That’s Apple blossom, bluebells and cold spell to you! The Apple trees are in full flower, though with the wind blowing the petals off and the cold spell putting the pollinating insects back to bed I’m not sure we are going to have the sort of crop we had last year.

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The bluebells look and smell gorgeous all through our woodland walk and if you are looking to entertain the children a game of ‘spot the whitebell’ could be fun! There’s a few in there, you’ve just got to find them!

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I am not giving out clues either!

Being a gigantic frost pocket with heavy soil that dries out to dusty concrete in the drought we’ve had we have delayed planting out the veg garden so far. We had a ground frost last week that was enough to wipe out the Nasturtium seedlings that had ventured their heads above ground. We also have to sort out some sort of rabbit protection or risk providing a giant rabbit breakfast buffet. Over the next few weeks the potatoes and onion sets will go in and the seedlings carefully nurtured in both my greenhouse and a volunteers greenhouse will go out in the beds.

We finally have ducks on the biggest pond intermittently now too.

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Mr & Mrs duck eating the pond weed for us.

We are still doing lots of re-planting in the beds of plants which we think will tolerate our peculiar set of growing conditions better, clearing those plants which have taken over and re-planting where losses have occurred.

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Planting candelabra primula, Iris sibirica and daylilies in the wet border next to the Gunnera manicata after removing self set Ligularia.

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More candelabra primulas and Lysichiton americanus or Skunk Cabbage by the big pond.

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The Morello cherry by the cottage has the purest white blossoms ever seen.

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Don’t forget to smell the Akebia quinata or chocolate vine flowers on the left hand pergola they really do smell of chocolate.

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Also worth a smell is the Phlox divaricatus ‘Clouds of Perfume’ planted at the front of the borders for easy reach, in the background of this picture under the Buddleia are a few of the perennial honesty apparently much beloved by the great plantswoman Beth Chatto. Here’s hoping they do well for us.

Amazing to see things which are flowering well out of season confused by the mild winter we think, we have red hot pokers flowering now and Astrantia ‘Shaggy’ under the apple tree on the terrace, before the Aquilegia’s or columbines are out. Come along and see what you can see too.