‘The month of promise and the sweet beginnings of summer’
- The Gardener
- May 6
- 4 min read
The lovely sunny weather continues although it’s turned a little cooler in the last few days. We’ve had very little rain here and there’s not much sign of it on the radar. But it’s very pleasant and provides perfect conditions for hoeing and mowing, the two staple tasks of the gardener in May.
In the borders, we’ve been hoeing off the second flush of annual weeds, now so much easier as all the herbaceous has at least started to appear. And once again it’s time to start putting out the link-stakes and curved supports before the wind beats us to it! Delphiniums, Centaurea, Achillea ‘Cloth of Gold’, peonies and some of the larger geraniums are at the front of the queue but there are Shasta daisies and tall Campanulas to do this coming week. It’s quite a big job but fine in small doses!
It’s also been heartening to see the tree lupins and the foxglove tree (Paulownia) emerging after the winter. We germinated these last year from RHS seed and it’s exciting to welcome plants we’ve never grown before!
As I work, swallows have been criss-crossing the teacup lawn, screaming as they go, now joined by the house-martins which prefer to feed over the Glen to the east of the house. Butterflies too have been very apparent, particularly the very distinctive orange-tips which we seem to have more of this year, enjoying the nectar of the bluebells which have replaced the daffodils in the Old Orchard and Summerhouse Gardens.
The blossom this year has been so good, with most of the apple trees, a-buzz with honey-bees, now in bloom along with the double -flowered candy -pink Japanese cherry in the Slope Garden. This coming week, she will shed her petals like an over-excited mother of the bride enthusiastically hurling confetti over the happy couple as they emerge from the church! In the Teacup Garden borders, the giant buttercup blooms of the tree peonies have emerged and I must remember to make some time for the scented dark-red one in the Woodland Garden when I pay a visit to the rhododendrons, which are, one by one, coming into bloom.
In the raised beds, we’ve been planting swede this week. Swede likes warm soil so it doesn’t pay to plant seeds too early. It’s been good to see the tiny feathery leaves of carrots emerge and I’m hoping that it’s parsnip seedlings coming through rather than weeds; parsnips have a reputation for being very slow to germinate. I’m a tiny bit concerned that they might not germinate at all as I used seed from the packet I opened last year. Time will tell. I note that last year’s spring onions are forming flower buds, so I’ll be planting them out shortly in the borders as ‘an unusual variety of allium’!
It’s been all-go, or perhaps all-grow in the greenhouse this past few days, and we’re starting to run out of space! We’ve been pricking out the lettuce, tomato and cosmos into modules, which will allow them more root-space until we plant them out at the end of the month. The temperature can still drop to near zero in May, so we’ll take no chances! Being traditional gardeners, we tend to grow varieties that have been around for a while; Webbs Wonderful is a crunchy, iceberg-type lettuce that works well for us, and Moneymaker produces fast-developing good-sized tomatoes, ideal for the relatively-short Scottish summer! We love cosmos for their non-stop, old-fashioned ‘big daisy’ blooms, and together with dahlias are our summer bedders of choice. We grow Purity, a large white-flowering variety and great for filling gaps in borders, and Gazebo Mixed, a smaller variety of pastel shades for the flower-bed outside the sitting room. Once they start flowering, usually in late June, they will not stop until the first frosts!
While working in the greenhouse, I noticed that the first of the agapanthus buds has appeared. They develop very fast - one day nothing, the next day a flower spike! We shall be moving them into sunny spots in the Walled Garden in the next few days.
And Jeremy, our resident Black Hamburgh grape, has sprung into life once more with amazing vigour, growing several inches a day, tendrils grasping anything that gets in the way. Regular ‘haircuts’ are the order of the day during the summer, being careful not to snip off the flower clusters, of course, which will in August lead to beautiful bunches of sweet, black grapes! Sadly our other resident vine, Mathilda, a Kiwi fruit, despite demonstrating equal vigour to that of Jeremy, has never fruited. Clearly not a self-pollinator so we may need to search for a Bruce!
And finally, the gardener has succumbed to a ‘bank holiday offer’. Having sworn never to purchase another tree fern ever again, he has succumbed! Tree ferns are probably my favourite plant, and yet the east coast of Scotland is really not the place for them. They can , and do, grow in Scotland, but in the west of the country, aided by the Gulf Stream. At the amazing National Trust for Scotland garden, Inverewe, they thrive, lots of them, all the year round, with minimal protection as they do in the wonderful estate gardens of Cornwall. So envious, but not any more. Our two babies, and they really are babies (as a thrifty Scot, I can’t bring myself to shell out any more than £15 for a plant!) will over-winter in the frost-free sunroom, living outside during the summer in a shady corner beside the lion’s head fountain. And in 12 years time, if I’m still around, I can look forward to them reaching the lofty height of.. one foot (30cm!). Tree ferns grow very slowly.
Great pic of the flowering cherry