer it is worth any hassle.

Ten years after opening to the public following extensive restoration, The Salutation is hosting a series of masterclasses, courses and tours throughout 2017. Click here for more details.

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It’s rare that I sacrifice commentary for imagery, but as I look back over the photographs I took at Great Dixter last weekend, I can’t help feeling they speak for themselves. And, being without my laptop, I’m also going to publish them as they were taken, with minimal enhancement and just a brief description.

I will save words to convey my thoughts on the gorgeous displays of spring bulbs and blossom in a forthcoming post. For now, please enjoy a dozen of the scenes that most captivated me last Saturday. TFG.

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The recent chilly weather has had its pros and cons. The downside for eager gardeners who have been nurturing seedlings and planting out bedding is that these tender charges now need protection to save them from harm. The upside, for those of us who love spring bulbs, is that the cold has prolonged the display of flowers, which can be so fleeting when it’s warmer.

Owing to my own tardiness when it came to getting my bulbs into pots last autumn, the flowering of tulips and daffodils at The Watch House was already delayed by several weeks: I would not be at all surprised if I still had daffodils flowering in May. However, flower they will, and the succession of colourful bowls, chalices and trumpets exploding from pots around my front door will give me joy for that much longer.

In three months’ time I will sit down and plan my spring displays for next year. The bulb catalogues will start to plop through the letter box immediately after Chelsea, but it’s a while before I can bring myself to peruse them. I have three sources of inspiration when it comes to which bulbs I choose: my own garden, based on what’s worked well in the past; Sarah Raven, who has a genius for combining bulbs in the colours I favour; and Great Dixter, one of the few great gardens that celebrate the art of planting in pots.

Like me, Great Dixter’s creator, Christopher Lloyd, was not interested in polite gardening. Nor was he concerned by making his garden ‘low maintenance’, a ghastly term which sets my teeth on edge in the same way as ‘lite bite’ or ‘omnichannel’. Christopher was famed for breaking the rules and experimenting with new plants and brave colour combinations, often changing bedding schemes three or four times a year. Potted plants, especially annuals, tender perennials and architectural exotics were, and still are, used in large, skillfully staged and regularly revised arrangements. The impact of beautifully grown, unusual plants, combined for theatrical effect is always thrilling. Since our garden at The Watch House was created ten years ago, I have striven to achieve the same drama, albeit on a smaller scale.

“My main use of pots is clustered on either side of the porch entrance at the front of the house, where they are a cheerful sight as I come and go. Being in a noticeable position, the plants get plenty of attention – more, probably, than those in any other part of the garden.”

Christopher Lloyd

The catch for the average gardener, and I count myself as one of them, is where to put all these pots before and after their starring moment. In his book, Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners, Christopher suggests an ‘out of the way space’, but acknowledges that a greenhouse makes it possible to include more exciting plants. My tiny new garden and greenhouse has given me a good solution to the challenge I have ‘next door’, although moving heavy pots between locations still means lugging them up and down the road. Before that I managed adequately by lining containers up along the narrow passage leading to our front door, or by hiding them in one of our basement light wells until they could reach up for the light no longer.

No such challenges at Great Dixter of course, where there’s ample space in the garden’s nursery to nurture pots until they reach their prime. Nevertheless, the planning and planting of seasonal containers must be a mammoth and high-profile task for the gardening team. Visitors to Great Dixter expect the famous displays either side of the porch entrance, and in the Wall and Blue gardens, to live up to Christopher Lloyd’s brilliant example every time.

By and large they do. On the occasion of the Spring Plant Fair earlier this month they were gaily planted, each with a single colour or variety of narcissus, tulip, or hyacinth. Unlike Sarah Raven, who likes to mix colours that harmonise or bounce off one another, Christopher Lloyd preferred one colour per pot: so do I. Mixed plants and colours are fine when the container is particularly large, or standing in splendid isolation, but when grouped together they can look a bit messy.

I pack my bulbs in by planting them in multiple layers, but am still astounded by the density of flowers, narcissi especially, that force themselves into the chill air from Dixter’s army of terracotta pots: in the larger ones there must be between 50 and 100 bulbs. To recreate this at home without going bankrupt it’s a good idea to buy from a wholesale catalogue, such a J. Parker, rather than a retail outlet. That way you get a lot more bloom for your buck.

On my recent visit the colour combinations were not exactly sophisticated, but that’s OK. For me, spring is when I simply need a blast of bright, in-your-face, rude colour to shake me out of my winter stupor. These pots certainly did the trick. The scent of hyacinths and narcissi was enough to sooth any biliousness caused by clashing colours, and the backdrop of conifers, a plant group Fergus Garrett will undoubtedly propel back into vogue very soon, added a touch of retro garden glamour.

Although hard work at times, pots are enormous fun to work with, offering opportunities to try new things before committing them to the border.

“Pots are great for experimenting with plants. Anything new to us that’s exotic-looking starts life in a pot – that way we can see how long it flowers, how tall it grows and how it stands up to what we can offer. We can can also learn to manage it before it takes precious space”

Christopher Lloyd

Even if you begin with three, five or seven pots in a group, you can quickly and cheaply create a spectacular display with as much fire power as the most carefully conceived herbaceous border, yet in a fraction of the space. And, when the flowers fade, you can whip the plants out and replace them with something more exciting. The best kind of instant gardening.

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It was British Prime Minister Harold Wilson who first said ‘a week is a long time in politics’. Almost sixty years later, his words have proved as sage now as then. Had Harold Wilson been a keen gardener, and I can find no evidence that he was, he would have found gardening no less of a roller-coaster ride. One minute there’s nothing doing, all quiet on the Western Front, and in a trice it’s actions stations, curtains up, tah-dah time.

Despite every disadvantage my spring bulb theatre is going to put on a show-stopping performance, bang on cue for the Bank Holiday. An all-star cast of tulips, hyacinths and daffodils, supported by a cheerful chorus of osteospermums, is about to hit all the right notes. I am quite astonished that it’s all come together after a lot of sub text-book gardening practices were employed, but that’s bulbs for you: they have a knack of compensating for human incompetence and the vagaries of the weather.

The tulip I am most enamoured of this season is called ‘Lasting Love’. It has oxblood-red, chalice-shaped flowers. The petals have a lustrous quality which makes them come alive in the sunshine, bringing out the richness of the red. The foliage, not usually worth writing home about when it comes to tulips, is attractively wavy. I have positioned ‘Lasting Love’ next to Euphorbia ‘Blackbrid’ – a match made in heaven. Next door, a partnership fashioned somewhere vastly less salubrious is Tropaeolum tricolor with Loropetalum ‘Ming Dynasty’. Please believe me when I tell you that this unfortunate coupling was not planned, but now it’s happened I don’t have the heart to tear them apart.

Last weekend, Martin The Garden Centre Man tempted me by waggling a new delivery of pale pink rhodohypoxis under my nose. Overlooking the lurid pink pots in which the nursery had supplied them, I could see their potential as subjects for a shallow bowl and purchased three potfulls. Having not grown these diminutive South African bulbs before I quickly researched and found out they favoured a moist, acidic, gritty compost. They are possibly a little too particular in their tastes to live for long in my care, but I am excited to see how I get on.

Given a choice of unpredictable occupations, I’d choose gardening over politics any time. It’s taken me a week to write this post, in which time the general election has gathered pace, there has been another terrorist arrested in London and the pound has finally started to rally against the dollar. Meanwhile, in the garden, hostas have unfurled, pleiones have bloomed and pak choi has been planted in the vegetable garden. Weeks like that can last as long as they like.

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Spring is arriving in slow motion at The Watch House. I’ve been watching a single bud of Narcissus ‘Golden Ducat’ striving to open for ten days, willing it to reveal the acid-yellow petals tightly furled within. My clematis have been held in suspended animation since early February, their tender shoots primed and raring to go. Fortunately they’ve been stalled rather than damaged by the cold, and snails are still too inactive to make a meal of them. I notice how Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’, stripped of every last leaf by the gales, is hesitantly producing tiny flower buds along its naked stems. Each one looks like a tiny dolls’ house bouquet. In another year the tight buds would already have opened into clusters of yellow pom-poms the size of my fist. Of all the spring-flowering bulbs, only hyacinths have carried on regardless, shrugging off rain and snow to bloom as well as they have ever done. In fact they’ve made shorter, stouter, better plants all round. My absolute favourite, Cadbury-purple Hyacinth ‘Woodstock’, is a joy to behold, despite having no friends to play with. The first of the tulips are still a good couple of weeks away.

I can’t recall the last time the majority of my daffodils were not either in full bloom or starting to fade at the beginning of April. Apart from N. ‘Jetfire’ and N. ‘Winter Waltz’ (both varieties with N. cyclamineus as a parent) the majority are still in bud. When we do get a sustained period of warmer weather, highly scented varieties such as N. ‘Cragford’ and N. ‘Avalanche’ (both tazetta types) will come out in a trice, but they will be late by any standards. Sixty-odd bulbs of N. ‘Golden Ducat’ were purchased on a whim back in August and planted promptly in large pots. I usually go for small, single or multi-flowered daffodils but ‘Golden Ducat’ is a tall, sturdy double with waterlily-shaped flowers. After such a cold, drab March I shall welcome any and every type of flower with an open heart, including these whoppers.

The entire Easter weekend was spent gardening: my aching limbs have been reminding me of that ever since. Despite all the exertion I found I wanted to eat less, and I slept a whole lot better. This made me realise that I really should take more exercise. For me to have four uninterrupted days in the garden is exceptional and I loved every minute, even when it rained, which it did the majority of the time. I’ve equipped the workshop with an LED worklight almost bright enough to illuminate the moon. In this way, when the rain and wind get too much, I can get under cover and do some potting. In the greenhouse, Tropaeolum tricolor is resplendent, having not produced a single flower last year. All I did was repot the stringy roots in autumn and this seems to have done the trick. What strange, yet fascinating little flowers they are, like shoals of tropical fish.

As predicted I didn’t get half way down my list of weekend jobs. Maybe I achieved a third, and then only by picking off the easier tasks. I doubled the size of my gravel garden, taking it from ‘minuscule’ to simply ‘tiny’, and made enough space in the greenhouse to start bringing on begonias and dahlias. Assessing the quantity of plants stashed indoors and in the workshop, I very quickly reached the conclusion that I have too many. I must not buy any more. What are the odds on me adhering to that?

I am heartily pleased to find that Echium candicans, commonly known as pride of Madeira, has survived everything the winter has thrown at it, including confinement to a pot which is much too small. As a reward, I’ve moved it into a much bigger one and placed it immediately outside my French windows. When it flowers, which will be soon, I’ll be able to watch the bees feasting on the echium’s purplish-blue flowers.

The benefit of sustained cold through March is that us gardeners still have plenty of spring action to look forward to. Many of us will have lost plants to snow, ice or wind. We sorely need cheering up. Plants have a knack of catching up (provided they are still alive) so that by May we will all be wondering why we were so down in the dumps. In the meantime I encourage you to enjoy the lingering hellebores and daffodils, use the appalling weather as a convenient excuse for not planting seeds / painting the fence / mowing the lawn and take your seats for the late late April show, coming soon to a garden near you. TFG.

As great days out go, I rank a visit to the Cornwall Spring Flower Show up there with Chelsea and Sissinghurst. It’s a special day for many reasons. The setting alone, deep in rolling parkland at Boconnoc near Lostwithiel, makes it worth a trip from near or far. The Boconnoc Estate has been at the heart of Cornish affairs for over a thousand years. The park, gardens and house wear a mantle of delightfully unspoiled antiquity. From the approach along narrow lanes lined with craggy oaks, one feels transported back to a different era. Look north, south, east or west and you’ll find nothing to connect you with with the twenty-first century, not even a phone signal. Even those whose cars got stuck in the mud on the way into the carpark would have to agree that there are few estates in Cornwall so lovely as Boconnoc.

And then there’s the show itself, one of the earliest in the year and unquestionably the best showcase there is for Cornish specialities, notably magnolias, camellias and daffodils. Entries into the competitive classes are exhibited in the Stable Yard buildings, filling them with colour and scent. All the great estates participate, as well as private gardeners and plant collectors. Not all the entries are top notch, but it’s the taking part that keeps the show alive. Incredibly after such a harsh winter, there was plenty to admire, among the most impressive being a collection of outdoor trees and shrubs exhibited by the hosts, winning first prize and the Rosemary Cobbald-Sawle Cup. The tiered display included generous bouquets of stachyurus, azalea, osmanthus, cherry blossom, Rhododendron macabeanum and pieris (see lead image).

Unlike the big RHS shows, The Cornwall Spring Flower Show is not centred around large, expensive, show gardens, although there were one or two small ones to break up the other exhibits. R&A Scamp’s showcase of daffodils is always a joy and the catalogue a ‘must have’. No time like the present for planning next year’s display! My friends were dazzled by the sheer variety of daffodils available, drooling over the flouncy doubles and split corollas. I prefer my daffodils slightly plainer, and found myself particularly drawn to canary-yellow ‘Arctic Gold’ and diminutive ‘Twinkling Yellow’.

The quality of the nurserymen and women that attend the show is, for me, second to none and more akin to what you’d find at a rare plant fair. If I had to single out a few it would of course include Burncoose for shrubby plants, especially magnolias; Crug Farm Plants for scheffleras; Penberth Plants for proteas, restios and succulents and Barracott Plants for all manner of exotic and architectural plants. New to me was Nicholas Lock, a grower of rare trees and shrubs who was offering the most jaw-dropping array of shrubs and trees. Judging by the twenty-two page plant list, Nicholas has a penchant for buddleias and euonymus, as well as corneas and acers.

Realising that resistance would be futile, I decided to make three of my four purchases here. I can barely contain my excitement at acquiring Buddleia speciosissima, an incredibly sought-after buddleia with felted silver leaves and bright red flowers. I also passed up the Drimys winteri I’ve wanted for so long in favour of a different species, Drimys granadensis, a plant which I’m assured will not grow as large as D. winteri and will therefore be better for my garden.

We had a lovely chat with Selma Klophaus, a Landscape Architect who also turns her hand to growing unusual and tender plants such as echiums, sonchus and dudleyas. Selma explained how she loves to experiment and try new plants, which is very much in tune with my approach to gardening. Along with many other good Cornish nurseries she will be taking plants along to Rare Plant Fair at Tregrehan on June 3rd, and to a new plant fair she is helping to organise at Tremenheere Sculpture Garden on September 9th.

Following Saturday’s wash out, those who made it as far as the carpark were blessed with glorious weather. The spring sunshine was warm enough to allow us to sit outside and enjoy lunch (falafel) and a drink (Cornish beer) and get some colour in our cheeks. I could happily have done the whole day again, only this time with a pick-up truck to transport all my purchases home. Alas I had to restrict myself to what I could manage on the train. Here’s The Damage:

1. Drimys granadensis – a broadleaf, evergreen shrub or tree native to tropical montane forests in Peru and Southern Mexico. It has large, white daisy-like flowers and green leaves with a striking, silver reverse.
2. Pittosporum bicolor – otherwise known as Tasmanian whitewood or Victorian cheesewood, this columnar shrub looks nothing like a pittosporum and more like a berberis. The flowers are fragrant and yellow with a maroon flush.
3. Buddleia speciosissima – A rare species found only on Mount Itatiaia in Brazil where it occupies rocky grassland habitats. It is blessed with silver leaves and tubular red flowers, not unlike those of Nicotiana sylvestris, only scarlet.
4. Schefflera gracilis – A small, slender evergreen forest tree with fabulous foliage. Hails from Vietnam.

The Cornwall Spring Flower Show is organised annually by the Cornwall Garden Society and is sponsored by Atkins Ferrie Wealth Management.

Oh the irony. For the last three years our National Gardens Scheme area organiser has been asking if we’d open the garden for a spring viewing and this year we thought we might just take the plunge. It’s always been such a guessing game, anticipating when the daffodils and tulips might be at their best, added to which we are often away precisely when the display peaks. Of course, Sod’s law, this year the Jungle Garden is looking better than ever, it’s a riot of unselfconscious colour flattered by copious amounts of green. All our stars are aligned, bar one: thanks to Covid 19 we can’t open and nor can anyone come and visit. It’s a great pity. Despite that we are loving every moment in our own private Keukenhof, especially given the fine weather we’ve been enjoying over Easter.

For the first time in many years we planted up part of the raised bed with tulip bulbs last autumn. This exercise is always reliant on there being open ground available, but having removed some dahlias, and after lifting the canopy of our bay tree, we had a golden opportunity. We deliberately selected shorter, sturdier cultivars that would survive the wind that whips along this stretch of the garden. They included ‘Orange Dynasty’, ‘Showcase’, ‘Slawa’ and ‘Request’. Tulip ‘Apricot Beauty’ has flopped both visually and physically; the flowers have proved too pale and pasty in the company of the others, and the stems have also proved too weak.

Planting tulips in the raised bed has added a new dimension to our spring bulb display and will be built on for 2021. Whilst we have managed to get tulips flowering from the sunny front edge to the dry, shady back edge, we are lacking height. Next year we plan to add crown imperials (Fritillaria imperialis) to remedy that and to add drama and exoticism to the display. We both love crown imperials and I even enjoy the foxy smell. In pots, F. ‘Orange Beauty’ (below) is doing exceptionally well. We also have plans to remove the large table and take the rows of pots through from one end of the garden to the other, creating more of a bulb ‘grandstand’ than a ‘theatre’. As usual, this will depend on time and money rather than ambition.

I am frequently asked what I do with all my bulbs once they’ve finished flowering. Daffodils are allowed to die down and are stored dry in their pots until August or September, when the bigger bulbs are repotted in fresh compost. Tulips, without exception, go on the compost heap and I order fresh ones over the summer. Some people are appalled by this (including The Beau), but it’s really not worth the effort and disappointment of storing and growing bulbs that are unlikely to re-flower satisfactorily. Our tulips will receive the same treatment this year, but the daffodils will go up to the allotment where they’ll be planted in rows, ‘in the green’, to be grown as cut flowers next spring. There is space between the rows of autumn-fruiting raspberries which will be perfect for daffodils.

We have a couple of new favourites this year, Narcissus ‘Pink Charm’ and N. ‘June Allyson’. Unusually for J. Parker’s, the bulbs we ordered as Narcissus ‘Altruist’, the most gorgeous orange-sherbet daffodil you ever did see, have turned out to be an entirely different cultivar. I’ve no idea which. No matter, they all look marvellously pretty together and we shall buy more ‘Altruist’ for next year.

As for tulips, we picked a colour scheme each; mine for the Jungle Garden and The Beau’s for the Gin & Tonic Garden. For a variety of reasons we never got around to moving the pots into the Gin & Tonic Garden so they’ve all been bundled in together and there’s very little coordination as a consequence. I don’t believe that coordination matters in spring, we’re all just happy to see flowers, whatever colour they may be. The Beau favours tulips with two-tone flowers – either red and white or red and yellow – whilst I tend towards rich, single colours like orange, rust, plum and ruby. I daresay we’ll make more of an effort in the Gin & Tonic Garden next spring but it’s been good (and sensible) to have a single space to focus on for this year.

There are a great many tulips left to bloom, but our favourites so far have been T. ‘Zombie’, T. ‘First Impression’ (personally I think a better name would have been ‘Ronald McDonald’ owing to its garish red and yellow flowers), T. ‘Slawa’ and T. ‘Orange Dynasty’, which is always on my shopping list. All the parrots and viridifloras have yet to bloom, including ‘Black Parrot’, ‘Amazing Parrot’ and ‘Golden Artist’. With luck they’ll be flowering well into May as the exotics start to creep out of the workshop.

I could not sign off without mentioning Geranium maderense, a tender geranium from Madeira that is a signature plant here at The Watch House. It is not at all hardy, which is why it’s rarely seen in gardens outside Cornwall, but when it finds a happy place it seeds around so freely that you’ll never be without it. We have about ten plants in total this year – a mix of the species and a white cultivar named ‘Guernsey White’. They are each beginning to flower and will die shortly after producing a prodigious quantity of seed. I find it difficult to decide whether I like the white or the pink form most – like favourite children it’s impossible to choose. Both are spectacular in leaf and in bloom.

Geranium maderense is a large, lush, monocarpic geranium suited to only the mildest UK gardens. Elsewhere it will grow successfully in a large pot that can be moved inside over winter.

Although we are both working full time through the current lockdown we have a lot more time to spend on the garden and the allotment. This is really paying dividends, not just for our plots, but also for our mental health. I am so much happier being close to home and able to interact with my garden on a daily basis. It’s been wonderful to enjoy the sensation of gardening at leisure rather than under continual pressure, which is how it sometimes is at The Watch House. That pressure will inevitably come as the days get longer and everything starts growing like topsy. So, just for now, I’m going to stop and take satisfaction from being vaguely on top of things. I am certain this was not the Easter break any of us had planned, but it was far from without its pleasures.

Wishing you a happy, healthy week ahead. TFG.

N.B. This post was exclusively published on The Frustrated Gardener. If you are reading this on any other blog, it has been illegally ‘scraped’ by some unscrupulous folk who don’t have the talent or knowledge to write their own material. Come on over to The Frustrated Gardener and leave the pale imitation to shrivel on its virtual vine.

Our garden is at its lowest ebb from early February until the Ides of March, on the 15th of the month. Battered by gales laden with salt and sand, scorched by snow and starved of light, everything but the eternal evergreens* is pale, frazzled or mushy. I try to like what I see, but I yearn for it to be April and for the blemishes of winter to be erased by lush new growth. By normal standards, our spring bulbs have been extremely slow to get going, although we do now have a smattering of hyacinths, daffodils and crocuses to enjoy. These offer a sure sign that spring is underway and that more colour will follow. We now have well over one hundred terracotta pots in their final positions, containing tulips, narcissi, hyacinths, anemones, ranunculus, lilies and hardy orchids. The emerging foliage of persicarias and hostas will help to break up a sea of flowers. At least that is the theory. Anything especially good looking or precious will be promoted to the worktop of our outdoor kitchen to be admired at close quarters.

The tasks we’ve been undertaking over the last fortnight are not glamorous; they have not lent themselves to pretty photographs, hence I have been short of excitement to share here. We’ve emptied and cleaned the greenhouse, repainted the fence around the Gin & Tonic Garden (at least The Beau has), repotted about twenty percent of our perennials, house plants and shrubs, and started umpteen dahlias and begonias into growth: the spare bedrooms are filling up fast. First to sprout are Dahlias ‘Twynings After Eight’, ‘Fubuki Red and White’ and ‘Burning Love’. The rest will not be far behind. On the allotment, we’ve planted eight fruit trees (plums, damsons, apples and a cherry), then weeded and dug in anticipation of more planting once the weather warms up a little. Our homage to the Dutch bulb fields, a square bed planted with 15 varieties of tulip in straight rows, is a source of great anticipation. The lines are now evident and it’s fascinating to observe the differences in leaf colour and shape as they emerge from the cold earth.

Deliveries of bulbs, seeds and plants keep on coming. These first packages are modest in size, but there are many more to follow. If there’s one thing I have learned from last year, it’s not to be caught short, so I am already stocked up with pots, fertilisers and composts to keep me going for a few weeks at a time. It looks like it will be a bumper year for the nurserymen as the nation prepares itself for another summer spent in the garden. I am returning to those companies that served me well through 2020, as well as trying a few new ones – Halls of Heddon, Farmer Gracy, Pheasant Acre Plants and Brookside Nursery included. My begonia tubers from Farmer Gracy were so enormous that I could barely fit them in the palm of my hand; purchases from the rest have yet to arrive. A collection of beautifully grown clematis from Thorncroft will fill the gaps on our boundary fences. I treated myself to Clematis florida var. florida ‘Sieboldiana’ which I will grow in a pot and hope not to kill. Books have also been arriving thick and fast, the last flurry before my evenings become consumed by watering, staking and deadheading again.

Whilst neither glamorous nor showy, this is an important time in the gardening year; it sets the standard for the rest of the year and time that can’t be had again. How plants are handled, potted on and coaxed back to life will determine how they perform in the mid to long term. In March there is always more to do than there’s time for, and there’s never much to show for it. Working conditions can be uncomfortable but occasionally wonderful, especially on those days where it feels warm, or when a drowsy bumblebee strays across one’s path. We soldier on, knowing that our efforts will soon be richly rewarded. The Ides of March may have been ominous for Caesar, but just as in Roman times they mark the end of the old year and the start of the new for us gardeners. TFG.

*the eternal evergreens are: Phillyrea latifolia, Laurus nobilis f. angustifolia, Pseudopanax chathamica and Trachelospermum jasminoides. Rarely do they ever look anything other than perfectly green and healthy.

It’s a little known fact – so little known that one might almost call it a secret – that the first job I ever applied for was with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. As a Landscape Architect I would be travelling the world, recommending how to look after these historically important sites. The main attraction was not the work, but the opportunity to visit new and unfamiliar places. When I looked a bit harder, I found the commission’s planting style to be spartan and manicured; totally appropriate for war graves, but a little restrictive for a young creative wishing to spread his wings. I wondered how rewarding the role might be. I didn’t get the job – I don’t even recall being interviewed – and soon found something else to do.

The majority of Britain’s graveyards are not maintained in the same meticulous fashion as war cemeteries. They are, in most instances, considerably older and have expanded slowly, sometimes over several centuries. Disturbance tends to be minimal, whether that be in the form of noise, development or foot traffic. Chemicals are not applied, and maintenance is often reduced to a bare minimum to save money. All of this is an attractive proposition for wildlife, helpful in building biodiversity. Provided a reasonable balance is maintained between the sensitive care of memorials and letting nature run its course, graveyards are one of the more successful examples of humans, plants and animals coexisting in a confined space.

Near to where we live is the church of St Peter-In-Thanet. It was first built in 1070, then enlarged in the 12th century. A square tower was added in the 15th century. For hundreds of years, St Peter’s church was the seat of local government. The village of St Peter’s was the largest settlement in the area (Broadstairs did not expand from a fishing village until in 18th & 19th Centuries), hence most of the parish’s great, good and indeed not-so-good are interred here. Some older memorials, close to the church, are very grand indeed. Over time, more and more space was required for burials so that now the graveyard extends to nine acres, a long, narrow finger of green extending north west towards Margate. The newest plots are furthest from the church. These can be identified top left of the photograph below, looking rather more open than the rest of the graveyard. One wonders if additional space will be required in future.

From a wildlife perspective the middle section of the churchyard, where one can find several war graves, is the most interesting. The trees are smaller here, mainly hawthorns and deciduous ornamentals, allowing a meadow rich with flowers to establish beneath them. Here and there, brambles form thickets favoured by birds, and no doubt rodents. Our natural flora is augmented by plants that have escaped from planting on and around the graves themselves. Chief among the interlopers at St Peter’s is the daffodil. Destined to naturalise, daffodil cultivars old and new can be found romping between the gravestones, forming large clumps or scattering themselves artfully around. It’s very possible that they have hybridised, creating daffodils that might only be found in this one spot.

Daffodils are likely to have been introduced to our country by the Romans from the Iberian Peninsula, but like snowdrops, they’ve been with us for so long as to be considered native. They are certainly very much at home on our shores, both growing wild and being cultivated for flowers and bulbs. The reason they are so successful is that they are brilliantly adapted to our damp, maritime conditions and strongly perennial. It takes a lot to push a clump of daffodils into retreat; even then they may dwindle and refuse to flower rather the die out altogether. Daffodils are survivors, glad of man’s helping hand, but self-sufficient thereafter. Noel Kingsbury sums it up perfectly:

“At the heart ….. is the idea of the daffodil as a metaphor for our relationship with nature, as being a cultivated plant, but one which is capable of living its own life. Like cats, they feel only part domesticated”

Noel Kingsbury, Daffodil, Timber Press.

A daffodil expert might have a field-day in the graveyard at St Peter’s when it is flooded with blooms every spring. They might even gain clues as to the identity of each variety based on the age of the graves they are growing near: it might be pure coincidence, but the only daffodil we can accurately identify, N. ‘Feu de Joie’, was introduced by William Copeland pre-1927 and is growing close to graves dating back to WW1. It is a beauty, and we will be tracking down bulbs to grow at home next year. This kind of blousy, romantic daffodil was left behind as fashion favoured neater flowers on stronger stems, but to me the form and colouration of ‘Feu de Joie’ is exquisite.

We are not daffodil experts, so we spend our time generally enjoying the scene and marvelling at each and every different flower we alight on. Although variations on a theme, the permutations of colour, trumpet and petal are remarkable. Bobbing in a stiff breeze, they bring so much joy and hope for the year to come. Pictured below are just a handful of the varieties in bloom at St Peter’s at the end of March. I’d love to hear which ones appeal most to you.

We’ve experienced such a long, cold spring in 2021 that the daffodils have lasted much longer than normal. In the Jungle Garden, many have yet to bloom, which means we’ll be enjoying flowers well into May. Planned carefully, a succession of bloom can be achieved quite easily, starting with a variety such as N. ‘Cedric Morris’, which will flower in time for Christmas Day, and ending with N. poeticus, which might occasionally hang on until June. Five months is a long time to enjoy daffodils, although some might argue it’s not long enough.

I can recommend a couple of excellent books if you are interested in learning more about daffodils:

• ‘Daffodil, Biography of a Flower‘, Helen O’Neill, Harper Collins.
• ‘Daffodil, The remarkable story of the world’s most popular spring flower‘, Noel Kingsbury with photographs by Jo Whitworth, Timber Press.

There’s still time to get out and enjoy daffodils as gardens and parks begin to open up post lockdown. Make a note of your favourites and order bulbs in summer ready for planting in early autumn. For heritage varieties like N. ‘Feu de Joie’, you may need to search the Internet for specialist growers such as Ron Scamp in Cornwall. (It goes without saying that you should never take daffodils from the ‘wild’ or from parks and gardens without permission.) Unlike tulips, daffodils need to be planted before it gets cold in winter, so they can establish their roots in warm earth. They grow well contained in pots, but they’ll never be as happy as they would be in the ground, where they are never very far from claiming their freedom. TFG.

It has been the strangest month; cold – indeed the frostiest April in sixty years – and desert-dry. Although we’ve escaped spring frosts here on the East Kent coast, it has been bitter day-in, day-out, with desiccating winds blowing in from the north and east. Most days I have returned from walking the dogs feeling like I’ve had a facelift. Our heating is still on and I’m bundled up in my Ugg boots and a thick wool sweater as I write this post. Meanwhile, we have been watering our pots twice weekly since the end of March. (Rain forecast overnight tonight may save me a job later on.) The Meteorologists explain that dry ground combined with clear skies exacerbates the frost situation by encouraging ‘radiative cooling’. If I have learned one thing this year it is that gentle watering actually helps to guard against frost damage at ground level, although that’s of little comfort to those who lost their magnolia and camellia blossoms during the snow earlier in the month.

The impact of the weather on both gardens and the allotment has been pronounced. For weeks plants have grown at a snail’s pace when normally they’d be erupting from the ground with gusto. On the upside, our daffodils and tulips have never lasted longer. They’ve remained bright and unsullied for at least twice as long as normal, rewarding us with a terrific display. Less than half the tulips have coloured up so far, thus as May approaches there is much left to enjoy, including anemones, ranunculus and slipper orchids. I have only dispatched a handful of snails and other pests, since all creatures seem reluctant to come out of winter hibernation. Once again, I’ve not set eyes on a single lily beetle. Long may that continue. On the downside, our tiny greenhouse is bursting at the seams. The first twenty dahlias we potted up in March are now large enough to be planted out, eighty more are sprouting and another twenty have not been prompted into growth at all, owing to lack of space. Despite delaying seed sowing by several weeks we are going to experience a severe case of overcrowding if we cannot move anything outside soon. In the workshop, the gingers, cannas and brugmansias that are usually growing apace by now are only just showing signs of life. Although plants are fiendishly good at catching up, I predict summer will be on the later side this year.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that in November I revealed our bulb planting schemes for 2021. At the allotment, we went for smouldering purples and fiery reds and yellows. These colours make my heart sing. Through the fence between us and the carpark we hear a lot of ‘Oooh! Look at all those tulips!‘. We hope passers-by find them as joyful and uplifting as we do.

On the whole, I’ve found that the tulips at the allotment have stopped well short of their expected height, I presume due to drought and the openness of our plot. Tulip ‘Cash’ has been a winner, although it’s very close in appearance to T. ‘Apeldoorn Elite’, which I have grown since I was a child. The main difference is that T. ‘Cash’ is 50% taller than my old favourite with enormous flowers. The Beau is in love with T. ‘Ravana’ which is short yet extravagant with flamed petals and variegated foliage: definitely a more-is-more tulip. We have been taken aback by the similarities between some other cultivars. T. ‘Jan Reus’ and T. ‘National Velvet’ are extremely hard to tell apart, as are T. ‘Antraciet’ and T. ‘Uncle Tom’. What this and our other experimental plantings demonstrate is that one can’t go by pictures in a catalogue or website. They are almost always inaccurate, sometimes gratuitously so. One must try new varieties out for oneself, to properly assess colour, stature, flowering time, hardiness etc. etc. We can now select the best of these pairings for our situation and make room for something new and different next time.

We did not plant enough bulbs for the Gin & Tonic garden, where our theme was ‘ice and lemon’. Having failed to finish planting all our purchases in autumn 2019, we played it too safe and focussed on the Jungle Garden. However, we have lots of favourites here, including the ubiquitous Narcissus ‘Tête-à-Tête’ and the delightful, N. ‘Lemon Beauty’. Much as I love N. ‘Lemon Beauty’, her flowers face demurely downward like a hellebore, making it difficult to appreciate them fully. We planted generous quantities of T. ‘Purissima Design’, which is nicely simple without being boring. Yellow-edged leaves, reminiscent of a hosta, are a good foil for the ivory, egg-shaped flowers. The scheme would not be complete without T. ‘Exotic Emperor’, a flower which lives up to its name in all but colour. You’d naturally expect something rich and jewel-toned rather than off-white and green, but what it lacks in colour T. ‘Exotic Emperor’ makes up for in flamboyance of form. Surrounding a soft, powder puff of petals there are all sorts of pointy bits (botanical term) reminiscent of the tines that hold a jewel in place: unique and well worth growing. I’ve been waiting in vain for Acacia verticillata ‘Riverine Form’ to produce its pill-shaped puffs of yellow, but this feathery little shrub is showing typically antipodean disdain for our cold British weather and is not budging. The Beast From The East has left many other plants leafless until it warms up. Next year we need to think bigger and bolder about this small space, adding some fizz to bring the cocktail alive.

The main event at The Watch House is the Jungle Garden. We were inspired by the National Trust’s Emmetts Garden near Sevenoaks in Kent after a visit in September. Here, tulips ‘Pink Diamond’, ‘Kingsblood’ and ‘Queen of the Night’ are planted in the grass beneath cherry trees. I had never contemplated mixing pink, red and purplish-black before, and went to town on a full spectrum of colours from blush (T. ‘Poco Loco’) to ebony (T. ‘Continental’). We planned everything out on paper, including flowering times, to ensure we had a long succession of bloom. That part of the scheme worked; the palette is more of a happy accident, with a mix of pinks and reds that turned out to be too yellow or too blue alongside a few outright bad choices. Back to the point about trying things first hand, next year I am determined to perfect this scheme by planting more of the same cultivar and sticking with either warm pinks and reds or cool ones. The stand-out tulip, by a country mile, has been T. ‘Albert Heijn’. It is all too easy to be dismissive of established, popular varieties, but there is generally a good reason for their elevated status. T. ‘Albert Heijn’, unromantically named after a Dutch supermarket chain, has a chiselled silhouette and blooms that for last weeks. If you’re looking for a good pink tulip, you cannot go wrong with this one. T. ‘Czar Peter’ did something very peculiar and developed flowers which never properly opened, instead puffing out like Chinese lanterns, every petal seemingly fused at the tip. This is not normal, but looked marvellous.

One thing I did get right is the quantity of hyacinths. Every year I chastise myself for not growing enough, but this year I cracked it. Ten pots, each planted with twelve to fifteen bulbs, have filled the garden with intoxicating scent. First to bloom were H. ‘Anne Marie’, followed by H. ‘Carnegie’ and H. ‘White Pearl’. Then came H. ‘China Pink’, H. ‘Miss Saigon’ (totally wrong colour, but a gift, so I can’t complain) and now, H. ‘Dark Dimension’, which has the darkest navy flowers I have ever seen.

I had been waiting for the perfect moment to photograph some of my favourite tulips for you. Fearing my stars may never align, I took the plunge today, ahead of tonight’s rain, despite some only just developing their true colour. Below, from left to right are: T. ‘Claudia’, T. ‘Attila Graffiti’, T. ‘Alison Bradley’, T. ‘Albert Heijn’ (almost gone over), T. ‘Poco Loco’, T. ‘Continental’, T. ‘Fantasy Lady’ and T, ‘Lasting Love’. If I had to choose three I would plant again, they’d be T. ‘Attila Graffiti’, which is the most fabulous, shimmering fuchsia-pink, T. ‘Continental’, with petals richer than Macassar ebony, and T. ‘Lasting Love’ which, as its name suggests, is lovely and lasts for weeks. If I had a sophisticated garden full of silvers and greys then T. ‘Poco Loco’ would be a sublime choice, but in this company it looks inspid.

Here, at the tail end of April, we are in a strange situation where our display is halfway through rather than at an end. The buds of narcissi including N. ‘Calgary’, N. ‘Salome’ and N. ‘Cotinga’ have yet to burst and the list of tulips still to bloom is extensive – T. ‘Supri Erotic’ (what a name!), T. ‘Hemisphere’, T. ‘Capri Dream’, T. ‘Design Impression’, T. Black Hero’ and T. ‘Pretty Princess’. I must conclude that despite the weird weather it’s been an exceptional year for growing spring bulbs. Having invested a pretty penny, we’ve really got our money’s worth. TFG.

Our bulbs this year were sourced from J. Parker’s Wholesale and Dutch Grown, who are currently offering a 15% early bird discount to organised gardeners. As new kids on the block, selling direct from The Netherlands, this family-run company is definitely worth a look.

In a normal year, I’d consider myself lucky to have one or two daffodils blooming in May. By May Day their dominion is over and tulips reign supreme. This year is an exception; I have more daffodils in flower now than at any time previously. An Entente Cordiale has been reached between the two exalted genera, resulting in an unprecedented fanfare of flower in both gardens. Although completely unexpected and unplanned for, it’s a situation I am relishing.

Of course there are daffodils that naturally flower later in the spring, for example Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus, the old pheasant’s eye daffodil. It’s always nice to plant a few of these, although perhaps they are not as deeply treasured as those that bloom in the depths of winter. Like a tiresome relative at a wedding, somehow they seem to have outstayed their welcome. This year’s late blooming has been encouraged by a chilly winter followed by an exceptional cold and dry spring. Plants big and small have hung back, waiting for more comfortable conditions. Those that have braved the weather have been slow to develop and vulnerable to frost damage. No such problems here on the coast, but it does seem as if our garden has been preserved in aspic for two months, the rapid explosion of growth restricted to small, almost imperceptible changes each day. This is where photographing one’s garden regularly helps, making comparisons with the previous week or the equivalent time last year straightforward as well as illuminating. If you’ve grown daffodils, tulips and other spring bulbs this year, you will certainly have had your money’s worth by now.

I list here the cultivars that are still in the their prime today, May 8th 2021. In terms of lateness, please take this roll call with a pinch of salt as the timing may well be a consequence of the weather, rather than the variety’s natural tendencies. N. ‘Misty Glen’, for example, is noted by Ron Scamp to be a mid-season daffodil and yet it’s only just getting going as I write. The list follows the image below, starting from the top.

1. Narcissus ‘Mrs R.O. Backhouse’ – when first introduced in 1921, this was billed as the world’s first pink daffodil. The trumpet is patently not pink, but a very pleasing pale, coral-orange. The bulbs should flower in March and April, hence they were almost over when this picture was taken. Older blooms start to fade towards white at the base of the trumpet, which is rather charming.
2. Narcissus ‘Thalia’ – almost as revered as N. ‘Tête-à-Tête’, N. ‘Thalia’ is loved for its scent, generosity of bloom and tolerance of damper ground. Curiously, it does not have an AGM from the RHS. No matter, because N. ‘Thalia’ is a brilliant naturaliser and neutraliser in the garden, exceptionally lovely planted in huge drifts. Plant enough bulbs so that you can pick a generous quantity through the season. If you fancy trying something similar but different, I’d recommend N. ‘Tresamble’.
3. Narcissus ‘Obdam’ – our only disappointment this year. Of forty or so buds, only five opened. The remainder shrivelled miserably within their paper cases. This phenomenon is called ‘bud blast’ and was most likely caused by hot weather last spring and summer, wherever the bulbs were grown. Unfortunately for me, the impact is only evident the following year. The blooms that opened were pleasant, but rather heavy and I am not convinced I will trouble myself with N. ‘Obdam’ again.
4. Narcissus ‘Salome’ AGM – for a few days I was convinced that I had mixed two cultivars in the same pot, because N. ‘Salome’ opens with yellow trumpets before fading to pinky-peach over the course of a few days. The in-between stages are most attractive, as I hope you can see from the two blooms pictured above. In a sense, you get two daffodils for the price of one. I have found N. ‘Salome’ perfect for pots since the plants are not too tall and very weatherproof.
5. Narcissus ‘Jack Snipe’ AGM – not normally a late-flowering cultivar, this year N. ‘Jack Snipe’ seemed to be frozen in time. This is a fabulous little daffodil for pots, troughs and window boxes, taller that N. ‘Tête-à-Tête’ but pleasingly so: I find N. ‘Tête-à-Tête’ a bit overly compact. Expect flowers in March in a normal year. Plant generously in large clumps or drifts. (My Australian friend Helen refers to drifts of daffodils as ‘floats’, which sounds much more magical.)
6. Narcissus ‘Misty Glen’ AGM – if Farrow and Ball did daffodils, this would be one of them. Every inch a modern daffodil, N. ‘Misty Glen’ is neat, well-composed and strong-growing. Each bloom displays satin-white petals with a trumpet flushed palest moss-green. The foliage is a dark, silver-green that might be called something like ‘Leaf Beetle’ or ‘Basement Grey’. It’s all achingly beautiful and a masterpiece of hybridisation, however the formality of this bloom does feel better suited to the show bench than the garden.
7. Narcissus ‘Sun Disc’ AGM – I love a bargain as much as a nice surprise and these daffodils ticked both boxes. I purchased three large potfuls of unnamed bulbs from my local nursery in February, planted them in the ground and they turned out to be N. ‘Sun Disc’. The tiny flowers are as flat as buttons, surrounded by foliage as fine as grass. Naturalises well, so perhaps we’ll have more next spring.
8. Narcissus ‘Lemon Beauty’ – I generally detest split corona daffodils (i.e the trumpet is divided and often flared backwards against the petals) but this is an exception. The best way to describe its colour is luscious lemon curd swirled through an ice-white sorbet. It’s a dazzling daffodil. The split corona is well disguised so that only the yellow markings are perceived roughly as a star at the centre of each flower. The only annoyance is that the flowers face downwards, like a hellebore, requiring some effort to appreciate them properly.
9. Narcissus ‘Stratosphere’ AGM ? – this was ordered as N. ‘Hawera’, which it most evidently is not! Some lazy detective work suggests it may be N. ‘Stratosphere’, but whatever the name it’s marvellous. The flower colour is rich and clear, and the stems are upright. A very welcome error on the part of the bulb merchant, so I will let them off this time.
10. Narcissus ‘Cotinga’ – Although wonderful, I have my doubts that the flower pictured above is actually N. ‘Cotinga’ and not an imposter. The trumpet appears to be much shorter than it ought to be – but perhaps it might lengthen over time. N. ‘Cotinga’ is a diminutive Cyclamineus daffodil, with small, nodding flowers. Ideal for the top of a wall or on a terrace where they can be appreciated from below.
11. Narcissus ‘Bridal Crown’ AGM – if truth be told this is not one of my favourite daffs. It’s a bit clumsy and the stems tend to bend over quite easily, here at least. The fussy flowers remind me of a dessert my grandmother used to make called Russian Cream – as sort of jelly with egg-white froth on the top (it tastes better than it sounds!). N. ‘Bridal Crown’ is scented and often forced for early blooms.
12. Narcissus ‘Mount Hood’ AGM – a daffodil of my childhood and fondly cherished. These bulbs were kindly sent to me by Dutch Grown and I am delighted because I would not have considered growing this cultivar in a pot, having always thought it better for the border or naturalising. Turns out N. ‘Mount Hood’ is a good sport in a container, although the bulbs I was given were so enormous that they have almost exploded out of the compost. The trumpets start out primrose yellow before fading to ivory white, as shown above.

If, like me, you are having a day doing ‘indoor jobs’, may I extend my sympathies. Tomorrow promises to be the start of a period of warmer weather which will have gardeners jumping for joy. TFG.