Through the garden gate--February

February started badly, when I went flat on my back on the wet lawn sustaining a fractured ankle . I was on my way down to the bird table with a pot full of seed. The seed ended up all over the lawn and my husband reported that a flock of starlings descended shortly afterwards to consume it all. I do wonder if they missed any and if we will be seeing sunflowers and other things growing out of the lawn later on in the year.

Well, a few weeks later after much rest, ice, painkillers and physio I am now getting about, pottering around the garden. The physio continues, the rest and painkillers are still needed after I've overdone things. I've been told it could be a couple of months before my ankle is fully healed.  But when the sun shines as it has done in the last week, I have to be outside. As therapy we have been out to the garden centre and I have bought pots of bulbs. Quite gingerly I have found that I can kneel down on my kneeler which has handles to hoist me up again. So I have planted spring bulbs and Hellebores. This is a new garden for us and one which didn't have much in it before. So I am trying to bring in some spring colour.

A box of goodies from the garden centre

In the front garden last year I cleared a space under a Weigela shrub, cutting back some of the branches to raise the canopy. This month I planted  crocus and tete a tete daffodils under its canopy. In the back garden I planted snowdrops, crocus, daffodils and hellebores in a new shrub border which we  made in January. It's lovely to see the spots of colour starting to appear. 

Spring bulbs poking through the snow under the Weigela

 Digging I definitely can't do at the moment, so Richard has done some digging out and planting up of bigger things which needed a spade. There is a large border at the side of the house which had a clump of very well established Crocosmia, yellow irises and bluebells. I dug as much of these out as I could in the autumn.  Crocosmia and irises are difficult to get rid of once they get too established and they are not my favourite plants.  Bluebells can take over a space too if allowed. They are better in the wild or in a woodland garden. As I wanted to give this bed a new look, they had to go. I brought  a Sarcococca ( sweet box) from my old garden. It had been in a pot for a few years. This was planted in the new border by the path where hopefully we will get the scent of it as we pass by. It has looked much happier since it has been planted in the bed. At the other end of the bed Richard planted a Brachyglottis.  This plant used to go by the name of Senecio. Why do they keep changing plant names I wonder? I like to grow this plant for the silver/grey foliage which I find useful for flower arranging. In the centre of the bed is a yellow Potentilla which has always been there. This is quite a good sized border and I'm looking forward to adding some perennial plants in the next few months. It gets quite a bit of sun from early morning to midday. I want to plant up some cottage garden plants which will tumble over onto the path.

The snow arrived this week, so no more gardening for a while. I was going to take some photographs of our planting work, but now the garden is covered in snow. I hope it will soon be gone and we can enjoy all that spring colour. I hope too that I will soon be able to get back to gardening properly with a fully healed ankle. In the meantime all I can offer in photographs is that of a snowy garden and a box of the spring plants before they got planted.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post