Cut flowers

This week our family weekend trip was replaced by an Easter week away, coming back to spring after a week in the Norwegian mountains was all the more striking given the contrast with the snow and sub-zero temperatures.

A cup of tea and some Easter eggs to enjoy, walking round the garden and experiencing the spring.

The spring border is now at it’s peak, with small tête à tête daffodils, naturalising hyacinths (all planted from bulbs bought in flower at various supermarkets) and scillas as well as budding shrubs, including a small edible cherry.

This year there are fewer pinks and dark reds, the hyacinths appear to be changing their colour as they naturalise, something we need to rectify next year.

Spring bulbs in flower in what we call, only slightly facetiously, the ‘spring border’.

Flower bud on an edible sweet cherry (variety unknown).

The small potted flowering cherry by the front door was almost in flower when we left, other buds on the same plant have now caught up with the earlier flowering twigs close to the wall and it’s now a race with the tall columnar flowering cherry (prunus amanagowa) to see which opens first. I hope to have a spring garden party when they are fully open! (Hopefully in good weather).

Flower buds on a dwarf flowering cherry (variety unknown) against a warm brick wall.

Japanese flowering cherry buds on Prunus serrulata “Amanagowa”

The pear tree has also clearly enjoyed a warm week with buds also starting to burst.

The last of the winter viburnum bodnantense flowers are still glorious while the leaves are now also fully out and the faint scent is more.marked.

The red flowering currant is also at it’s spring peak. I really like the raspberry red flowers, but it’s an undeniably scrappy shrub in shape and the rather unfortunate cat pee smell makes it unappealing as a cut flower. However, as with previous years I’ve taken the risk and cut a few branches for a base in combination with the first opening (and by contrast deliciously scented) skimmia blooms, some ivy with black berries, corkscrew hazel and a fully in bloom camellia. It will be interesting to see how these all survive in a vase…

A skimmia flower head, just starting to open. The flowers have a beautiful scent.

Alpine flowering currant – it has rather small and indistinct green-yellow flowers but makes a fine dense hedge with bright green leaves in spring.and is a good foliage plant for a vase.

I love having fresh flowers in the house and growing your own is undeniably better for the environment than buying often imported or greenhouse grown blooms.

Other shrubs in flower currently include this box.We have several in the garde that seem to be affected by either or both of box caterpillar and box blight, but so far at least this one has remained unaffected.

Box (Buxus) flowers, a small but vibrant yellow.

In the back garden, the waves of the chionodoxa are really at their peak now, they must spread by themselves as we are now starting to see them in our peony bed cleared 2 years ago.

This spring time is a good opportunity to plan for new plantings in the autumn.

These daffodils are rather lost here. I plan to put in a few hundred crocus for earlier in the spring, but perhaps I should also consider some new narcissus too? I really like the pheasants eye varieties but would like some to flower in early April.

Same bed looking the other way. The tulips are not really right for this bed. Their leaves are too dominant. There are also alliums and red peony shoots in this bed so perhaps less room for narcissi than I’d like..

Similarly, the plum and pear border have a few rather lost daffodils and many tulips that may not flower this year. I’m keeping an eye on this bed for the rest of the spring to see if it needs to be refreshed next autumn too.

The camellias are all in bud but this red flowered shrub is fully out and covered in bright red flowers. It is incredibly beautiful, but I always feel the rose like flowers and glossy green leaves are somehow a little artificial or don’t really belong in the bright Scandinavian spring.

Our second rhododendron is also out now, and after removal of some tree branches shading it and a renovation prune last year, it’s looking magnificent.

Also now coming to a peak are the hellebores. Although breeding has made the flower stalks a bit more upright, many of them still nod downwards, but a few sacrificed to float in water and the flowers are an exotic revelation…

Helleborus flower heads floating in water.

Like this they last a surprisingly long time indoors.

Anyway, that’s enough of a spring update for now. Time to go and plan the next holiday!

As the Spring has come back (and I realise I’ve hardly posted on here this year), our garden has once more blossomed once more into a lush gorgeous Eden, which I’m determined to enjoy as much as possible.

Alpine trough mark II

The last of the skimmia flowers

Cherry blossom

Acer in spring

Euphrobias and shocking pink tulips

Watching the red squirrels

New tulips

The rhodedendrons shooting up

Time for a tea party on a warm evening

At the same time, work is even more hectic than it used to be, we’re short-staffed and over-committed. It’s too easy to try and race to catch up with myself all the time and I find that my time in the garden is increasingly limited. It’s frustrating that although I love gardening and find it relaxing, I am actually sometimese too anxious about work to put the time in to get on with it and it starts to become a source of yet more stress.

I have therefore decided to set myself a new challenge – a vase of flowers for my office every week for a year, but only cut from our own garden. It’s a way to bring something of the peace and tranquility into what is often a hectic environment and to observe and think about the seasons.

You might have noticed that I have often posted pictures of vases of flowers and talk about what goes into them in this blog. I love having flowers around the house but I’m usually unwilling to buy them. Partly because of cost but mainly because of the staggering environmental and social cost of producing and transporting cut flowers, most of them from lands a very long way away.

See for example this excerpt:

Costofcutflowers — Excerpt from this report on cut flowers

Given our lovely garden it shouldn’t be necessary to buy them in anyway, though winter might prove more of a challenge.

At this time of year though, I’m basically spoilt for choice in terms of cutting flowers but hopefully the requirement to get out and look around at least once a week will both inspire me to see the garden with new eyes each week and to educate – especially as I start to work out what different shrubs and flowers actually are and which will keep as cut flowers and which will not and also of course how to mix and arrange different blooms. It will hopefully also force me to keep posting – somethign I often struggle to fit in, even thoguh I like the contemplation that writing forces me to do.

I will post the pictures here and on instagram for your delight and inspiration as a moment of joy.

Starting this week with an easy classic, Convallaria majalis, the lily of the valley. It’s actually a native species too, and in the same family as asparagus.

I’ve always loved the scent, it’s amazing to me that such unobtrusive flowers can fill a room, or a whole house with such a beautiful perfume. They look delicate but are really as tough as old boots, spreading with some vigour in conditions (dry shade under trees) that other plants find tough to thrive in.

*A word of warning though, all parts of the plant are poisonous. The leaves do have some superficial resemblance to edible wild garlic (ransoms) though they are generally darker + tougher and don’t have the same pungent garlic smell when crushed.*

The small flowers are often difficult to see in the garden so I feel I get much more joy from cutting a few and holding them up close to look at them carefully, while admiring that glorious perfume.

This little vase is now on my desk at work and filling the office with a heavy and heavenly scent.

Other bigger and more exuberant flowers, I’d rather keep in the garden to admire from afar. The little white bells contrast so beautifully with the large deep green leaves too and I find them surprisingly long lasting in a vase.

So, perfume, beauty and long-lasting flowers, more or less the ideal first entry for my cut flower challenge.

See you next week…

downbythepond

The old pond– a frog jumps in, sound of water. – Matsuo Basho

East West, Home’s best…

Springing Forward