Ch ch ch changes
More cutting back and tidying up than adding new stuff this month. Cut back the long stems on the forsythia and a lot of browning growth on the cotoneaster revealing lots of starry white flowers on the remaining green growth. What I thought was spiders’ webs on the brown foliage turns out to have probably been a sign of hawthorn webber moths. I am horrified to have inadvertently destroyed a habitat. Let’s hope they can recover. I promise they will be left unpruned from now on.
Put a muehlenbeckia in the frame by the back door. Potted up tarragon, sage and Thai basil in pots for the garden table where they join the rosemary which has survived me and the winter and is growing well in its pot. Planted nasturtium, sunflower and morning glory seeds as an experiment to see if they can grow this late in the season (reader, they can). Put a Hosta in the low, round red pot which felt like a sacrificial offering to the slugs, but which has, miraculously survived a month unnibbled. Black eyed susan in a pot placed underneath a wigwam – cheat’s approach to adding quick height and colour.
Successes
Valerian looks fantastic and the rusty red colour picks up the heuchera further down the garden. The campion in that corner is getting ready to flower, the honeysuckle is flowerless but growing strongly up its wigwam and into the ceanothus. All the heucheras are flowering well. In the corner of the east facing bed near the patio, the loosestrife is flourishing and the alchemilla is wonderful. The pond continues to be a delight, the water boiling with tadpoles. I have hopes of raising a toad army to take on the slugs. There is a week each May when the towering white bush and the elders next door are flowering at the same time as the pyracantha and the ceanothus in my patch and the garden looks magnificent. (the picture for May 24 captures it, this years was obviously taken in the dark) The achillea has survived its mauling by slugs last year and has grown back, but is a good foot shorter than usual, as is the echoinops.
Hmms
Guelder rose started the month infested with blackfly, though they’d cleared off by the month’s end. Lilac doing the same bending over whippy thing it did last year. Not sure what to do about it. Slugs might not have found the hosta (yet) but they have demolished the flowers on the flag irises in the pond. All the feverfew, which was such a feature of last year’s spring garden has disappeared without trace.
Weather
Tricky. Some hot gorgeous days, some downpours. Temperatures ranging through the teens up to 25 and back again.
Sole Trader PR 