Spring Garden Journal - My Favourite Flowers Turned Up

It's been far too long since I did a garden update !

The truth is, my poor garden has been terribly neglected for the last few months while I had to focus all my energy on some work issues.

But behind the scenes, my wife has done a huge amount of work getting seedlings started, bringing them all into the house every night and taking them out again every morning until the temperatures rose enough for them to survive. Now that warm weather has finally arrived, she's been busy planting them all out.

Meanwhile, neglecting the garden has allowed it to do it's own thing, and that's not all bad.

My favourite flower turned up out of nowhere ! We had one small clump self seed last year, and this spring they have turned up in lots of places. Yes, it's forget-me-nots - hardy plants with little blue flowers which thrive in all the most difficult spots in the garden.

This one turned up in a gap in the brick paving outside my garden office, together with a dandelion.

Soooo many dandelions this year ! I've got totally mixed feelings about them. The amount we've got, and the damage they do to the lawn makes them a weed. But I know the leaves are tasty in a salad, and I believe they have some kind of medicinal properties as well as being something you can brew into a tea. So perhaps I need to change my thinking on them. Instead of treating it as weeding, start thinking of it as harvesting.

Here's another clump of forget-me-nots, in a little overgrown patch at the edge of the lawn under the privet bush. Together with a stray hosepipe.

It's hard to see, but the plant a little to the left of the forget-me-nots with the lobed leaves is a Michaelmas daisy. Another thing which is incredibly pretty and bee-friendly, but can easily become a weed because it spreads and self-seeds so much.

I think that's a bit of a theme with our garden. Lots of self-seeded plants which are wonderful in small numbers but become a weed when they like the garden too much and try to take over.

Under the fig tree, we've got quite a few allium flowers popped up. I'm glad to see them ! They've been in that flower bed ever since we moved in, but pressure from other plants really reduced them. After clearing a lot of other unwanted things out over the winter, we've got more allium flowers than I've seen for several years.

Another neglected patch ! Lots more dandelions, and lots of bluebells. But the bluebells are really Spanish spackle rather than true English bluebells. It doesn't matter, they're pretty so they can stay 🙂

This is one of the loganberries which established itself a couple of years ago. Loganberries are a blackberry/raspberry crossbreed, and like blackberries the stems act as runners and make new plants if they sit on the ground.

We started with one loganberry, which is quite old now, so I'm happy that it's created a few new plants - three more in total, two of which started giving us fruit last year. This photo is actually two of the three. One is at the back by the fence, with stems I've trained to the left, the other is in the middle of the photo with stems trained to the right.

What is nice is that it's already making a bunch of new stems. What you do is each autumn cut down the stems that fruited in the year, and these new stems them get trained to become the fruit-bearers for next year.

Three raised beds converted to polytunnels with hoops, clips and clear plastic sheeting. It's to protect the plants from extremes of cold and wind until it gets really summery, but it also helps keep the voracious slugs and snails at bay. The nearest one is already giving us copious amounts of chard which my wife is using like spinach when she makes sag aloo 😁

In the distance is the greenhouse, which is currently filled with pots full of tomatoes and peppers which should be ready to plant out soon. The bushy thing in the foreground by the solar light is a big grow bag of potatoes.

Finally, where we put up mesh to stop Chester cat escaping last year, the climbing plant has decided it absolutely loves it. Most years it slinks off to the left and gets in the way of the tomatoes, as can be seen from the dead brown growth left over from last year. But this year, it's reaching for the sky, and I've never seen it so vigorous ! I'm looking forward to seeing how many of it's amazing purple flowers it comes up with.