The garden – April 2023

Theses posts are just for me – a record of the garden month by month: what’s working and what isn’t and how it changes over the year. There are lists of plants, locations of beds which won’t mean anything to anyone else, and photos, many photos, showing, how it’s all going.

If you land here by accident, welcome. Please walk on the grass.

Ch-ch-ch-ch- ch-changes

So let’s call April 1 the the first day of the gardening year, even if much has already happened including restocking the back border after last year’s fox destruction:  2 nandina domestica, 2  skimmia and a hydrangea Annabelle all planted late February.

This month I have:

Divided the achemilla in the east facing bed nearest the patio.

Moved the fuchsia from the west-facing bed nearest the patio to the east side, moved the gaura to the far-most west-facing bed where it can flop away to its heart’s content without blocking anything else. It seems to have survived despite all advice saying that moving a plant like this is doomed to fail.

Dug out the old lavender with some trepidation – it has been reliable for years, but was getting past it.  One of the cuttings from last year survived and was planted by the ceanothus – a planting decisions that had more to do with how tired I was and where I was standing when I was holding the pot than a considered design decision. However it seems to be surviving.

Moving the lavender revealed some cyclamen and some ornamental black grass which it had smothered and which were replanted in the bed by the fuchsia. Rescued some of the small crocosmia bulbs which had been engulfed in lavender and replanted them in a group. They were almost instantly attacked (foxes? squirrels?) but some still upright. Planted a Lonicera in the centre of that bed and moved the geum from the shade of the bay tree to the edge of that bed to get more light.

Dug out the Salvia Amistad which didn’t survive January’s snow. Planted a guelder rose in its place.

Planted three foxgloves around the bay tree nearest the house.

Masses of flowers on the bay trees and on the forsythia early in the month. Forsythia over by late April and has been pruned. The sweet woodruff might be coming back after the fox attacks of last year, but there are still big empty patches – curse those cubs.

Planted 3x verbascum in the west facing bed between the ceanothus and the cordyline, two of them had started to develop flower spikes by the end of the month. Planted 3x alchemilla at the lawn edge of the back border.

Planted small clematis to grow through ivy on east facing wall nearest patio and honeysuckle to grow though ceanothus. Both experiments!

Successes

Potted up three dahlia tubers last week of March, only survivors of the several I tried to overwinter. Spotted teeny tiny green shoots on one of the of them by the end of the month, so at least one survived!

Harvested several kilos of wild garlic – enough to supply the butcher with the raw material for a line of locally-sourced, wild garlic sausages.

Geum and fuchsia seem to have survived being moved.  Actaea I thought had been killed by last summer’s drought are coming back strongly. Allium planted in the autumn are coming up but buds only, no flowers yet.

Hmmms

One of the new foxgloves has been destroyed by slugs. The clematis has already been eaten all but one leaf – presumably by snails living in the ivy. Have moved it to see if it will grow up the pyracantha at the back but not hopeful.  All but one daffodil in the big pot came up blind.

Nandina planted end Feb have lost some lower leaves – google tells me it’s over/under watering or too much/too little sun or too much wind…

Generally the garden feels behind where it would usually be.  Photos from previous years show more growth and flowers. The picture at the top was taken on April 26 2023, below is from May 1st 2019 – almost the exact same time of year and the same angle but evidently a much warmer spring.

Weather

March weather very wet and cold, but no frosts here since February. April has been the same with strong northerly winds.