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!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 22:55 and is filed under Plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.