I realise that some of you reading this will be well into spring & all your bulbs & spring flowers will be in full bloom , or even over. Ours are (apart from the Snowdrops) a couple of weeks off of being at their best. Unfortunately I am very busy for the next two weeks, so did not want to not cover a time that I really love in the garden, so you will see in the following shots the ones that are out now & maybe, just maybe, in three weeks time when I have recovered from my business the best will still be here.
Before I start talking about any of the plants I must confess most of them I am unaware of their names, but with some help from SWMBO, I hope I have got the right names for them.
Those first two are of a plant that grows wild around here & goes through all different shades of colour, as you can see from the above shots. I hope I am correct in saying it is a Polonaria. What we both like about this plant is that once it is established it will stand up to almost anything the Cairngorms weather throws at it.
Next we have the Heathers, of course a true Scottish favourite & as we get older we are filling the garden with them, as long as you give them a haircut after they have bloomed to stop them from going leggy, they need very little other maintenance, but give you great coverage & bloom.
Next come the humble Crocus, not many of these in our garden, but what we do have are attractive, that is as long as the birds don’t get them first. For some reason, especially sparrows, the birds like to peck off the stems, maybe the sap is tasteful, not sure, but you can have a great display one day & the next they are all flat on the ground. The second shot of a single Crocus is amusing, this one decided to come up in the turning circle of our drive & whenever I have had to turn the car round, the wife has said mind the Crocus. Somehow I actually to avoid it every time & at last it has died back so I don’t have to avoid it.
I followed the Crocus on with the iconic Spring plant, the Primrose, only a few out in the garden at the moment & the few that are out, as you can see, are all different shades of yellow. I like when the purple & pink ones join them & make a cracking display.
The Hacquetia (think that is right) though not a flower (again I think) it is a brack, but is still a colourful addition to Spring in the garden.
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All Winter the next plant, a member of a large family of plants & not sure which one this is, has given us a bit of colour as you come to our front door, now in Spring it gives us this almost Autumn colouring which is very bright & affective. makes you smile as you come around the corner of the house.
See what I mean about the plant above?
Next is this little bulb that is described in the plant book I am using as ” A cheery small bulb, good for naturalising in borders or grass” at the end of the paragraph it adds ” No maintenance required other than to control the self seeding”. So now you can see why we love this bulb, it is so prolific in our garden and such a bright blue it is gorgeous. It is called a Scilla, just plant & let it take over, nothing else will fill your garden with such brightness as this little plant
Lastly I doubt there is hardly a garden in Britain that doesn’t have a Daffodil or two in their garden. Our are not really out yet, a few are when they are South facing & also the miniature ones, but the real display of main crop ones are still to come.
So Spring has started, but way from finishing & I expect we will have another dumping of snow before summer (especially if my neighbour Rod is not here ) (sorry in joke), but we do enjoy our crop of Spring flowers.