Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

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Once spring is underway, it gathers speed. For the past week I’ve been happily distracted from the garden by the company of a visitor, so have had less time to notice changes in the garden. Now that I have time to look around I’m impressed to see how much has grown and flowered in just a few days.

Blossom is everywhere, from the fruit trees in the garden to the ornamental cherries and crab apples on the green in front of our house. The daffodils have mostly gone over now, but the tulips are open and the first lilac flowers are out. Amidst the rush of flowery activity, I’ve had less time than I’d have liked to admire the pasqueflowers (above) before they too were going over.

This year I may have been too distracted to take much notice of the lovely purple pasqueflowers, with their charmingly fluffy buds and leaves, but I do still have the pleasure of their seed heads to come. These sway on their long stems in any breeze, with their silvery hairs glinting in the sun. Almost as pretty as the flowers! (And one of my cats used to think they made a grand toy for her to swat!)

Now I really need to get back out into the garden – everything happens so quickly out there in spring! 🌿

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Despite the title, I’d describe these flowers as ‘pretty and wild’, since Primula vulgaris is the primrose, a wildflower which grows in woodlands and meadows. The wild primrose is also a welcome early spring flower in many gardens. It likes the semi-shade at the foot of hedges, so is a great plant to grow below deciduous shrubs and in other partly-shaded places. In my eyes, it’s prettier than the more brightly-coloured primula hybrids and I find it easier to blend into the existing planting in my garden.

A friend gave me several clumps of this primrose from her own garden last year. Some have been planted out to join the primulas already in the garden. Others were potted up to plant later on, after I have finished splitting and moving other plants around. All are flowering happily! They harmonise well with, and flower at the same time as, the mix of cream and darker yellow daffodils growing here. (I will need to add some blue flowers for the best effect. What a good excuse for buying more plants!)

Wild primroses were common along roadside verges when I was a child and I can still remember my delight at the sight of these pale yellow flowers. There were not a lot of flowers to be seen in the gardens of the ‘far north’ of Scotland in those days, so finding pretty flowers growing in the wild was an experience to value. I don’t know if they grow there still, but here (in Suffolk) I see them in the wild only occasionally. It’s good to know that they are growing and thriving in many gardens, where they provide an early source of nectar for the first of the year’s bees and butterflies. 🐝

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Spring arrived here this week. Every year I feel that there is a day when winter clothing suddenly feels much too much and the sun has real warmth to it. The cats have deserted their bed by a warm radiator and taken over the conservatory chairs again. The birds are busy, busy and so are a few early bees. Best of all, things are growing again.

Nevertheless, it’s a slow process for colour to start reappearing in the garden. Our daffodils have opened at last, and there’s a scattering of blue and white Anemone blanda and some yellow primroses. Amongst these spring flowers, the hellebores are still holding their own. They flower for weeks, bridging the period spanning late winter and early spring with their glorious blooms.

This year the hellebores have done well. They’ve become much more sturdy plants, with many more flowers than I’ve seen on them before. Both photographs here are of ‘Rosali’ from the HGC ‘Ice N’ Roses’ series, which I planted last year. I hope that this newer hellebore will turn out to be as robust and resilient as other older varieties are said to be…time will tell!

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Hellebores are resilient plants. They need to be, given that the weather in very early spring can be anywhere between sunshine and gentle breezes to the blast of high winds and freezing rain or snow. This year we’ve had a fairly benign mix – quite a lot of rain but sunshine too and no gales around here.

I did worry that this hellebore and the others that are planted beside it might suffer in the gusts of chilly air that are sent out from the air-source heat pump that we recently had installed. The heat pump works by extracting warmth from the air around it so the air it pushes back out is very cold. Luckily, it turns out that the airstream is just enough to the side of them not to be damaging.

Unfortunately, the site that had to be used for the heat pump meant that a path and a low retaining wall had to be dismantled to make room for it. Now both path and wall will need to be reinstated and the hellebores may be in the way. If possible, I’d rather not move them, especially when they seem happy in their present position. Hopefully, if I do, they’ll survive and bring more joy to next spring.

(Meanwhile, I’m wondering what has laid its eggs on the flower in the top photo…do you see those white ovals? Not slugs or snails, which have round eggs. Not to worry, I suspect the rain we’ve just had will have washed them off!)