Springtime. The gardens bursting into colour!

What a beautiful sunny day. I do think gardeners get a bit over excited at this time of the year – or is that just me?

Springtime is my favourite time of the year, as everything’s starting off again. Seeds being sown, seedlings popping up, bulbs coming out, trees budding up, it’s all too much!

In between sowing more seeds and watering the little seedlings that are already up. I just can’t stop taking photos of every flower that blooms.

I’m sure it’s because of what we’ve been through this last twelve months, as every flower feels more welcome than they’ve ever been!

Without a shadow of a doubt though, the most exciting thing coming up is the ‘Eremurus’ fox tail lily. I planted them into a new bed two years ago and last year I only got one tiny little flower spike, half the size it should have been. I’m sure it was lack of water last spring, so the water that gets saved in the kitchen bowl is going solely onto them.

When the weathers been good I’ve been out like a shot. I’ve got two shallow terracotta pots that I’ve had crocus in for the last three years and this year they didn’t perform as well as they had previously. I’ve taken them out and dotted them all around the woodland boarder.

I’ve also lifted and split a number of snowdrops clumps, replanting them all around the white garden. I’ve saved some of them to plant in the two pots, together with some black grass ‘Ophiopogon planiscapus Nigrescens’. It’s an experiment as a neighbour gave me the little cuttings of grass and I thought the snowdrops may look good coming up through it, we’ll see.

As I do every year I’m trying a new tomato variety, this year its ‘Sweet million’.  I always have my two favourites ‘Rosella’ and ‘Brandy wine’ – I do seem to be drawn to veg varieties named after alcohol, funny that! I always grow one of the golden varieties and a staple. This years staple is ‘Alicante’. They’ve all germinated well so I’m hoping for another bumper crop.

I’ve just sown the first flower seeds, Tagetes (marigolds). I use them to grow as companion plants to the tomatoes to try and deter the pesky white flies. I’ve also sown the striking Tithonia ‘Torchlight’ torch for short. They are a Mexican sunflower, it’s a vivid orange and the bees absolutely love them.

It’s good to have some pleasant indoor jobs to be doing as the weather’s not exactly brilliant yet, but this is the UK what do we expect? You don’t get a ‘green and pleasant land’ without rain. That’s what anoraks are for!

Keep safe and happy gardening.