Garden Snippets
Spring has arrived at last! Despite the cold winds and frequent showers she is here in all her glory. I usually get a panicking feeling at this time of year, so many jobs can end up piling one on top of the other. But not this year, I've got myself organised.
My new plantings of snowdrops and hellebores have been duly installed and hopefully are nicely settled in. Composted bark and leafmould have been spread around the borders with more waiting in the wings. Organic fertiliser has also been put down. This was applied prior to the composting, making the nutrients quickly available as plants start into growth. It takes advantage of the last of the winter rains to wash all this food down to root level. The leafmould and compost have also attracted (like bees around a honey pot) all the blackbirds for miles around, who think it is solely for their benefit and they are thoroughly enjoying themselves, finding tasty morsels hidden beneath all this compost. No sooner is compost put down on the beds and borders, than blackbirds, robins and dunnocks appear to see what this kind chap has served up for breakfast! Trouble is, I spend an awful lot of time sweeping footpaths clear of compost scattered this way and that. Still, it is very entertaining to watch them. They almost follow me around the garden, perching in nearby shrubs chuckling to themselves with anticipation. They seem to be saying - 'Just wait until he goes back indoors, we'll be down to have a good old rummage'. When a bag of compost is brought out together with a trowel I get this weird feeling that I'm being watched!
As spring slowly advances and the sun comes out, so do you. What has survived the ravages of the winter months, the cold, the frosts, the biting wind and most of all here in England the incessant wet? Well, surprisingly for me no notable fatalities, thank goodness.
On my wanderings around the garden at this sweet time of year, I always come upon friends long forgotten poking through. One such is a rather special hellebore that I had thought had passed on to that great garden in the sky long ago - Hellebore dumetorum, a delicate green-flowered wild species which I obtained from that great hellebore guru, Will McLewin. I well remember visiting his nursery in Stockport, in Cheshire. He lives quite near me in fact, but is rarely there. More often than not he is abroad at some exotic location enjoying wild hellebores; the former Yugosalvia being one of his favourite haunts. He was once a lecturer in mathematics but now runs what he himself describes as a 'not-very-commercial nursery devoted mainly to growing and understanding them, it is clear that 'interested in hellebores' does not adequately describe my condition". He goes on to say about his passion, "I enjoy being able to write 10/6DXP instead of 'large, pointed, pale-pink flowers with heavy spotting merged together in the centre with a clear border, dark nectaries and exceptionally large leaves". Anyway I digress, his nursery sits upon a very steep hill and isn't sign-posted in any way at all. After many knocks at innumerable front doors, I finally manage to track him and his nursery down. To say he is mad on hellebores is putting it a shade mildly. They are his passion in life and it shows. On the sloping fields were masses of hellebores in various stages of development. A mouth-watering delight without doubt.
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