It’s blossom time again!  You really can’t overdo blossom, Monty Don says it best in ‘The Ivington Diaries’ 

‘Here to a blossomy infinity would not be too far’.

To have a beautiful tree close by that you can admire all year round that also flowers is for most of us I guess one of the real pleasures of living where we do. Of course some have already done their thing: the earlier cherries, the native blackthorn and the Mahonias that bless us in winter and early spring. And aren’t they a welcome sight on a grey day and some bring a lovely scent to awaken our senses too.

Flowering early April here (depending on the unpredictable weather of course) is the pretty Magnolia Stellata and the weeping pears with their understated but very beautiful soft white flowers with a hint of grey that complement perfectly the willow- like leaves.  The medlar happens a little later with its single, simple and lovely flowers.  The medlar has become a real favourite there: it is a fairly small and graceful spreading tree that just gets on with being a medlar without much tlc.  My kind of tree.

Some of the blossom is so dainty:  greengage (see photo), pears and quince all white, all beautiful.  The quince has been amazing since we planted it about 3 years ago and, very unusually here in our heavy clay soil, she has just grown steadily and without fuss.  Love it. 

Later, in fact too much later for my gardening nerves, is the Catalpa or Indian Bean Tree (see photo).  It does an impression of being dead sometimes right up until early June, and then she produces her large racemes of flowers, a bit like a loose horse chestnut, and fabulous large leaves.

And not forgetting the native trees we see around us; the limes, beeches, maples, hollies, hawthorn; they may not all have magnificent flowers but they make our landscapes wonderful in a way nothing else can.

We’re hoping to have some renovation work done on the garden in April.  It was going to be last September but kept getting postponed because of the awful wet weather. The oak railway sleepers in the seaside garden are falling apart and that area is looking a rather sad.  So, we’ve a new plan, I hope it works!  I’ve saved some of the little plants that seeded around and gave us the effect we wanted. They are currently looking rather bedraggled in pots, but seem to have survived the worst of the winter weather. They include the dwarf Alchemilla mollis and ting yellow Sisyrinchium, a couple of pots of  creeping campanula I couldn’t keep the rabbits off, and that pretty little Erigeron karviniskianus with little daisy like flowers that flowers all through the summer and into autumn.  It is an understated look, but good and works well in a gravel garden.  The two dwarf pines (now not all that dwarf) will stay to give us some maturity and I have some little tulip and daffodil bulbs in pots ready.  Fingers crossed they make it to do the work and I can write about it next time!

Enjoy the rest of the Spring and the early summer and I’ll ‘see’ you in June!

Kate Foale