Getting Greener

"A flowerless room is a souless room, to my way of thinking;

but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it."

- Vita Sackville-West

April is the month when we can finally begin flower-picking in earnest and this year the lilacs have really outdone themselves for scent and sheer ebullience.

Double white lilac outside the cottage

We have two of the deep purple variety in the back garden and one white flowering tree in the front. Until recently this was overshadowed by a rather ancient elder which we've now removed to let in more light.

As a reward, the tree has provided us with heavy swags of bloom, just crying out to be picked and displayed in a room where they can scent the air with the fragrance of early spring.

Some people believe that bringing lilac indoors encourages bad luck, but the only thing I'd worry about is whether there are bugs hiding inside the blossom. (Maybe one should leave it outdoors for a couple of hours first, to let any little critters escape..?)

Cercis siliquastrum

Another colourful favourite in gardens  is the Judas tree - a strange beast in that it can apparently produce flowers right out of the bark. (Christina tells me that this tends to happen when it hasn't been properly pruned!)

In any event, it's certainly eye-popping and I was drawn to photograph this specimen because of the peculiar combination of golden lichen, grey bark and magenta petals, reminiscent of the pattern on a Japanese kimono. 

My book tells me that Judas trees tolerate most soils, but prefer it to be deep and well-drained, in full sun or part-shade. Unless regularly pruned, they can reach a height of 8-12m, spreading out more than 8 meters... too big for our garden, alas, but nice to admire elsewhere.

Gladioli byzantinus

Talking of things exotic, we recently decided we should replace our rather ineffective wild gladioli with some new robust corms which have just come into flower. 

It's intriguing the way their heads reach forward as if practising an Egyptian sand-dance... (does anyone know what I'm talking about??)

I'm pleased to say the blooms are stronger in colour and form than the wild version, so it just remains to pull out all the old ones which have scattered themselves everywhere.

The Honesty hedge!

In this climate, it's nearly always wiser to choose a cultivar rather than rely on a native plant which may take more easily but then outgrows its welcome, leaving lots of offspring to remind you of your mistake.

However, we do make an exception for Honesty because it can be spectacular under a hedge where little else is prepared to grow. I enjoy its flowers - like the butterflies - but then I usually rip out the plant before its root becomes too large and intractable.

Aside from those bold, brash purples and magentas, there are smaller ground-cover plants also in bloom and attracting the insects.

This creeping thyme always makes a delightful cushion and will easily thread itself between rocks and over dry-stone paths.  

I'm particularly fond of carpeters because they're so useful at knitting together awkward or unsightly areas of the garden and quickly lending a naturalistic flourish to a newly planted bed.

Iberis sempervirens
'Snowflake'

The same may be said of certain edging plants like this Iberis or Candytuft, much beloved of suburban front gardens.  

Again, it's worth growing something which is a bit nicer than the stuff you find en masse in plastic trays. I found this variety in Chiltern Seeds catalogue and it's been flowering for well over a month now, starting from when there was little else in bloom.

I've planted it in different areas and it seems to perform best in part-shade where the soil is more moisture retentive. The flowers on this particular plant just keep getting bigger and brighter - a contrast to all the greenery!

Dicentra spectabilis alba

Similarly pure white, the heart-shaped baubles of Dicentra spectabilis gleam within the shadowy depths of emergent foliage.

We both have a weakness for white or cream flowers tinged with green; out in the countryside, patches of Solomon's Seal and Lily of the Valley are starting to appear on waysides, echoing this cool combination. The verges, too, are full of waving Cow Parsley and burgeoning stems of Hogweed, not to mention the puffy blooms of Bladder Campion.

Dicentra spectabilis
The original 'Bleeding Heart'

That's not to say, of course, that the traditional pink and white version of Dicentra isn't equally welcome - in fact it's a quintessential plant of the English spring garden, along with Foxgloves and Sweet Williams.

Chiltern's catalogue tells me that Dicentra spectabilis also bears the name of 'Lyre Flower', which is apt considering its unusual shape.

Anything which hangs, drapes or shoots out in an elegant fashion is worth growing because it draws the eye and stimulates your imagination in ways that other, more ordinary plants, never will.

View towards the herb bed

The weather has been mixed throughout April, with plenty of sun along with cold winds which have kept the temperatures down. It hasn't been great for my seedlings, which have to survive without a greenhouse, but it's enabled the bulbs and the blossom to continue for longer than usual.

Here you can see our remaining tulips: 'Ballerina' - feisty in orange - and 'Merlot' in a sort of wine colour. Once they've finished, we'll take them out of the containers and keep them safe in the shed until it's time to replant in September.

The low box hedge on the right has just been trimmed and is already starting to put on fresh growth, whilst the honeysuckle hedge behind is in need of yet another hard prune. 

Sunbathing in a sheltered spot

On the far right of the picture, you can see that our Viburnum opulus is in full bloom. The French call this 'Boule de neige' (snowball tree) or Viorne obier, and it's another popular shrub.

I'm not sure if ours was the compact version or not; but, in any event, Christina keeps it well-pruned so it doesn't exceed its allotted space. If you cut back hard after flowering, you maintain the shape of the shrub and it will still bloom its socks off the following year. 

The only downside to this viburnum is its fatal attraction to blackfly. We usually resort to snipping off the worst affected shoots - mainly those which have soft growth and no flowers.

Exciting discoveries in the early morning light!

Tulip Fever

"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge

scale, you could not ignore its beauty."  - Georgia O'Keeffe

It seems as though all the subtlety of Spring, with its soft pastels and misty greens, is suddenly blown asunder by the arrival of these brash tulips!  

Easy to understand how artists have been inspired - and 17th century collectors driven mad - by the vivid combinations of shape and saturated colour.

This is a flower that can appear so delicate and subdued on a dull morning, petals closed and elegantly streamlined, only to throw open her skirts in the heat of a sunny afternoon, revealing hidden depths of a completely different hue!

Tulip "Apricot Emperor"

These three photographs reflect the changing moods of one tulip, "Apricot Emperor", which we used in planting up a copper container last autumn.

There are two more containers of bulbs yet to flower and I guess we're probably about halfway through the tulip season. We've had a few surprises pop up in the border too... bulbs which probably came from the 'Tulips Against Cancer' charity, where you buy a flowering bunch with bulbs still attached. This might account for the occasional pinks and yellows!

Tulips with cerinthe

We rather enjoy these odd splashes of colour as they light up beds which are mostly full of greenery at this stage, and they have the gaiety of poppies when their petals are fully open and flamboyant.

Tulips form clumps quite quickly in our garden and need dividing every three years or so. The larger ones produce a lot of leaf which is why we prefer to put them in containers, even though it means the bulbs will have to be lifted and stored later on.

But it also means you have plenty of flowers for cutting and giving away, which is a good thing!

Just a single specimen can make an effective table arrangement when teamed with other early bloomers such as primula, narcissi, cerinthe and muscari.

I really prefer smaller botanical tulips for naturalising in the garden. We started with Tulipa turkestanica, which featured in last month's post and has now gone over, to be followed by Tulipa clusiana "Peppermint Stick", a taller, single-flowered variety.

Also known as "The Lady Tulip", clusiana is very slender and stylish when her petals are still tightly wrapped in the early morning.

Gradually she unfolds herself, revealing that her petals are pure white inside with just a hint of the exterior pink showing through.

Tulipa clusiana "Peppermint Stick"

Finally, these petals open right up like a magnolia flower and you see that the centre is a shade of deep plum - almost black - with contrasting yellow stigma (that eggy bit in the middle).  Small but spectacular!

As long as your bed is in a sunny position with free-draining soil, these tulips can be left in the ground to spread - either by seed or by producing offsets.

Although this spring has been particularly wet and windy, I have to say that even the taller varieties of tulip have stood up well to bad weather.

Their sensible strategy is to remain shut when it pours with rain and, if anything, the colours seem to intensify on dull days - a good time to photograph them in fact.

In his bulb book, Dr Hessayon recommends that both flowers and foliage can be removed from garden tulips once they fade... thus depriving snails of a good meal but avoiding lots of mess in your border!

Anenome nemorosa

A Walk on the Wild Side

As an antidote to tulipomania, we've been exploring local woodland to find early wild flowers like pulmonaria and wood anenome, which have also done well in this damp spring.

We came across some lovely drifts of Anenome nemorosa which bloom on the sunlit forest floor whilst waiting for the trees above to come into leaf.

My wild flower book tells me that its spreading habit means that a group of 100 flowering stems can actually belong to a single plant! 

Vinca minor alba or Periwinkle

Our garden is too dry for such a delicacy but - from a distance - we've created something similar by planting Vinca minor as a ground-cover under shrubs, hoping it will keep the dreaded ivy at bay.

At this time of year it produces a host of starry white flowers that stand out nicely against its evergreen leaves.

Whilst walking through woodland, we came across several butterflies taking advantage of sunlit glades and spring flowers.

Here a brimstone has attached itself to some Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis), a plant that nearly always has blue flowers in the wild, although we did come across a white version similar to the cultivar called "Sissinghurst".

Populus tremula

If our little garden in the valley were a huge estate, with an awkward area of waterlogged land, then I'd be sorely tempted to establish a plantation of aspens.

I adore these trees and I guess they've been emblematic of the French countryside ever since Impressionist painters set up their easels beside rivers and lakes.

In winter and early spring their silver-white trunks and delicate branches have a magical ability to reflect light and transmit the rushing of wind.

Catkins on an aspen

Aside from being able to thrive in boggy places, aspen wood is said to be resistant to boring insects so it's often used in construction of roofs, providing local farmers with a relatively fast-growing crop of timber.

This is another tree decorated with masses of catkins, though they're often hard to see at 15 meters high!

It might be stunning to grow in a big garden but unfortunately the roots produce extensive suckers which can be particularly annoying if they come up in your lawn.


As you can deduce from its Latin name, the aspen is a type of poplar which, in turn, is part of the willow family - hence their affinity with water and those catkin-like flowers. In our area there are two or three other types of poplar - all very beautiful trees - which I'll endeavour to write about later this year.

Narcissus actaea (or Pheasant's Eye)
with Narcissus albus plenus odoratus