And finally, spring has sprung.   Buds are swelling, even bursting, the willow tree in the garden is finally showing green (a full month later than we’ve got used to in recent years) birds are waking us up at about 5.30 each morning with an almost pre-dawn chorus, and we’re running out of space in the poly-tunnels….

To infinity, and beyond....

One of our experiments this year was to grow a few Fritillaria imperialis.   We saw them planted en-masse in Roundhay Park in Leeds many years ago, and have been meaning to grow some ever since.  We’ve never grown them before, either in the garden or in a pot, so this is uncharted territory.

And boy do they grow!   We put them in deep 4lt pots last autumn, and after the extraordinarily cold winter we’ve just had, were expecting them to have turned to mush by now.   But no!   A couple of weeks ago we noticed them them sticking tentative green shoots out of their compost, and since then, they’ve been rocketing skywards.

They’ve got to grow quickly of course – they flower in May, by which time they’ll be 4 ft tall, so there’s no time to lose.   But it’s still surprising to see them noticeably taller each day.

We can already see that they’d need very careful management in our garden – it’s windy here, and these guys grow fast, but soft, so they’d need staking and tying in very regularly.   Probably more regularly than we’d manage.   But if you have a reasonably sheltered spot, or the inclination to give them almost daily attention, they are very impressive plants.   They look lush and exotic, almost as if they belong in a jungle, but are evidently bone hardy.

We’re looking forward to seeing them flower, but as so often happens around here, we fear they’ll all be sold long before that happens!

We write editorial to accompany our regular advertisements in our local free advertising magazine Nova News.   The print deadline is about a month before publication date, so writing topically about gardening is a bit of a challenge, if not a gamble, especially this year.

Anyway, here’s the editorial from the current issue, which publishes this week….

There doesn’t seem to be much agreement on when Spring actually begins.  According to the Met Office it’s March 1st;  sun watchers will tell you it didn’t start this year until 17.32 on March 20th (the vernal equinox);  Gardener’s World viewers are never quite sure when it’ll start (or if after it has, if it’ll be cancelled because of the snooker).     Others might tell you Spring hasn’t arrived until they’ve heard the first cuckoo, or the roar of the first lawn mower, but whichever definition you follow, you should have a spring in your step by now, so enjoy!   It’s the best season of the year!

Poised for action....

After the winter we’ve just endured we’re surprised and delighted to find sun or our backs at last, and have been marvelling at the resilience of the plant world – our picture shows a rhododendron bud poised to deliver a burst of colour to the garden, and apparently entirely unphased at the arctic temperatures it’s just endured.

And we’re looking forward to a wonderful summer;  it seems only reasonable to expect that after a “proper” winter we should get a proper summer, and  we’re gardening like crazy so we’re ready.   We’ve been frantically sowing, taking cuttings, potting up and potting on for some weeks now, and the nursery is at last shaking off winter, and waking up!

We’ve been busy in the tree department too, and have added new aisles so we have an even bigger selection to choose from (450 trees at our spring stock check!).    And we continue to extend our range of shrubs and herbaceous plants, trying always to include species that you won’t find in many other places, so if you’re looking for something a little out of the ordinary, call in!

If some of the plants in your garden haven’t made it through the winter, don’t be too despondent.   It’s an opportunity to ring the changes!   And if you some of your plants look as if they only made it through winter by the skin of their teeth, listen to what they’re telling you – they’d like to be somewhere warmer, or perhaps freer draining , so give them what they want.  Uprooting a plant and shifting it to a new site in the garden isn’t actually as daunting as it sounds, and the plant will likely thank you for it and perform much better in future years, so get the spade out, and do a bit of re-styling!

And if some of your plants need a bit of a post-winter tidy – be bold!   Most people are worried about pruning and tend to be overly cautious; don’t be – cut dead shoots and branches right out, and if that leaves the plant unbalanced, prune what remains back to buds that look as if they will grow in the right way to re-balance the plant.   Be decisive, and let the plant know who’s boss;  make it do what you want, and it will thank you in the end.

And finally, If you enjoy garden visiting, the National Trust property Dunham Massey in Cheshire ought to be looking good right now.    A new 7 acre winter garden was installed last year, and it includes 200,000 spring bulbs, many of which should be doing their glorious thing just about now!

It has to be said that our looking good list is a bit short at the moment.  Lots of the stuff that would have been brightening up the sales area by this time in recent years is being very sulky this season, and not yet looking its best.   In fact, not really looking much at all;  there are signs that things are beginning to move at last, but the season is lagging well behind what we’ve become accustomed to, and last years blooms are little more than fattening buds right now.

Skimmia Kew Green

But one or two plants just seem to shrug of whatever the weather throws at them, and Skimmia x confusa ‘Kew Green’ is looking as good as ever.

We first saw this in a garden situation at RHS Rosemoor, where they’re planted as an understory below trees (Betula utilis probably, which are planted in abundance there, but we can’t remember for sure).

We copied this idea in our own garden, under trees which have a much denser summer canopy than Betula, and they’re doing remarkably well, growing slowly, but thriving in the dry shade.

Those in the picture are on our sales benches, but looking pretty much as one with those in the garden.

It has the RHS Award of Garden Merit (all the best plants do you know) grows (slowly) to maybe 1 mt tall, and 1500 cms wide, and has clusters of small greenish-yellow flowers in spring (the buds in the photo will burst soon!).      It needs a shady spot, but copes with pretty much any soil.

Is it a sign of incipient senility when you can remember the tag line for a 1970’s corporate PR campaign, but you can’t remember why you came into a room?   I’m sure I came in here to do something other than write this….

Anyone who posts a reply naming the “ideas in action” corporation gets the Barlow Nurseries “Daft stuff lodges in your brain too then” Award…

Ilex x altaclerensis 'Lawsoniana'

Our own version of ideas and action is shown in the picture.   We visited Westonbirt Arboretum last autumn (and never got around to completing the blog of the visit, which is still languishing in the drafts folder).  We were looking for inspiration to extend the range of trees and shrubs we stock on the nursery.  Boy, we found loads!

We now have several Westonbirt inspired additions to our sales tables, one of which is Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Lawsoniana’.   It’s a very dense holly with bold yellow leaf variegation, and almost spineless leaves.   It’s female, bearing red autumn berries.   It grows to maybe 6 mts (20 feet) tall, but will take a long time to get there.

We were particularly impressed with it because its growth habit is very dense (we’ve grown Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Golden King’ for years, but that has a much more open habit) and its leaf variegation is a very strong yellow.  It will grow  in pretty much any soil, and any aspect.  Just the thing to brighten a dark corner, or lift a dull shrubbery.

Our other Westonbirt-inspired lines will appear here soon – when they start looking good (they’re deciduous, so a bit unremarkable right now!).

If you’ve visited The Lost Gardens of Heligan you’ll probably remember the little ledge in the bothy near the pineapple pits where the garden boy used to sleep.   It was his job to stoke the fire that kept the pineapple pit warm through the night, and he slept on the little stone shelf so that he was nearby when the fire needed attention.

It was tough in horticulture in those days!

The plight of that bothy boy often comes to mind when we find ourselves facing adverse working conditions;  not because anything we have to face comes near the conditions faced by victorian gardeners, rather as a consolation that whatever happens, we’re so much better off than they were.

Brrrr

And so today we found ourselves contemplating the lot of that poor garden boy once again.  We decided to water some of the plants in one of the tunnels, and found ourselves smashing through a layer of ice to get to the water in the butt.

At midday, second week of March.   The weather continues frustratingly victorian!

Cold and dispiriting for us, very confusing for the plants.   Days are lengthening, and day time light levels have been good.  The plants want to grow – but temperatures in low single figures by day, and well below zero at night leave them thinking a bit longer in hibernation is in order.

It’s going to be one of those years where a late start is followed by explosive growth when the weather finally warms up.

Surely a sign that Spring is just around the corner?

The gardening blogosphere is positively awash with snowdrops right now, so it seems a shame not to join in….

We’d actually forgotten these guys were in the garden;  we remember seeing them when we first moved here, but then left that area to fend for itself, and the self sown holly thicket that we’ve just cleared grew and grew, and engulfed them.  So it was a real joy to realise that they’re still with us.   They must have had a pretty hard time competing with a dense canopy of holly, so they stand as testament to the resilience of the species.

We make no pretence that we’re any sort of galanthophile, so have absolutely no idea what variety they are – it seems unlikely that whoever planted them would have been any sort of connoiseur either, so we presume they’re the common or garden Galanthus nivalis.

And jolly charming, and very welcome they are too.   With precious little else happening in the garden at the moment, it’s reassuring that mother nature is out there following a schedule, even if most of the country’s gardeners have rewritten theirs pending better weather.

Today this field, tomorrow......

The real snowdrop surprise came when we peered over the rudimentary fence that separates our garden from the adjacent field, and saw that our little colony seems to have made a bid for freedom, and established an outpost next door.   These little guys really are surviving against the odds – the field is under regular cultivation growing maize, wheat and potatoes in rotation, and is ploughed and sprayed repeatedly.   This little colony is surviving in barely a yard of field margin, where the fence angle prevents the tractors getting right up to the edge.

So while we might be charmed by their delicate beauty, we can’t afford to let our guard down – snowdrops clearly have their own agenda, including world colonisation if the opportunity arises.

Their only problem seems to be that given a rate of progress which needs to be measured in feet per decade, it could take some time!