The Last week of April

There are lots of garden photos to post from March and the first three weeks of April but I am afraid that if I try posting them first I'll never catch up with myself so here are some from this last week.

 Aubretia in the wall of the former fishpond (now a water garden) on the patio.

 Our new Broom.  May it sweep clean.

The best smelling pot in the garden - lavender, sage and rosemary.  Will someone tell that  baby hedgehog he shouldn't sit in his food.  Sadly, we haven't seen our real hedgehogs at all this year.  I wonder if they have gone elsewhere?

 

Lesser Celandine - a cultivated form with brown / purplish leaves. 

 The tiny Mossy Saxifrage.

 Arabis in a pot on the patio.

 The ground in the front garden is now littered with fallen cherry petals.

 The Beech in my hedge of native plants still retains last year's leaves.

 

But the Field Maple is showing it's new growth.

 

As is the Hazel.

 A tiny Geranium leaf.

 

Hostas emerging.

 

Japanese Maple.

 The White Lilac has survived my fairly drastic pruning last year and is flowering well.  It's a pity it isn't the lilac lilac!

 The Marsh Marigolds from Helen's are flowering in the marsh.

 And we have Violets and Pansies of every shade imaginable on the patio.

 Even though the front lawn is covered in petals there is still plenty of blossom on the Cherry.

And by contrastv with the fifteen foot high cherry we have the two inch high Spring Squill.  If only we had more of them.  Perhaps one year I shall buy a load and plant them around the base of one of the trees.

March 2012

It's been a marvellous March this year - so mild and sunny and dry.  I was working in the garden virtually all month.  Not that I did anything energetic but it was lovely to be out in the Spring-like weather.

On 1st March we still had Snowdrops;

and the first Daffodils were just coming out.

Frogs were emerging from their hiding places;

and so were the insects like Ladybirds.

But by the end of the month the hanging baskets were planted;

The pots on the patio were looking colourful;

 

there was frogspawn in the ponds;

 baby newts had four legs;

and the cherry was in full flower.

 

What a month!