It’s now light when I leap out of bed every morning. The first thing I do, before preparing breakfast, is too look out at the garden. I talk to it, ever keen to see more growth and flowers. However, this year it is dragging its heels. All this gloom under heavy cloud and constant rain. A number of plants look depressed and a few look positively dead. A cold, wet winter is hard for the garden. It is rather like me, wishing for warmth and too often disappointed. I study the plants many times over the day. Are they comfortable? Have I put them in the wrong place? The spring garden is no easier than the summer garden.

The wrong place

The garden experts will tell you to monitor your soil and get to know it. If that sounds easy, don’t be fooled. Firstly, each and every season is different. Secondly, I know from experience that beetroot or spinach, for instance, will florish one year and fail the next. It’s the weather that makes all the difference. Plants are like us, delicate. It’s either too hot, too cold, too wet and too dry. However, we have to try. I now know where the wet spots are and no mediterranean plant likes that. They dream of home, warm and dry. Consequently, I need to try and match plant and location. Shade is often a problem and part of garden is screened by the garage. That is now full of ferns and they look happy.

The spring garden

I often have to be amazed at how plants recover. Flattened by frost, they pop back up an hour or two later. Buds start to appear and you can see the plant burgeoning. However, I need to recognise that some bulbs, like daffodils, are best dug up and stored in the garage. They can come back out for planting in November. I am trying various other plants to see how they do. Ultimately, a garden will always find its own level over time. Down in Dorset, forget me nots and foxgloves seeded everywhere. In Bradwell, that does not happen. However, various planting that I have done has worked. Patterns of plants can look attractive, as they do in my photo of grape hyacinths and sedum. The sedum were all split from just one plant. This is groundcover, a way of planting that avoids having to do weeding or digging.