Carol Klein’s garden is bursting to life
There have been false starts but it feels as if the garden is finally ready for spring
H“The whole garden begins to fizz with vivid colour, nature’s paintbrush flicking splashes of blue, magenta and yellow over the dark canvas”
as spring sprung? Over the last few weeks it has been difficult to determine whether or not it’s spring or winter. Some mornings you go out and immediately feel like retreating back into the house as the cold nibbles your fingers. You’re confronted by a grey scene, any colour drained away.
On other days you’re greeted by warmth. As you weed and tidy, the sun shines on your neck – no thick scarves now – and you might even ditch the warm coat by midday. Suddenly the whole garden begins to fizz with vivid colour, nature’s paintbrush flicking little splashes of blue, magenta and yellow over the dark canvas of the garden as cyclamen, irises and the first of the primroses bravely open their flowers.
The flowers that bloom in the spring-tra-la are delightful, but those that bloom as winter turns to spring are even more special.
On the shady side of the garden, each of the smaller beds separated by little gravel paths has hellebores of one colour combined with different bulbs and other small woodland plants. Underneath our big cornus ‘Norman Hadden’ there are several yellow hellebores surrounded by patches of pretty little Puschkinia scilloides (striped squill). The pale blue flowers, with a darker blue line through the centre of each petal, almost look as though they’re made of porcelain.
Each year the clumps increase. I should divide them from time to time, but the job always gets forgotten as there are so many other pressing activities at the end of April – the best time to divide and replant.
The snowdrops also often have to wait until much later to get the treatment they need. The process is the same for both – digging up congested clumps as the flowers start to fizzle, pulling bulbs apart and planting singly, but reasonably close together, in deep holes. The year after, they look a bit thin but during the
following year, the ‘clump’ effect will begin to re-establish itself.
In some of the drier parts of the shade garden, and on the raised bed, Cyclamen coum is dazzling with its vivid magenta ‘propeller’ flowers, while its white-flowered forms make a more subdued contribution.
When you’ve had a few of these jewel-like plants for a few years, ants spread their seed and, with a bit of luck, before too long, you’ll have small colonies. C. coum doesn’t need a shady spot; in the wild it often grows in rocky places in full sun, its corms protected in cracks and crevices. When corms Jo become established na th an they can produce B uc kl multitudes of flowers. ey Crocus tommasinianus are usually the first of the crocuses to open in spring. Whereas many hybrid crocus get eaten by mice, voles and squirrels, this one self-seeds so freely that it spreads rather than disappears. Its pale, luminescent flowers open wide to lilac cups when the sun shines, revealing brilliant yelloworange anthers. It can take over areas where it’s planted, but its flowering period – albeit brief – is very welcome and never a nuisance. By the time its skinny leaves spring up, other perennials out-compete them.
Throughout the shady part of the garden, snowdrops make sheets of white, lighting up even the darkest corners and here and there are splashes of brilliant yellow in their midst provided by the winter aconite, Eranthis
hyemalis. It is just such splashes of scintillating colour that make this time of year so exciting.