Awaiting Act One

The garden is like a stage awaiting the actors to appear. I know they have arrived as I can see fresh, green leaves throughout the garden but there is that growing anticipation of what is yet to come.

This weekend has been quite lovely. Very mild, temperatures of 15 to 17c, a soft breeze and full sun. You can see the garden responding to the long hours of daylight and warmth.

I love the heads of the Snakes Head Fritillary nodding in the wind. But all over the garden plants are beginning to prepare their entrance stage left.

In the meantime we've been busy preparing beds for a soft fruit garden where we will grow raspberries, blackberries, black and red currents. This is a first for us and something of an experiment for we have never grown soft fruit before. However, I am excited by the prospect.

The new lawns have now settled in over winter and I made the first cut of the year today. The smell of freshly mown grass and the crisp lines in a lawn are both things to treasure at this time of year.

We have also continued with the planting and I prepared two new beds at the side of the house in preparation for a seat that we will eventually place there with a grass path leading to it. The beds have Nepeta mussinii planted in them to create a froth of pale lavender blue flowers from mounds of greyish leaves all summer long.

In the main herbaceous bed I planted Knautia macedonica and lots of Verbena Bonariensis that I have been growing on in cold frames for some months. At the front of the house and in the main bed I added 20 x Digitalis Virtuoso Purple and 6 x Digitalis Giant Spotted.

So, although it has been busy, most of all it has been enjoyable and the promise of the show to come makes it all that much more worthwhile!