My Garden Journal 2023 April

Back visiting my garden journal for 2023 and we should be well and truly in spring, feeling the changes in both light and temperature.

To begin with I wrote, “April arrived but bring its expected ‘April Showers’ with it. Instead we had alternating sunshine and storms. Luckily we had jobs to do both out and inside the glasshouse. One job was to sort out my aeonium collection which overwinters inside the glasshouse. In spite of this protection we lost quite a large percentage of them. We potted on cuttings and bought on others purchased from specialist nurseries.”

From aeoniums we moved on to look at alpines. I noted that, “We grow alpines in various places around the garden, in a scree garden behind the glasshouse, in pots and stone containers and along the edge of the drive on the Chatto Garden. Our et and cold autumns and winters are not appreciated by alpine plants which often don’t last long.”

On the opposite page we look at more small scale plantings, a spring bulb called muscari. Here I wrote how “Every gardener loves spring bulbs, which manage to brighten our gardens with daffodils and tulips probably the favourite. But I have a soft spot for muscari. Over the last few years I have been searching for less well known varieties, so now have a small but interesting collection.”

Below are photos of just ten of the collection.

From muscari growing and flowering closely to the ground I moved on to look at clematis, a climber which flowers much higher up. Here I noted that, “We have been busy buying clematis since we moved so now we have so many. We must list them one day to see what we have. At this time of year we enjoy many ‘alpina’ types which tend to have white, blue or pink flowers whose long slender petals hand down gracefully. Below we show a few we have in our garden.”

On the opposite page I looked at a few of the gardening tasks we performed in April.

Next the journal displays a double page spread featuring tulips, that most colourful bulb flower of all. To introduce them I wrote,“Most of the strong April colours are gifted to us by tulips. Te tiny ones below tend to be species tulips, with the larger more developed flowers are cultivarsbred for size, shape and colour.”

On the final page of entries for April I returned to show some more gardening jobs tackled during the month. I noted that,“April is no different to any other month as there is a list of jobs to tackle.”

The next visit to my Garden Journal might show that we are getting much closer to summer.