End of Month View: Marching Out

For once, I have been aware that it is the end of another month, although where March has gone is anyone’s guess! The usual starting view from the back of the house is rather different this month, although a couple of weeks ago you couldn’t see the sitooterie because of the piles of ‘stuff’ on the paved area. We are having external insulation added to part of the house (just in time for the warmer months!), and the material required was stacked here but went down rapidly as soon as work started as it only took a day for the boards (the white wrapped piles each contained 6 boards) to be attached; similarly, the first coat of render also took around a day, as presumably will the top coat. All stages are weather dependent, hence the delay.

Let’s not think about the front of the house, and leave the scaffolding and building material and head further down the garden, continuing with the adjacent streamside and shrub border, where the spring bulbs in the grass are now over and the roses and other deciduous shrubs are greening up. The colourful cornus is also in leaf and is due for its annual chop very soon.

The woodland has lost its brown-ness, with fritillaries and wood anemones in full bloom, and bluebells and wild garlic gearing up for their turn. At the far end, the view from the bothy takes in the main borders but also the glorious second flowering of Rhodendron ‘Cheers’:

Back on ground level. the main borders are filling up with fresh foliage, presenting opportunities for dividing mature plants, choosing new plants for empty spaces and highlighting an unexpected victim of the relatively mild winter, a hardy chrysanthemum. Turning towards the woodland edge border, the bronze heucheras under the Acer griseum are brightening up, and the border itself already feels lush as the season progresses, with snowdrop foliage now forming a dense carpet:

The grass border is always slow to get going, but the two bold borders are quickly filling up as new growth emerges, sadly revealing the loss of an established delphinium. The stack of sticks will form supports for outdoor sweet peas, which are currently hardening off.

The cutting beds beside the working greenhouse remain in their winter guise, some with overwintered plants that now need to be potted up and moved on. Space in the greenhouse is already at a premium, and the bottom end is now full to capacity with pricked out seedlings:

The blue & white borders, fairly recently revamped, are looking particularly luscious, although much of the foliage seems to belong to camassias which, after many years of not flowering, are becoming almost thuggish. Beyond these borders the rose garden looks less dead-sticklike as the roses fill out with healthy new foliage and, further on, walking between the main borders emphasises just how valuable herbaceous perennials can be in our gardens.

Back towards the house, the obelisk border is livening up as the still-new shrubs and perennials come to life again, complemented by Narcissus ‘Minnow’, now in bloom. To the left, in front of the sitooterie, you can look across the insulation detritus towards the house, where the wisteria shows the first signs of new growth…and I am already on the lookout for those bothersome wood pigeons.

Finally, popping into the Coop, the fragrance of narcissi and hyacinth fills the air, streptocarpus, pelargoniums and nerines spring into growth and the white hippeastrum grows taller by the day, whilst the Coop Corner behind is a patchwork of foliage, lingering hellebore blooms, a beautifully blue brunnera and the rampant Clematis armandii.

And that’s the end of the tour – if you look under The Garden tab above, you can see a map of the garden and the route we have taken on the ramble. By the end of next month, the garden will be different again as the year races on…