It was cold in April, and May was just as cold for a week or so. Then it warmed up, so the temp was getting above 10 degrees most day. Finally a few days ago it turned May-like, and now it's even warm. Had dinner in the new garden and watched a red kite, the first definitely spotted around here.

Tulips: Moneymaker, Ballerina and China Pink make a great combination, Doll's Minuet did add something to that mix, a little extra craziness. I didn't enjoy Princess Irene as much as expected. No more greigiis. Remember to label the pot with species tulips, let them bake in the poly tunnel, and replant, leaving out the largest bulbs from the types with too-big flowers.
Dahlias have been potted on for planting out when we return from Scotland in early June.

Roses are all starting at once, except for Phyllis Bide and mutabilis, both severely damaged by the north winds of April and May. They hardly have a leaf yet.  Lord Lambourne and Discovery apples are almost as bad. Charles Ross apple shrugged off those storms but not likely to have any fruit.

Planted a row of sweet peas in front of new willow trellis, with an angled mesh to climb up the first few feet. The new willow arbour  is nicely leafed, still more basket-work than shaggy shed. It was pleasant to sit there and enjoy the shade yesterday evening when it was hot.

Tulip Time

Tulips have been doing what they do,  shining out with such a jolt of vivid, intense saturated colour that we gladly pay to renew them every year. Well, most of them.

The greigii tulips up by the shed came first, but I don't think I'll be planting that kind again. The flower heads are just too big for the height of the tulip so they look a little awkward when they are the only flower in the bed. At around the same time we were astonished by the appearance of a big clump of White Triumphator or Purissima (check this) next to the new willow arbour in the new garden. They must have been buried there when I removed the old playhouse and added whatever compost came to hand--pots that needed emptying-- to bring up the level of the soil. In that cool shady sheltered spot they kept going for a month.

Our week of summer in March brought everything on rather quickly, then winter came back (and stayed) in the first week of April. Two days of a Force 9 easterly shredded the new leaves right off the roses and challenged tulip India growing in the bed by the white lilac. From the kitchen table we watched the flowers bending  in the wind, the stems nearly horizontal. Amazingly,  when the storm ended, there were still flowers there, and they gradually stood up straight again, no harm done at all.  Now, at the end of April, another easterly is blowing and the flowers, now faded to pink with white edges, still look well. Note for autumn 2012: plant more tulips in this bed. Note for now: feed the foliage and hope India might pop up again. Another note: in this relatively sunny and not at all sheltered spot, they are still going after nearly a month.

Ballerina, Moneymaker and China Pink lily-flowered tulips

I planted a mixture of small species tulips in a big pot and they  did very well. I'll try to keep that pot going for next year. Possibly add some muscari? The muscari planted in the north border of the conservatory garden among the tulips look very well. The intensity of the blue works well with tulips. The Jan Reus tulips there, very dark red, have performed well, but they would show up better in a brighter spot. Tulip Princess Irene is just showing colour in this bed and up by the shed. Up by the shed the tall  lily-flowered red, pink and orange tulips are the fairest of them all. And that is saying a lot.

Willow, Part Two

Willow arbour, just finished

I've long wanted to build something at the top corner of the garden bordering the wood. I didn't know it was going to be an arbour made of living willow.  There were a lot of willow rods left after the trellis was complete. I pushed them into the soil in an  oval around the concrete floor of the former playhouse on that spot, and started weaving.  What I had was enough to make the perimeter of my structure, but not enough for the roof. So Musgrove Willow sent another bundle, 10 to 12 feet long. It was a bit of a puzzle, how to weave a roof. Eventually, it all got  woven in together and the whole structure feels sturdy. Once the roots get established, new shoots will be woven in and it should be pretty solid. In the burning sun of a North Wales summer, we can relax in the green shade with our potato or juniper or barley drink.

The picture happens to show the two ends of the tech spectrum, with the unlovely but worthwhile solar panels on the roof of the house. The arbour itself looks over the planting in the new garden, designed for summer days.

Light and air

The daffodils in the "meadow" by the apple trees are doing very well this year. As you look up towards them,  they are seen against the stone wall that backs the new garden behind them. That's a very good example a simple picture working  well.  And an example of a nice effect come about purely as a side-effect.

Before we took down the beech tree and the old tin hut, and the ash in the hedge that had grown past control, that area was a shady jumble of nothing much, and the daffs were going backwards.

Pruning the Charles Ross apple tree

With that area opened up to vision, we've been motivated to have fewer weeds and more meadow plants. I am hoping the camassias I planted in the winter will come up strongly. Or will the rabbits have them....

Willow, Part One

For a long time I have wanted to make something out of willow rods that would grow when pushed in the ground.  For an even longer time I have wondered what could be done about the fact that the poly tunnel is so visible from the house.  Now, I'm putting the finishing touches on a living willow trellis placed just right to hide that plastic tunnel.

This is the site of the old glass-house, only the foundations of which remained. It was too windy for a glasshouse there. Latterly Shandy and her numerous offspring lived pleasant lives in the glasshouse, burrowing to their hearts' content.

Last month we coppiced the willow shoots planted beside the roundabout so long ago, harvesting some firewood. I thought that the younger shoots might do for willowy projects, but they were thin and short and riddled with anthracnose. Looking on the web, I found that specialist growers offered long disease-resistant bundles for not much money. Musgrove Willows of Somerset had the bundles delivered here two days after the order.

So, willow week!  Starting with erecting two strong end-posts set in concrete. I found bedrock about 6 inches below the grass at one end and spent some time chipping out a socket. Then it was time to dig in  several  barrowloads of home made compost. Finally came the fiddly pleasure of pushing in the rods and weaving the design, just when the east wind was blowing. I've used guy lines to gradually pull into position the rods twisted around the end-posts

  However, that wasn't really final--what ever is, in gardening?  I thought it better to spread a good layer of soil-based compost over the surface, with special attention to the area where the soil is so thin.  We had a clear-out of old bags of compost for that. Phormisol came next, and finally (really?) another layer from the compost heap to hide the phormisol.

I went out to the woods and dug up a few spadefuls of snowdrops to plant along the front edge of the willow-bed. I imagine a bright line of snowdrops cheering up the winter trellis  next January. We will acquire some helleborus argutifolius for the area just below the willow-bed to hide the block foundation of the old glasshouse..

The rest of the willow may make an arbour around the  base of the old wendy house at the top of the new garden. We shall see.

Other garden news: the two camellias transplanted to the north border in front of the top wall of the garden are both coming into flower and looking happy. You can see the bright pink camellia behind the Lord Lambourne apple this year and it will give a better show every year as it grows to the size of the camellias at Bodnant.  In a century or so..

How to have fun in January

Well, you can gather snowdrops and crocus. Or you can cut down some trees, which is what corbies have been doing this weekend.  Along the drive, the ash and sycamores are getting tall and taking light away from the roses. We are taking out the biggest. They will be next winter's firewood. We are taking lower branches away from  most trees now, and leaving the skinny ash and sycamores to put on some width before cutting them down. It was not part of the plan to coppice the trees I planted on the drive 20-odd years ago. But it's good that you can remove a lot of trees and still have a lot of trees.

Fag-end of the year

We had a bumper crop of flowers to choose from for the Christmas table.  The photos show roses Old Blush China, Phyllis Bide and Cupid hips, bergenia, winter jasmine, feverfew, dame's violet, osteospermum, sasanqua camellia 'Narumigata', late hydrangea from Chas Ellis and marigolds. This is the first Christmas we have had snowdrops actually blooming (sheaths split) in the woods. The mild weather has also allowed rasps to ripen in the tunnel so we had a plate with our muesli this morning - and more to come!  There is a lot of rust on the old rasp leaves and also some hyperparasite (Darluca?).