Coming on now

Lots happening this week on my gardening travels. The sun has been shining and I have been potting on, pricking out and sowing away to keep plants flowing on the production line. One of my gardens has some of its pots coming out of hibernation from the greenhouse and back out into view, so I planted some Sedums to fill out and refresh.

I volunteered at Horatio's garden this week, the garden attached to Salisbury Hospital Spinal Injury Unit. I met James Sinclair who is designing a new Horatio's garden for Glasgow Hospital and I helped to prick out some plants for the Plant Fair coming up in a few months time. A lovely place to visit, always friendly faces about and a variety of jobs to help out with. The garden has different pieces of sculpture from time to time and lights under Birch trees for when it gets dark. Lots of interest for the patients.

My time at Heale saw me building wig wams with Willow for plants to climb up in the veg garden. HG had prepared the wood and I really enjoyed putting the structures in place. The wood is such a fantastic orangey/pink colour and I love the way they are adding to the shape and structure of the veg garden as you walk through the Box parterres.

We have been working in the greenhouse pricking out Aubergine, Chilli, Broccoli and Lupinus and sowing more flowers, Delphiniums and veggies, Cabbage and Cauliflower. HG keeps playing plant Jenga with everything, making enough room for yet more pots and trays!

We had time to plant out our first earlies, the red Duke of York and we used a spoonful of bonemeal for each potato to help them along nicely to produce more tubers.

We planted out Broad beans too. We had sown them in Root trainers, which I just LOVE and they look like premium plants with strong, healthy root systems ready to roll.

Cloches and slug pellets and fingers crossed all will be well.

Looking around the garden all is ready to pop! Heale has quite a few Magnolia trees and the one first to come out looks like 'Star Wars'. Across the river Avon sits Magnolia 'Apollo' and 'Felix Jury'. The shell of the flowers heads are just splitting and peeling off, ready for the bloom to follow.

In the Japanese garden, in shade, sits a clump of delicate, tiny flower heads which HG told me was Puschkinia scilloides variety 'Libanotica'. It looks like a wild garlic plant, lots of green foliage and delicate little flowers, except these flowers have a fine blue stripe. Very pretty.

There is also a weeping plant towards the rivers edge, a Cercidiphyllum japonicum f. pendulum. The stems are rather sweet, a red wood arching in habit. Researching it online, it looks like it has beautiful heart shaped leaves to look forward to as well.

More river work has been carried out, willow has been coppiced and used to repair eroded banks and it looks really good. The Willow is a striking colour. 

Still a wintery feel in the garden some days, a cold wind and still a fire is made every week but now the first veggies are out and about, I am excited about the months ahead and all that lovely produce to come!

Mothers Day today and I was taken to Furzey Gardens in the New Forest. A wonderfully charming and secretive garden with fairy doors in the trees. So much to see on the way, Skunk Cabbages brightly pushing up through the soil, Heather abundant in purple and white flowers, Rhododendrons, Camellias, Skimmias. What a treat.