Spring Bedding Time
Spring is sprung and the tulips are out. This is one of the flower beds in my front garden. It seems to have taken ages to actually flower but now it is out in all its glory. If you plant mixed plants, like these primula’s, then you struggle to know what colour tulips to complement them. I added yellow tulips and it appears to work (ignore that red one!) but many will have mixed views. The old days, when mixed colours were not popular, things were easier. It was was red wallflowers overlaid with white tulips: blood and bandages people would say! Who cares, colour is colour. I love spring bedding time, the snowdrops first, then the daffodils, then the gardening artifice; mixing colours, a rare thing in nature.
A bad winter
It has been a bad winter for the garden. People I speak too have, like me, lost plants. Plants can tolerate a lot of cold, and a lot of rain, but not both together. Everything seems to have been sodden for week after week. However, I can forgive it. The beech trees are budding, the hornbeam hedge is leafing and all is well in the world. Considering that hedge cost many hundreds of pounds, Ann and I both feel somewhat relieved. I reckon that I have planted about 1000 plants since last May, a lot purchased but many grown in the garden and divided. For many nights a frost threatened so I brought my cosmos seedlings indoors. Gardening forces awareness upon us, that nature is fickle and kills as well as nurtures.
Spring bedding time
A joy I have not mentioned has to relate to mental health. Colour, scent, insects, blue skies, these all make us feel so much better. However, there is some stress. I have to plan getting vegetables in and even replacing the spring bedding with summer bedding. The gardeners life is to be a handmaiden to nature, to play with her plants and create what seems, to us alone, pretty. That said, insects are my principal concern this summer so, what to plant?
