In our December tips we mentioned the bonus that winter fruiting plants can yield by attracting birds to the garden in the gloomier months of the year.  As if by magic we have had a glut of colourful and sometimes rare visitors in the early part of this year. The most special visitor was a waxwing, which was attracted by the berries on our Sorbus ‘Joseph Rock’.  We have never seen one of these in the garden before.

Waxwing Jan 2024

The Sorbus also regularly attracts golfinches, tits and starlings, which often use it as a staging post on their way to the bird feeder.

Goldfinch on feeder

We also had a fieldfare coming in for the berries that the waxwing had left.

Fieldfare Jan 2024

Whether it was the same fieldfare or another one, the crab apple in the front garden also proved to be an attractive perch

Fieldfare Feb 2024

Our cotoneaster also proved attractive to the local ring-necked parakeets.  While these birds are generally considered a pest, they are undoubtedly a pretty spectacular visitor to a small garden.  They soon moved on from the Cotoneaster berries to the fat snacks on the bird feeder.

Parakeet on Cotoneaster

Parakeets on bird feeder

July should see us entering high summer and one of the plants that evokes memories of long hot days is lavender. It provides a treat for the senses when in full flower.  First there is colour, the variety of blues, whites and pinks from the flowers and the glaucous leaves can work with most planting schemes. The powerful scents from both flowers and leaves are also complemented by the persistent drone of the many types of bee that are attracted to the nectar rich flowers.

A busy bee

Lavenders are relatively easy to care for. Although Mediterranean plants, they are adapted for fairly harsh conditions, in particular, they will thrive in both dry conditions and poor soils and most will survive cold winters without too much difficulty. They are less happy in prolonged cold, wet soil and if you have this over the winter then growing in containers, with free draining compost, may be a better option.

You can use lavender to create hedges or features such as mounds or stand alone specimen plants.

Lavender Hedge

Lavender mounds 0n a summer evening

Pruning is important to prevent older plants from becoming too woody, as new growth tends not to come from the older wood. To keep lavenders in prime condition they should be trimmed at least once a year. Usually this is after flowering and they can be cut back to a few centimetres below the flowering stems, while still exposing only new growth.

With the Wimbledon finals in July, the choice for an edible crop for high summer has to be strawberries. Strawberries are easy to grow in beds or containers. If grown in open ground it is best to use one spot for 3-4 years after which yields may decline, but as new plants are easy to propagate from runners after a couple of years you can prepare a new set of plants for a new position. In containers it is important to water and feed them as these are hungry and thirsty plants and with more limited root runs need a bit of extra love to fruit well.

Home grown strawberries for Wimbledon

As spring turns into summer, one of the nation’s favourite plants comes to the fore, the rose. As with daffodils a couple of months ago to talk about “the rose” doesn’t do justice to the wealth of options that roses offer to the gardener. From containers, through individual specimens and rose beds to ground cover, climbers and ramblers there is a rose for every situation. With flower forms ranging from very simple to many petalled and a wide variety of colours to choose from it would be hard not to find a rose that you like. Many roses are now repeat flowerers, so although they hit a first peak in June many cultivars will give you blooms throughout the summer and autumn.

We have a fairly small garden, but have devoted one bed to roses.  It is edged with lavender and Erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane) and contains five roses, four grown as shrubs and a central one trained up a pergola.  The photo below shows it in its first spring after planting.

7 March 2020

Even with young plants, we got a good display later in the year.  You may remember that the spring of 2020 was very warm, so the plants were ahead of normal that year.

Rose bed 29 May

Now that the plants are maturing we have pruned and trained them so that the flowers are presented above the edging plants.

Rose bed June 2022

Roses do need pruning on a regular basis, but if you remember the basic rules that the plant will do best with good airflow around it then pruning doesn’t have to be considered as some arcane skill. A nice open shape with a smaller number of strong stems will do much better than a plant that is crowded with more weaker stems.  A piece of advice we were given was to prune in late February and to aim for a structure that looked like an open upturned hand with 5 main stems.

In the vegetable garden, June should see the first harvests of peas. Harvest may not be the right word as the first few pickings of peas on our allotment rarely make it home. Instead, they are an immediate treat for the workers. Many fruits and vegetables are at their best when picked and eaten fresh and few are better examples of this than peas. Eating them early also means that there is less danger of encountering pea moth caterpillars, which become more prevalent as the season wears on.

This month’s choice for an ornamental plant was pretty easy and is Wisteria. The cascades of scented flowers from a mature Wisteria are a real indication that spring is on the verge of turning to summer. There are many different types available with variants on the classic purple and white flowers and also a new pink-flowered cultivar. This photo is of a white one that we had been cultivating for about 15 years at the time of taking the picture.

Vigour and flower shape and colour will be down to personal choice, but we’d suggest always considering a scented Wisteria as they tend to be in bloom at just the time that it is getting warm enough that you might be thinking of evenings in the garden.

Wisteria are not difficult to prune, but it is important that they are pruned both in summer and winter. Summer pruning keeps the new growth under control and encourages the development of flowering wood, while winter pruning allows the development of the overall shape of the plant.  A classic pruning mantra is “7 and 2″ which means trimming new growth back to 7 buds in July (the 7th month) and 2 buds in February.  We tend to be a bit more pragmatic and cut back new growth in the summer when it starts to get out of hand, especially if it threatens windows and gutters. Often this will mean two or three rough trims in the summer to keep the plant tidy.  The winter/spring pruning is the important one for maintaining the shape and ensuring that you get a good display of flowers.

Pruning in February or March means that the flowering buds have started to swell so it is easier to see the difference between flower buds and vegetative buds.  The flower buds are fatter and are found on older mature wood.  Identifying the flower buds means that you can prune in such a way as to maximise flowering in May.

Wisteria flower buds

One of the edible crops that we try to have ready by the end of May is the first new potatoes of the year. We sow them in February in bags in the greenhouse, earthing the bags up to keep the growing tips covered in case the temperature in our unheated greenhouse drops below freezing. Once growth starts they come on quickly so might need covering up every few days. Once the frosts have passed the bags go outside to maximise the light reaching the leaves ensuring that the tubers develop as quickly as possible.  The aim is to have the first tubers ready by the Whitsun weekend, but we are then eating from the bags for the next month or so until the tubers in open ground mature.

New potatoes from bags 9 June

Easter often falls in April and one of the flowers most commonly associated with this time of the year is the daffodil (Narcissus). Of course, to use a phrase like “the daffodil” is very misleading as there is a huge range of varieties. Using “narcissus” as a search term for plants on the RHS website gave over 8,000 results and the RHS handbook for shows has 14 different divisions for daffodils. As well as the classic yellow, daffodil colours can range from white through cream, into orange and include multiple colours in a single bloom, in addition some are strongly scented. They range in size from dwarfs that are only 15cm high to tall ones that can reach over 50cm. Apparently, the world record is over 1.5metres.

You might find some narcissi garish, or indeed bland, but look at the wealth of options. With the range of colours, flower forms and sizes there is probably a Narcissus to complement every planting scheme.

It is possible to force Narcissus to flower indoors for Christmas, but even outdoors it is perfectly feasible to have a succession of different varieties in flower from early February through to May. Having a clump (or drift if your garden is larger) of these nodding heads in April is a sure sign that spring has definitely arrived.

Woodland Daffs in spring sunshine

Garden Daffodils

Another sign of spring is the emergence of the first asparagus spears, which generally start to appear in April. An asparagus bed is a long-term investment. There won’t be a crop for 2-3 years and for the next couple of years spears should only be cut selectively. However, once a bed is fully established you can expect large yields and tasty meals for many years.

Emerging Asparagus Spears

Asparagus and mozarella

For March we’d like to highlight two trees/shrubs that are suitable for smaller gardens, both of which bloom in March. They are Magnolia stellata (Star Magnolia) and Amelanchier lamarckii.(Snowy Mespilus).

Magnolia stellata is a relatively slow growing deciduous shrub/small multi-stemmed tree. With a maximum height of about 2.5 metres and a slightly larger spread it can fit into the smallest of gardens. It has attractive and quite dense foliage, making it a good plant for providing cover for birds, but its main ornamental feature is the profusion of white star-shaped flowers that burst in early spring, often before the leaf buds open.

A young Magnolia stellata in full bloom

The picture below shows the flowers in close-up and illustrates why the name stellata was coined.

Stellata Flowers

Amelanchier lamarckii is a taller, but more slender option. Like the magnolia it has white flowers in early spring, but they are smaller and more delicate on the Amelanchier. Changing leaf tones mean that although the Amelanchier may be the less showy of the two in March, it continues to work hard throughout the year. The new leaves are a bronze colour, opening to green, but then turning an orange-red to give an autumn display. The flowers are followed by small dark berries that will soon be eaten by birds. The picture below shows the “snowy” flowers and the bronze new foliage.

Amelanchier in late March

So, two compact trees flowering in March, if you want one to work harder all year, the Amelanchier is the choice, but for the more striking display in March, plump for the Magnolia.

A serious contender for this month’s choices was the Narcissus, given St. David’s Day, Mothers’ Day and the first day of spring, but we’ve held off until April (Easter).