Monty’s month
APRIL is the kindest month, healing all the hurts of winter, and feeding every hope and dream of the long spring and summer to come. The month opens with a prickle of green in the hedgerows and ends full blown, steaming into May on a fanfare of new growth. It is also the month of daffodils and, most gloriously, of tulips, which rise to their crescendo at Longmeadow in the last week of the month. Drumstick and native primulas can be potted to augment the display. But although the garden is filling with early clematis, bulbs and spring perennials, and blossom is sitting like a glorious floral cloud in the orchard, it is really the growth of green that makes April unlike any other month. At the beginning, the garden is still dominated by bare brown branches and empty brown soil, but in just four weeks, it is flushed with green of the most vibrant, life-infused kind, and all other colours are set and measured against it.