My Garden Journal 2021 April

I began my April journal entries by stating, “April is a month when there is so much going on and so many garden tasks to perform. Luckily we like garden tasks! We are still enjoying early flowering bulbs, perennials and shrubs.”

I shared a gallery of low growing flowering plants.

The second page is about some of our birdlife in the garden at this time of year.

I wrote, “The month began with unseasonably warm temperatures, at times moving into the low 20 C. Bright sunshine emphasised the beauty and freshness of spring. Wildlife became dominant in the garden with ladybirds on almost every plant and bees, hoverflies and odd butterflies entertaining us. The trees, still bare of leaves, were visited daily by flocks of tits and finches, goldfinch, chaffinch, greenfinch and siskin.”

I featured a watercolour painting of a greenfinch painted by my father a few decades ago.

“Euphorbias are important features in our garden throughout the year and we grow so many different varieties and cultivars.”

I shared photos of some of our euphorbias looking good in April. They show the variations in colour and shapes of foliage, bracts and flowers.

Turning over to the next page we can see that we continued to be busy with garden tasks, where I noted, “April continued where March left off where numbers of garden tasks were concerned. We finished coppicing and pollarding our cornus and salix grown for stem colour. Because we now get so many garden visitors our grass paths get ruined every year so we have re-surfaced them with bark chip.”

I included a couple of photos of finished coppicing and pollarding and one of Jude bringing out garden furniture which had been over-wintered in the summerhouse, followed by five illustrating the re-surfacing of our old grass paths.

My next entry is my watercolour of a little bouquet of spring flowers all from bulbs, muscari, leucojum, scilla and fritillary.

General views of the garden featured on my next page. “I took a wander around the garden taking photographs of general views of the borders.”

Viburnum feature on the next page where I wrote, “One of our favourite garden shrub families are the Viburnums, so naturally we grow several varieties around our patch . At this time of the year a few are already in flower, while others have leaf buds bursting or flower buds fattening.”

Tulips have such a strong presence in our spring garden, giving such cheerfulness and colour on the dullest of days. When the sunshines so do the tulips! Despite being divas they seem to work so well with their plant companions.

I noted, “Flowering spring bulbs for April are the tulips of which we have hundreds. Here is a selection in bud.”

For the final couple of pages I shared two drawings created on my iPad, one of our Amelanchier glowing in early morning sunshine against a bright blue sky and the other a view from the summerhouse overlooking the wildlife pond.

“Amelanchier glows against the early morning blue sky.”

“Looking out from the summerhouse over the wildlife pond.”

So there we have my April entries into my Garden Journal 2021. We shall have a look at the journal in May.