April’s Garden Update
April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year - Vita Sackville-West
As April settles in, the garden begins to shift and the swelling pulse of spring intensifies. The month has its obvious charms – the days are longer and the temperatures are, after a cold, dry spring now finally creeping up; the tulips are in full swing and in a couple of weeks the hedgerows tree canopies will be full of leaves and thrumming with life. The soil feels warm on the back of my hand and the first two swallows have been seen racing frenetically around the towers.
It’s a sweet spot where the winter work is done but the weeding and watering has not yet begun in earnest, and it’s hard to imagine a time in the garden more crucial than the six weeks that follow this tipping point. It is now that we are sowing seeds directly into beds, pricking out and potting on the seedlings sown indoors, and hardening off sweet peas to go out soon. We are sowing seeds to fill the gaps that appear in August; for the vegetables and cut flowers we’ll harvest; and for the pots and containers to be filled once the tulips have finished. I’ve decided to do something quite different with the container displays this year (I usually stick to a muted pastel colour palette that is tasteful but, dare I say it, a little boring), and have opted to do something using more traditional bedding plants in a colour palette that is – by my standards anyway – slightly gauche. Watch this space.
Last week we finally managed to put a new set of training wires in a corner where a rambling rose has been noodling around on the ground and blocking a doorway, and it’s amazing what a difference it makes. There are roses and fruit trees covering every wall in the garden, tied on to the old iron nails and cleats left behind by previous hands and now no longer able to bear much weight. Every winter we try to put up at least one set of wires to nibble away at the task, it’s such a satisfying job and I can’t wait to see the results in summer. The fact that we are still tackling the winter jobs list in April might tell you something about what kind of winter it’s been, but the nice thing about this game is that every year brings the opportunity to both start anew and to set about the same challenges differently, and it’s not often we get the chance to do that.
Kate