Date: 1 April 2006
Originally published in: Period House (UK)
Written by: Kim Wilde
Celebrity gardener Kim Wilde loves this time of year when her garden comes to life.
This month, as increasing light levels and warmth tantalise all living things, spring flowering ornamental trees decorate our garden with fresh, exuberant blossom. I look forward to still, sunny days when I can catch the sweet, subtle vanilla scent of Prunus ‘Shirotae’ with its pure white, semi-double flowers… what a sight after a long, bare winter. Crab apples too are crowded in clouds of blossom, a great value tree for any garden providing decorative fruits and autumn colour later in the season. Amelanchier lamarckii, with its clear white flowers set among juvenile, coppery foliage looks wonderful placed near the evergreen Photinia x fraseri ‘Red Robin’ with its young, bronze foliage, and will dazzle again come the autumn in fiery tints. The exquisite cowslips (Primula veris) are the first flowers to appear in a small meadow area of our garden, which we cut down at the end of autumn. Their tall flowering stems topped with deep yellow flower trusses rise valiantly above the coarse grass and persist for a long time before giving way to the ox-eye daisies in May.
Bulbs, of course, are among the biggest stars of the garden this month, from the robust saturated blue spikes of grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) to the stately, white flowering tylip T. ‘White Triumphator’. In our garden the new fresh green growth on Buxus sempervirens is a perfect partner for bulbs providing not only an evergreen back drop, but echoing the mood of the moment with its fresh, new growth. What a month…
Happy gardening!
