BST

The clocks have gone forward, and we’re now in British Summer Time (BST).  Not that you would know it from the weather.  Magnolias and cherry trees in other gardens are in splendid flower, and the birds are nesting, but the weather is still fickle.  We had a good, dry week towards the end of the month – we were away and enjoyed the fine days – but then it turned chilly and showery, with occasional hail, again.  In our absence a pot of fancy Hellebore (Helleborus x glandorfensis 'Red Snow'), brought as a present by a visitor and left outside while I considered what to do with it, dried out a little too much and is looking very sad.  If it recovers, I need to find a suitable spot for it; the modern hybrids, I read, like more sun than the older varieties, and tend to be a little short-lived.  (This one might be very short-lived indeed, though I’ll try to revive it!)

Narcissus 'Thalia'

Tulip 'Exotic Emperor'

Tulip 'Orange Emperor' - and a calendula!

The little daffodils in the two big tubs are now mostly over, with just a few of the later varieties still coming through; most of the daffs in the ground are still going strong, and the clump of Narcissus ‘Thalia’ by the patio is flowering strongly.  The first tulips are in bloom – white ‘Exotic Emperor’ (syn. ‘White Valley’) and its orange cousin ‘Orange Emperor’; these are now a few years old, left in their pots with a top-dressing of fresh compost each year, and seem to be doing really well and bulking up.  Good value bulbs.  I’m not sure whether to top-dress them this year; last year I sowed annuals in the pots to make use of them during the summer, and a lone calendula is flowering gamely alongside ‘Orange Emperor’, but the second generation of seeds might not germinate if covered with too much compost.   I might try scooping out the top couple of centimetres of compost, with any self-sown seeds, and put that somewhere in the garden, to give me a wildflower-look effect. 

Camellia williamsii 'Donation'

The cowslips are shyly poking through the grass in the lawn, and there are primulas (self-set) under the apple cordons.  The older camellia, C. williamsii ‘Donation’, is flowering superbly, and even the newer one, C. ‘Ruby Wedding’, which has never flowered before, has a couple of buds just breaking.  This is interesting; the usual advice about non-flowering camellias is to water them well in June and July when the buds are being formed, but last year those months were hot and dry and I’m sure the camellias didn’t get their necessary soak.  I bought ‘Ruby Wedding’ a number of years ago, looking for a red-flowered one (so as not to clash with the daffodils), but at the garden centre I noticed that several different varieties had the same photo on their label; unsure whether any of them were red-flowered, I plumped for ‘Ruby Wedding’, reckoning that there was a good chance it would be red – and finally, after several years, it turns out that indeed it is.

C. 'Ruby Wedding' - and yes, it is red!

I had planned to split the Bergenia ‘Bressingham White’ as it’s starting to look in need of division, but in fact it has flowered better than it ever has.  I used to worry that the white was too white alongside the pale cream Narcissus ‘Jenny’, but it doesn’t look too bad.  I’ll split it if I can find the time, but otherwise shall leave well alone.  In my last garden I had B. ‘Silberlicht’, but while the flowers were white when in full bloom the buds and the fading flowers were pinkish, which wasn’t what I wanted; ‘Bressingham White’ is much whiter.

Bergenia 'Bressingham White' - and Narcissus 'Jenny'

On the veg front, some lettuce seeds sown before we went away in the middle of the month are sprouting nicely, and the first of the broad bean ‘Imperial Green Longpod’ are starting to push through their compost.  The netting over the two purple sprouting broccoli plants has successfully kept the pigeons at bay, and the plants are producing a good crop of greens. 

The birds don’t seem to be much in evidence since our return from abroad – a few sparrows, dunnocks and blue tits, the two robins and a couple of blackbirds, and of course the woodpigeons and pheasants.  But they seem to be shunning the fatball container.  I’ve seen the sparrowhawk a few times – I wonder if she has been attacking the little birds?  I suppose she’s nesting too, and looking to feed herself up.  I moved the fatball container to a spot close to the shrubs, to allow birds to hide quickly if needed, and that seems to have worked; a pair of bluetits were feeding there today.  Perhaps the pair spotted a couple of weeks back staking out the nestbox and now apparently setting up home there.

Not sure what this is ....

Despite the chill, it hasn’t been a particularly cold winter, but the catmint (nepeta) seems to have died.  I wonder why?  And I wonder what is this plant nearby – not something I recognise?  I’ll leave it and see what it does; if it’s a nasty thug, I can heave it out before it does too much damage, and otherwise I’ll hope for some nice flowers!