The Good, Bad and the Worrying at Veddw Garden in Spring

Spring is always hailed as a joy for gardeners and almost every gardener online, apart from our wonderfully honest Marianne, shows us delightful springing plants in the pleasant sunshine and we all go ‘ahhhh’. So you may go ‘ahhh’ at some of Veddw’s spring flowers. But it seems almost all my ‘ahhhs’ are accompanied by some anxiety, loss, or a sinking feeling about some job needing urgent attention.

Here’s an anxiety:

I do love this sea of Euphorbia griffithii – Fireglow, I think. But a couple of years ago I added some Allium Purple Sensation, and although there was a rather modest amount of allium, I did think it was a sensation.

So last autumn I asked Angus to plant some more. And this year all the euphorbia are flowering their hearts out – a month before I can expect the allium. Who said they could do that!???? Will the whole drama turn into a damp squib? Sigh.

And in the very same area, every spring I am insulted by the unpleasant colour pairing of two irremovable plants – pink clematis with the euphorbia. Never mind the bare patches on the Osmanthus. Those colours combined – yuk!

And a job? Well, I love seeing new fresh ferns:

But hmm.. this year there’s still a little tidying up required before there’s much pleasure. (we should have cut down the old foliage a month ago, I think – of all our ferns):

And then something has been chomping my hostas, big time! 

Snails? Or maybe a crow! Charles got an outside camera for Christmas, so he set it up to have a look. Though perhaps snails move too slowly to set it off. However:

DAMMIT!

But here’s good. We grow hundreds of erythroniums. Pagoda, White Beauty and Revolutum, all bouncy and doing well.

A few of hundreds of Pagoda, planted by Charles, a hundred a year for 30 odd years…

But we’ve repeatedly failed to get any more different ones to grow for us.  We have usually purchased them singly, at considerable expense, planted them carefully and then – they just vanish forever. However, we’ve just got one ! Here’s Joanna!

Phew! (But next year??)

Then there’s the Big Hunt.

And this goes on for weeks. The desperate search for plants which I dote on but which have not yet shown any sign of life. I cannot show you my Thalictrum Splendide emerging into the daylight, because it hasn’t, despite my looking every day. It’s not new; it’s about six years old, and this has been a very mild winter. Very wet though.. Not a single green shoot. I’ll keep looking, and hoping….How can the ground be so empty? In summer I can’t squeeze a new plant in anywhere.

And what about some newly planted Geranium Patricia?

This was intended to create another drama, in a bed with Geum Totally Tangerine. Could be fabulous. However, the geum have zoomed up and look about to flower. The geranium did pop up a single leaf per plant. Then the very next day they had all disappeared. Every one. Not a shred left. Now, about ten days later, there’s this:

Should I be hoping???? Price of a wet winter = snails?? Crows???

Meanwhile, of course, things like ground elder are happily romping around.

Last year I worried daily whether the cowslips were alright.

They come into bloom gradually, several at a time, it seems. I noticed, last year, that they did all arrive in the end. So this year it has been Charles’s job to worry about them, while I have looked on complacently. 

Cowslips with Camassias.

Replacements?

I do attempt to console myself for the absence of favourite and very important plants by investigating replacements. Only to discover they cost twice as much, or more, than I expect. The only affordable possibility seems to be bare root plants. I used to buy bare root plants in the autumn – big, healthy specimens. It’s still the way to buy trees and roses and perhaps many other things I have lots of. But these bare root plants are something else. 

That is a replacement for one of my missing geraniums. (From here) Will it grow with care and attention? Well, it’s certainly getting that. I am out there every morning hoping for a sign of life. (And yes, dear reader, I did put it in a pot and water it.) 

However, here’s good.

The real spring work here is repairing and painting – woodwork, metal work, anything that can rust or rot and will rust and rot. This is Charles’s major effort and without his efforts the place would disintegrate. And we certainty wouldn’t get to sit in the garden, as our seats – and we have many – rot. We replaced one though, in a fit of extravagance, as the one we bought was said to be rot proof. Embarrassed to say it’s plastic, but it looks good.

The about to rot wooden one which it replaced was then in need of a new site. We found a place in the woods.  The reason this is worth mentioning is that we were delighted and surprised to find that it gave us two new things. The first was the view of the seat, which provided a focus in an otherwise sort of anonymous space. 

And secondly, more obviously, it gave us a new view. We hadn’t sat in that spot before. 

It was good for sitting, in the evening sun. Not so good for a photo – sorry! I wonder how often a seat could be transforming, in a garden? Especially if you then sit in it a lot. Which is a very good thing to do.