June is bustin’ out all over, but some plants are struggling

ON the day of the Royal Wedding I found myself showered with cherry blossom, nature’s own confetti, which rained down from the wild cherry trees that grow in the woods, settling on grass and walls and shrubs like a layer of delicate frosting.

At the end of the day I was still shaking petals out of my hair.

But now it’s June and the blossom has gone, along with the tulips, and as the rhododendrons and azaleas bow out, the perennials are taking over.

Brightest are the poppies that seeded themselves into the gravel next to the house.

They’ve been unfurling red flower heads that open during the day to reveal a boss of purple anthers, then close tight again as evening approaches.

Foxgloves have sprung up all along the front border, lily of the valley is growing beneath the wisteria and globe flowers the colour of sherbet lemons mingle with the pink saxifrages that have settled themselves into cracks in the dry stone wall.

But not everything in the garden is rosy. Salads have been a disaster. A combination of protracted cold weather and a new compost, which they clearly didn’t like, has seen everything struggle.

If we were reliant on the garden to feed us, we’d be subsisting on a diet of grass and wild strawberries.

Those wild strawberries grow everywhere and I leave them undisturbed wherever they pop up.

They make a pretty sort of ground cover under shrubs and removing them would only create space for yet more weeds.

So far my new garden has yielded several surprises, including a couple of unusual shrubs and a small, white wildflower, all of which I have been unable to identify.

There’s a sorry-looking lilac bush, a magnolia tree tucked into the hedge, and many different kinds of ferns, which have appeared in some of the shadier spots.

Despite being surrounded by woodland, parts of the garden are very open and here the sun shines all day.

Other areas get partial sun and I’m keeping a close eye on where these different spots are so I can work out what to grow where.

I’ve also been attempting to work out how to cut back a laurel hedge that must be at least 4m high and 2m wide.

I’d been holding off on this task to allow the bees to feast on the flowers, but now the flowers have faded and I’m being pressed by my nineyear-old to get on with the job as one of his friends flew his drone into it last week and, so far, we have been unable to recover it.

Whether anything will be revealed once the hedge is pruned remains to be seen.

Even cut back by a third it would still be a monster, capable of swallowing a plane from the nearby flying club if one ever alighted in the garden.