“March winds and April showers” was reversed this spring, but apart from my pond which filled up with blown seeds repeatedly in April, the season has been easy on the garden with just enough rain to keep everything growing steadily. This time last year we were in the middle of a 6-month drought which led to the excessive fruiting — especially my apples, peach and pyracantha. This year, by contrast, those same plants have flowered and fruited weakly — some apple trees have no fruit at all, and my peach only mustered three fruits compared to 50+ last year. Hopefully they’ll get back to normal in the coming years.
It feels like I’ve put more effort (time and attention) into the garden this year, so hopefully the benefits shine through in the photos below!
Keir Watson
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MARCH
March was warm enough and sunny enough to get me out and begin prepping the garden for the coming season. This involved a lot of cutting back, sweeping up, tying-in and mulching. I have learned, over the years, to not put off these tasks as once new growth begins, clearing up last year’s remains becomes much harder. Fortunately growth is slow at this time of the year, so there’s plenty of time. Encouragingly, many spring flowers appear throughout the garden making all the work seem worthwhile.
In my White Garden, the tulips are planted deep and behave like perennials. Joined here with starflower, they put on an early show and die back by mid-summer.
Many deciduous ornamental grasses look great through the winter, but the dead stems get increasingly messy. I cut them back in February or early March before the new growth comes through.
Early March is also a good time to cut back fronds of ferns, and semi-evergreens such as Epimedium and Asarum to give the new foliage space to come through.
Once I had finished clearing out the old beds (as above), I later put down 2in of bark mulch to conserve moisture and surpress weeds.
The base of my Amelanchier produces sporadic suckers. This year I dug down and cut them off, then placed a weed mat over the area and covered it in bark. Will it work?
Now the snowdrops are over, Narcissus ‘Jumblie’ and primroses put on a show.
This new seedling flowered for the first time. It has a gorgeous pink and white, semi-double flowers — breathtaking and free!
In my woodland garden, I’m trying to grow this as an espalier on a shady fence. It’s rather slow, but has long whippy shoots, which should make the process easier.
In the woodland garden I discovered several scarlet tiger moth caterpillars. I’ve seen the adults here in summers before. (That’s a wind-fall apple it’s feeding on!)
This is the first of my pot perennials to emerge this spring. The small-leaved Hosta ‘Stiletto’, here pushing up through a mat of moss.
I pruned the UFO wall-peach in my greenhouse, and tied in this year’s vertical offsets. Agapanthus and lilies wait for the frosts to pass.
I tried overwintering pots of half-hardy bedding plants. Pelargoniums and a nemesia (above) were notable successes, but I failed to keep the osteospermum alive.
Snow-in-summer (left) and thrift (right) are great plants for creating mounds that maintain interest through the winter.
The third-phase of my green roof planting is performing well: it just took a half hour to get it tidy, thanks to the weed-mat and mostly evergreen planting.
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APRIL
April begins with warm sunshine between rain showers. We are able to open the folding doors and enjoy the Amelanchier which is just coming into flower.
In the garden prep continues, planting out hardy annuals and bulbs, providing support for emerging perennials and tying in clematis shoots. The beds need a lot of weeding before weed seedlings get too large. I get everything looking tidy, paths swept and the pond skimmed, clear and pristine. For a couple of days, at least…
But April has other ideas, bringing strong winds which cover it in leaves and flowers from next-door’s poplar. After a clear up it happens again! At least there is plenty of sun in between. I won’t put too many flower photos in this month’s gallery as I covered them in my article ‘Stars of the April Garden‘.
I planted a pair of large terrazzo planters each with 3x white Bacopa, 3x pansy and 1x central Argyranthemum ‘Molimba’.
Here’s the same planter looking fab. I like these plants as their faded flowers are small and don’t need deadheading
Thrift brings some cheer in my mediterranean pond garden, but I see weeds to pull, pots to replant, and last-year’s plant remains to clear. Better gone on with it!
I have been sold hundreds of mis-labelled plants, bulbs and trees over the years. This picture shows Allium christophii, which I just replanted following the nursery selling me mislabelled plants 18 months ago. At least they provided the correct ones finally.
The Lonicera hedges are the first to grow away in the spring and need cutting early. Fortunately, in my garden they never have nesting birds in, so I can get on them early. I am part way through the one above. The robin (bottom left) is interested.
This hedge is only 30-40cm deep and is planted in front of a boundary hedge. It provides a wonderful backdrop for this part of the garden.
Keep or ditch?
Hosta ‘Undulata Mediovariegata’ has three fatal flaws. (1) Slugs love it. (I’ve kept them away for now.) (2) Sun scorch: The variegation develops brown holes. (3) Part of it is reverting to the non-variagated form.
The green roof is doing great, but the roses growing on the wall of my workshop below had mildew last year. I tied them in and gave them a sulphur spray, but it’s a losing battle I fear.
After all that work… here is a first-floor view over the back garden at the end of April. Looking good!
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MAY
Chelsea season! — May is the first month when you can fill the garden with dramatic flowers: iris, roses, peony and foxgloves, which is why Chelsea Flower Show is so spectacular. The show gardens however, are a fraud. Put together in a few short weeks, they create the sense that you can ‘have’ a garden like these. You can’t have a garden. You can only garden a garden. Gardens are not static: they change continually, and how they pan out over time depends on how you manage that change. One such management technique is the ‘Chelsea chop’: I cut back a number of early flowering plants (such as snow-in-summer) to encourage new foliage and a compact plant. Others such as Aster, Anthemis and tall Sedum get cut back before they flower, to create dense stocky plants which flower shorter and a bit later.
Cutting back becomes an obsession: I’m getting more ruthless with plants that go over, or that don’t perform, chopping them earlier and harder. Towards the end of May and into early June, I deadhead the roses before they fully finish, scalping 30cm all over, which makes them look instantly tidier and helps the focus move to other plants that are coming into their prime. Diseased plants, and ones that have outgrown their space, I dig out (I’m looking at you geraniums) and put something better behaved in their place. Gardens evolve. It is us gardeners that shape the procession. That’s the joy of gardening once you understand it. At which point, Chelsea show gardens lose
May is dominated by the first flush of roses. One of the first away is Etoile de Hollande, seen above with mauve clematis H. F. Young framing my arbour..
It has taken many years, to confine this climbing rose to my fence and arbour, but this year it has put on its finest display. The flowers smell powerfully of elderflower and lemon.
Irises are spectacular but short lived. I grow blue Iris sibirica through white rosa ‘Kew Gardens’. The rose will repeat flower. The iris will not. I cut it back hard after flowering.
My Sisyrinchium striatum self-seeded and created this wonderful display. A couple of weeks later they were toppled left and right by wind and rain and required holding up with sticks and string.
My attempt to get rid of duckweed is making slow progress. I have been skimming it daily, but duckweed keeps rising from the deep, seemingly endlessly.
Hosta ‘Undulata Mediovariegata’ that looked perfect last month is already slug and sun damaged. Also, note behind it, I cut back the climbing “Iceberg” rose that had powdery mildew. We’ll see if it grows back better.
The hostas I grow in pots are much easier to keep free of slug damage than those in the ground.
This small-flowered ‘weed’ is a local wildflower Geranium dissectum. It was growing in this garden 15 years ago (on my green roof), and has suddenly popped up in an adjacent bed.
This is Rosa ‘The Pilgrim’ — a beautiful climbing rose, which I am trying to train around the windows, but it insists on blocking the view.
In my woodland garden, spring flowers give way to foliage, such as this beautiful tapestry of ground cover: wild ginger, sweet woodruff and maidenhair fern.
One of the woodland plants that flowers later than most is this perennial foxglove. It is considered a short-lived perennial, but in my garden has proved reliable for 5+ years.
My martagon lily flowered well this year. The bulbs I planted last year have produced 5 new flowering spikes but have yet to open.
My pyracantha espalier produced far fewer flowers this year (possibly due to last year’s glut?). I’ve given it a quick trim to keep its lines distinct.
Several culms, over one inch thick, have sprouted on my side of the fence at the base of my pyracantha. Easy to snap off at ground level when young, but the roots will keep advancing, and may start to do real damage… “Dear Neighbour…”
I have mixed feelings about this speedwell. In flower, it takes up more space than I want to give it for just two weeks of (admittedly pretty) blue flowers. (h25cm s50cm)
Related Reads
- A Modern Romantic Rose Garden
- 7 Alpines You Can Grow In The Border
- Pyracantha espalier
- Woodland Garden – Timeline
Final thoughts… I’ve just looked into Agapanthus gall midge – which leads to distorted buds. There’s no simple solution, so I’m going into June with the realisation that my only realistic option is to cut off all the flowering spikes on every Agapanthus – infected or not! Like box moth, this is a serious problem for gardeners and the gardening trade. It’s probably not worth investing in Agapanthus until they sort this out (no chemical sprays work so far) – so the problem is only going to get worse before it gets better. I have 20 large pots of agapanthus. Do I want to keep them if I can’t let them flower?
Previous Garden Diary Posts
- Garden Diary — Spring 2025 (Dec/Jan/Feb)
- Garden Diary — Autumn 2025 (Sep/Oct/Nov)
- Garden Diary — Summer 2025 (Jun/Jul/Aug)
- Garden Diary — Spring 2025 (Mar/Apr/May)
- Garden Diary — Winter 2025 (Jan/Feb)
- Garden Diary — Autumn/Winter 2024 (Oct/Nov/Dec)
- Garden Diary — Late Summer 2024 (Jul/Aug/Sep)
- Garden diary — Early Summer 2024 (Apr/May/Jun)
- Garden diary — Spring 2024 (Jan/Feb/Mar)