- Blossom time. Having waited long,long,long time for Spring, it felt like we had fast-forwarded past it to high Summer this week. Suddenly everything is flowering, growing and blossoming all at once and we don’t know where to look or what to sniff first. This is Pear blossom on one of my espaliers at the allotment. Don’t really care if there are no pears, this is beautiful.
2. Even though I say it myself, the allotment has been looking good this week, with tulips, wallflowers (Blood Red) and Iris unguicularis putting on a display.
3. I put a few of these Ipeion into a client’s hedge bottom in November, not really expecting a lot. They said it might take a few years to settle in. Not a bit of it. They have popped up all fresh and clear. A new one on me, but I can recommend them. Maybe some Muscari next to them next year, eh?
4. In the churchyard there are both English and Spanish bluebells. It is a cliche, but the English ones are so much finer. Puts me in mind of the best play of the 21st Century so far, Jerusalem, by Jez Butterworth, set on St George’s Day, which is this week, in a Bluebell wood. In that play the lovable rogue, Johnny Rooster Byron, squats in a wood and scandalises the local village. Part of my duties this week were to trim down a hedge in the churchyard where three homeless people had been sleeping and carrying on. It was a tough one. I am sympathetic to them, in a borough where the housing crisis is reaching absurd levels, but also recognise that they cannot really sleep there and trash the place.
5. Lunaria. Not the best picture, but an indication of how this has shot up in semi-shaded, woodland edge all over the country this week. This is a white form, but I keep seeing the pure, clear purple lurking in hedges and shady cracks this week. Very lovely and needing no input from gardeners at all.
6. You didn’t think there’d be a week without Tulips, did you? At this time of year? Abu Hasan, Clearwater and an unidentified survivor in the churchyard.
Check out The Propagator’s blog for lots of lovely gardens, plants, people and tips.
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/21/six-on-saturday-21-04-2018/
Tim Hewitt, Gardener 
I like the sound of Lunaria, maybe one to add a bit of colour to my woodland patch
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Try it. It’s very easy.
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Beautiful flowers that these Ipeion .. I didn’t know them.
You’re right that the blue flowers close to them would be nice (bluebells or muscari for example ..)
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Thanks, Fred. It’s especially nice when you try new stuff, it’s easy and you like the results!
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Wow, that Abu Hasan is gorgeous! Really interested about the ipheion’s over wintering outside, I suppose it was pretty dry at the base of the hedge. They are a lovely plant. I might copy 🙂
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Spanish bluebells are the bane of my life! I only fear bindweed more, and at least bindweed doesn’t threaten a whole population! We have native bluebells down our lane, but someone planted Spanish ones in our garden and I’ve spent the last 4 years trying to eradicate them. They are stubborn little buggers!
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They can go so deep, especially in clay. Very, hard to get out. I just keep pulling and digging and discouraging, but they are tough.
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Gorgeous tulips, by the way! I have never grown ‘Abu Hassan’ but it has featured strongly in garden visits yesterday and today! Love it!
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Yes, the Abu Hassan tulip is splendid. And I’ve learnt a new thing today: we just have bluebells down here, as far as I know. I didn’t know they had nationalities!
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It is funny, in that you end up sounding very nationalistic, but the Spanish bluebells really are thuggish, whereas English ones are not.
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Although it is nice the the snowdrops are all done, everyone is showing off there tulips that I do not grow either! I have really liked the white ones. All the varieties of white are nice. I am more likely to try tulips than snowdrops.
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Well snowdrops are dead easy and multiply by themselves. Tulips are a bit more finicky and hardly ever increase. Snowdrops happy in moist soil, tulips need alkaline good drainage. Still, Tulips are just beautiful in my opinion and I need them in my life!
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I do without because they are too brief, too expensive, and bloom only once without chill. They are expensive very short term annuals. When I try them, they will likely be forced and then discarded.
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I totally agree with you, Tony, but in a domestic garden, they are a luxury I can’t give up!
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.I have 25 “Ipheion mixed” bulbs in a cheap offer pack I bought of 200 summer flowering bulbs. I’m assuming this is a mistake and trying to decide whether I should store them until the autumn and hope they don’t deteriorate or plant them now and risk deterioration anyway, The only way I’ve found to get rid of Spanish bluebells is to dig a very wide and deep hole around the clump and deliver the lot to the local tip. Then I dig a bit deeper (it’s only a foot and a half to bedrock here). Oh, and I mark the clump and remove the flowers if I can’t dig it out there and then; otherwise they cross-pollinate with any English ones and invade the English clump.
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I would get them in, John. What have you got to lose? A nice warm, sunny, free draining spot. I do wage war on Spanish Bluebells, but it is a losing one in some places.
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I fear I have the Spaniard in my front garden (not a euphemism). I’ll confirm. Then begin the process of trying to dig the buggers up…
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In the right place they can be fine, but they don’t want to stay in the right place. Their leaves are thick and strappy and they bully a lot of nicer stuff out of the way. Plus, they are a one trick pony, offering nothing apart from their flower. Maybe I am just prejudiced.
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