Whats Looking Good In May 2023

The Laburnum that we thought had died during the freeze and didn't produce any leaves this spring has now burst into flower. We're hoping this isn't a struggle with it being on its last legs
The leaves showing around the outside are from a different tree.


Some of our Lilacs








The Tellima don't look all that good in the photo but look lovely in the garden. People are always wanting to the plants so, luckily, they propagate themselves very easily.




The Bronze Fennel has suddenly started to come up everywhere and are not easy to dig out. I shall attempt to do so as there are a lot of people who have asked for them. The flowers are very popular with the buzzies and some birds love the seeds




Mrs Shiney potted this last year and planted it in the spring . We have a slight problem because we have now spotted woodworm in the trellis

 

It is now exactly 10 years since Aquilegia Downy Mildew devastated Aquilegias in this country and the government, in its wisdom , decided not to even try and encourage a fight against it. We had somewhere around 4,000 of them in the garden and they were all badly infected and they all died (as did the whole of the National Collection). We used to sell lots of the when we opened the garden for charity but, naturally, were banned from selling any new ones that had popped up from seed that was in the ground. That was the correct thing thing as every year since then all those that popped up eventually succumbed to the disease. This year we have some that have popped up that don't appear to be infected and I'm hoping that it might be the effect of the big freeze we had.

There are only a few but it is encouraging.











The Irises are now coming out

 

The fruit seems to have ignored the freeze. Apples are flowering very well




My plums don't mind exposing themselves


Pears tend to hide among the leaves


Montana is a bit slow this year


The Weigelias are starting to show






Stachys (lamb's ears or bunnies ears) will soon have the local kids and grandkids popping round for a few leaves to play with


A late appearance for the first Cistus flower but with the hot sun now here they should be getting going. They were badly hit by the freeze.


Choisya were also hit badly but this is recovering (the golden versions, Sundance, seemed to have suffered much worse and we hope they may recover)


Yellow Tree Peony