Our expert gardener Susie White is busy with beautiful spring flowers this week.
Spring is a time to appreciate the little things – delicate, early woodland flowers. Susie shares her own favourites
March is an unpredictable month so it’s a joy when there are days of warmth. Flowers open to the sun and early bumblebee queens fly low looking for nest sites.
What I love about this time of year is being able to really appreciate the smaller plants before the garden explodes into full growth. The little treasures; special bulbs and the delicate early spring flowers.
Most of these grow in my woodland border before it is shaded by the trees above. My yellow anemones have fragile five-petalled stars on ferny foliage. Blue chinodoxas are small bulbs that are happily seeding themselves in the loamy soil. Gold-laced polyanthus bear exquisite flowers, each deep maroon petal edged in bright gold as if they have been embroidered.
There are dusky fritillaries with unusual purple-brown bells edged in yellow. Lungworts grow in large drifts, their nodding blue and pink flowers providing a mass of nectar for early insects.
To get a good look at the
many hellebores I photograph them from underneath using my phone. Yellow celandines are growing on a raised bed, but these are not the invasive, impossible-to-control weeds! These have glossy purple leaves and the wonderful name of ‘Brazen Hussy’.
There’s height in this border from shrubs. Bees love the drooping red tresses of flowering redcurrant. And the crazy twisted branches of the corkscrew hazel are bearing pale yellow catkins, later than the wild hazels.
In the field just outside the garden the lambs are playing and exploring their new world; spring is beginning.