The garden in March
Kari-Astri Davies is revelling in the fresh new growth that marks the arrival of spring
Gold dandelions spangle the greening fields, so quickly turning to clocks and blowing away. Scatters of pale lilac lady’s smock, or cuckoo flower, in wetter meadows coincide with the emergence of orange-tip butterflies. Their caterpillars will feast on them eventually. On warmer days, a flicker of sulphur yellow means brimstone butterflies are on the wing. Queen wasps emerge groggily from nooks and crannies after overwintering; quite a few in our conservatory. Bumble bees go about their business, busy with wallflowers and pulmonaria.
William Wordsworth, ‘To a Butterfly’
Developing borders
The daily tour of the garden is getting more interesting by the day, although still centred largely around shade-loving plants. In the newly mulched wood bed, it’s a joy to see fresh growth emerging. Wood anemones push themselves up, back first, from stick-like rhizomes. Some are now making substantial patches. One such patch started with a hosta. I’d taken it out of a bed in my previous garden to protect it from the overzealous attentions of marauding snails. The rhizomes of a lovely white wood anemone, ‘Vestal’, came with the soil around the hosta’s roots. ‘Vestal’ has the normal white outer petals but a pompom of smaller petals in the centre. It’s not very bee friendly I’m afraid. Having cohabited happily in a large pot for years, when we moved to Wiltshire five years ago, the hosta and its companion anemone were released into the wood bed, where they have done well. Other good doers include the large singleflowered, bluish-lilac wood anemone ‘Robinsoniana’. Another hitch-hiker from the old garden is ‘Bracteata Pleniflora’, a pretty semi-double white, with green ruffles. The striking, rich sky-blue ‘Royal Blue’ is taking longer to establish. Like anemones, some spring plants associate well with the hosta. They thrive before its leaves mature, then die down as light and moisture is excluded for the rest of the growing season.
“What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again!”
Golden scents
Many trumpet daffodils have a subtle sweet greenery aroma, most noticeable as a cut flower.
When asked to name scented garden daffodils, late flowering Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus is often mentioned. However, this is too subtle when compared to some of the heavy hitters. Strongly scented daffodils tend to have jonquil or tazetta in their make-up. Both of the parents come from warmer climes; jonquils from Spain and Portugal, N. tazetta from around the Mediterranean. Tazetta hybrids, such as the paperwhites we grow inside at Christmas, are often not very hardy. Jonquils of various types have been in our gardens for many centuries. One such is an old double, the short statured ‘Pencrebar’. A more modern favourite, dating from 1939, has to be the relatively small flowered, heavily scented, deep yellow ‘Sweetness’. Those with tazetta in their make-up include ‘Martinette’, a single yellow, with a small orange cup. ‘Sir Winston Churchill’ is more frou-frou, with small, double white flowers with orange centres, from which fine golden rays radiate like a starburst. This daffodil is relatively late into flower and lasts a long time. A few of the scented daffodils I’ve tried have the right habit to fit into the garden. ‘Sweetness’
“This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.” D H Lawrence, ‘The Enkindled Spring’
is one of these. Others, at least for me, look gangly and awkward, which is why I prefer to grow them in pots. This also means I can appreciate the scent up close.
Delicate fronds
One of the many pleasures of spring is seeing the fronds of different ferns unfurl. Some lift themselves like shepherds’ crooks; others open out from a tight knot. Some simply uncoil. The conditions in my garden aren’t ideal for many ferns. The shaded wood bed, home to many, is mostly dryish, although I’m trying to build up the clay soil with an annual mulch. A British native, the male fern, Dryopteris filix-mas, is a soft-fronded deciduous fern. I’ve planted these in the wilder copse at the bottom of the garden. More additions are being planned, as they seem to cope with dryish alkaline shade. In my previous garden, these ferns would propagate themselves freely in the shady damp compost of potted camellias. Another British native, Polystichum setiferum, or the soft shield fern, provides a subtle backdrop for other woodland plants in the wood bed. In the same bed, deciduous Athyrium niponicum, the Japanese painted fern, is more shouty and ‘look at me’. Named forms of Athyrium niponicum come with markings in various red and silver shades. My plant often needs watering during prolonged dry spells, which suggests it would really prefer moister summer soil. Another more colourful fern is Dryopteris erythrosora, from Asia. The young leaves of this hard-bladed evergreen fern emerge pinky bronze, turning to light green. New growth starts in May, so it tends to miss the worst of the frosts. There are some ferns, such as native Osmunda regalis, the royal fern, which definitely stand out from the crowd. This tall, airy-fronded deciduous fern seems to cope with drier conditions, but the stiff stems holding the fronds open out and flop as summer progresses. It certainly doesn’t make 8ft (2.5m) as the Royal Horticultural Society suggests it will in boggier soil. Matteuccia struthiopteris, the shuttlecock fern, also prefers damper soil. This deciduous fern runs, popping up in random places, which I quite like. It is not the only fern with this habit. Again, my drier soil probably keeps it under control; given more ideal conditions it probably would have taken over by now. Another statement fern is primeval, a very leathery-fronded blechnum, possibly B. chilense, which gives a clue as to where it originates from. I bought it years ago from Logan Botanic Gardens in Scotland. It has survived in a pot initially planted into acid soil, but over time this presumably leaches out to create a neutral environment? I decided to try a bit of blechnum in clay soil, and it appears to be doing all right. It’s probably not hardy everywhere in the UK.
Bare root roses
Some people may be wary of buying bare root rather than containerised shrubs. Generally, they cost less than a container-grown plant. However,
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
a bare root plant can look very unpromising when it arrives in winter or early spring in a brown paper sack that is packed with straw. Last March, I planted four bare root roses in the cutting flower patch in the veg plot. Only ‘Comtesse Vandal’ didn’t make it; the rest settled in and flowered. This year, I’ve bought ‘Ingrid Bergman’, a deep red hybrid tea rose, as a bare root plant, to add to the cutting roses. I was rather put out last year. A bare root gooseberry I’d bought in spring, called ‘Lady Delamene’, was described by the supplier on its website as a large green dessert gooseberry. In fact, it turned out to be a small red type like ‘Whinham’s Industry’, which I already have. The nursery offered no apology, merely saying it would change the description on the website. It may sound harsh, but I have limited space, so ‘Lady Delamene’ is being dug out. It will be replaced this month with ‘Trumpeter’. This is a large green dessert gooseberry, obtained from a different supplier. In researching which gooseberry to buy, I came across an article in the RHS magazine on heritage gooseberries. Apparently, ‘Trumpeter’ has exceptional flavour and a distinguished past. In 1864, one prize-winning ‘Trumpeter’ gooseberry weighed in at 1½oz (42.5g). Hopefully, I won’t be disappointed this time.