Through the Garden Gate--March 2023

March has not been very Spring like this year. We've had a lot of rain, it's been cold, windy and we even had a bit of snow. The rain has been constant and stopped me from getting out into the garden to do jobs. I've had to dodge the showers and take advantage of the odd couple of hours of a dry spell or sometimes  I've been lucky and there's been a whole day of sunshine too good to waste. We are just longing for some fine, dry weather. 

Despite this bad weather we've managed to do quite a bit of work in between the showers.  Most of the borders have now been cleared of dead foliage and leaves. In the back garden we mulched the beds with a soil improver. We spread a bark mulch on the woodland wildlife bed in the back garden and on the hosta bed in the front garden. The garden always looks so much better when this has been done, it suppresses the weeds for a while and shows off the lovely bright green of the emerging plants.

Although the weather hasn't been very Spring like there are still plenty of signs that Spring is here. There are buds on the trees and some are starting to open up so there's a little haze of green as we look out the house windows.

In the beds the spring flowers are coming into bloom. There is plenty of yellow from the daffodils.

Clumps of primroses are dotted around under trees and shrubs and as a contrast blue pulmonaria and the forget-me-not like flowers of the brunnera are opening up now. 

The pulmonaria pop up all over the garden. This little one has turned out a pale pink, I've never seen one that colour before.

I bought some drumstick primula and planted them in the front garden.

The patio pots are mainly full of daffodils, but there are some violas too and the tulips have buds which hopefully will be flowering next month. 

The clocks went forward last weekend so we have longer days for gardening. There's lots to look forward to in the coming weeks. Hope you all have a happy  Easter. 

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

Primrose memories

When I was growing up I remember  my mother often talked about  a friend she had who was called Marjorie. Marjorie had married a farmer and moved from the north of England to Devon. Devon seemed a long way away, I had never been there, we only ever went to Wales. But the idea of living on a farm in Devon sounded really good to me as a child. My Mum and her friend used to write letters to each other and twice a year my Mum would receive a parcel from Devon which we were always excited about. One parcel always arrived in time for Mum's birthday in October and it was clotted cream. It was a real luxury because you couldn't buy clotted cream in the shops up north then. We also didn't have a refrigerator so we had to eat the clotted cream up as soon as possible before it went off. I don't remember what we had with the cream but it was probably tinned peaches as we wouldn't have been able to buy strawberries in October then like we can now.

The other parcel from Devon would arrive around Mothering Sunday and it was always a box of primroses cut from the wild in the Devon lanes. You can't do that now, but this was the 1950's before the laws about not cutting flowers from the wild came about.

I really loved those primroses with their delicate, little stems and lovely pale yellow petals. But they always looked a bit squashed when we opened the box so we had to get them into water as soon as we could before they died. Mum and I  would get together all the little vases and jugs  we could find around the house and fill them with these gorgeous little flowers. They soon recovered from their travels and they brightened up our shabby little house no end. I still have a little jug of my Mum's which always got filled with primroses. It makes me think of Devon lanes and banks of primroses. Marjorie eventually had to stop sending the primroses as she said she wasn't allowed to cut them anymore.

Mum's little jug filled with little flowers but not primroses as I don't have enough to cut yet

I have been to Devon many times but never in the Spring when the primroses are out, but I see them sometimes up here along the lanes in Lancashire or the Lake District and never fail to think of my Mum and her friend Marjorie when I see them.

Primroses along the road at Whalley in Lancashire

It's only in recent years that I discovered  you can buy native primroses-- primula vulgaris. I planted some in my old garden under the trees. Now we have moved recently and I am trying to create a little woodland patch in our new garden and one of the plants on my wish list was of course primula vulgaris.  My daughter who now lives in our old house said I could dig some up from her garden, they were in need of splitting up and replanting so I didn't have to be told twice. 

They look lovely nestling around some old tree stumps and I'm hoping they will increase in numbers over the next year or two.