Frothy foliage, scintillating scents and potting palms

What a lot of change the garden has seen this April. Benefitting from all the warmth and then a little rain, the herbaceous borders have erupted. Shoots of all forms, textures and colours have appeared from nowhere. The growth has been dramatic, creating real dynamism and drama in the borders. My favourites at this time of year include the serpentine Solomon’s Seal and the frothy Thalictrum, but I love the promise of jungly exuberance offered by the cautiously emerging ‘noses’ of the large hostas and the unfurling croziers of the shuttlecock ferns in the shade border! There is a life-force surging through the garden now, and we are entering its most exciting period!

The rock garden

We’ve had some wonderful scents to accompany our garden walk-rounds of late, starting with a colourful show of hyacinths on the south lawn. Star of the show now, though, is Skimmia Kew Green, such a good garden shrub with its light green (evergreen) foliage and now smothered in white panicles of discrete but so sweetly scented blooms, a magnet for hungry bees! We planted ours around 15 years ago and it’s slowly spread but remains low so has pride of place in the front of the shade border, where it receives really no sunlight for much of the year. Recently, we encountered a much older specimen (probably five times the size) at the National Trust for Scotland’s Greenbank Garden, so perhaps the front of the border might not just have been the best location for it!

Skimmia Kew Green

Meanwhile on the other side of the south wall, it’s the soft pink blossom from the apples that’s contributing to the ambiance of the Secret Garden. They've joined the snow-white pear blossom to bring the walls to life, providing a contrasting backdrop to the dark-reds, soft oranges and butter yellows of the emerging acers. We completed the Secret Garden a couple of years ago and it’s my favourite spot, particularly at this time of year.

Acers in the Secret Garden

Now, the days are getting ever longer here in South-east Scotland. The blackbirds wake me at 4.45am and the fluttering bats announce the onset of dusk around 9pm; we believe we have Pippistrelles. They are great fun to watch, never afraid to swoop down seemingly just inches from your head!

This week we’ve been tidying the nursery, potting little plants on (including some Liliium regale grown from seed a couple of years ago and gradually getting bigger) and planting out baby Snakeshead fritillaries and grape hyacinths. We’ve been potting on the young Torbay palms (Cordyline australis) which we also grew from seed and young Trachycarpus fortunei palms which we sourced as tiny seedlings a couple of years ago from eBay! Once these get a bit bigger, I’m hoping that they will be hardy enough to live in sheltered corners of the walled garden all the year round. But that will not be for quite a few years!

The Secret Garden

And the grass is growing in the meadow, meaning a weekly trip on the elderly ride-on to forge a network of paths through it. We don’t graze our meadow and it’s only cut once a year in November so becomes a haven for insects, hares and ground-nesting birds. The swallows have just returned from North Africa, to be joined very shortly by the house-martins - they nest under the eaves of the house and they swoop over the meadow, back and forth like fighter jets, picking off tasty insects for their broods.

Pear blossom in the Secret Garden