Spring in the air?

As we look back on yet another week of gales and for some parts of the British Isles, exceptional amounts of rain causing severe flooding, its hard to believe that Spring is just a few weeks away. Yesterday, Moray was lashed by horizontal sleet and snow showers, and not for the first time, I've wondered if my greenhouse is going to stay in one piece or be smashed to smithereens. But amidst all the chaos of the later winter weather, the garden is waking up...and at a pace too! The mild spell back in December and into January coupled with a lack of heavy frosts has meant an early start for a number of plants.

The usual suspects are out in bloom though and it does seem to have been a very good year for snowdrops. I only have a small handful in the garden that I have divided a few times to surround the apple tree and the winter aconites given to me by a friend are making their own way through the woodland garden. But this year I am seeing the winter aconites in flower along side the anemone, Blanda Blue, which is normally not out until March. The primroses are coming into their own and their bright colours really cheer up an otherwise drab space. In my first year of gardening here I bought a lovely little crocus called 'Cream Beauty', and is it ever as it has started to meander through the garden.

I do have a number of large flowered Iris in the garden but last year, I purchased a bag of Iris reticulata 'Carolina' and popped them in a bowl. My goodness they are exquisite and so delicate. They have sat on the picnic table holding their own against the 80 mph winds that we have had and are just radiant when the sunlight touches their petals. Note to self...get more of these for next year!

I'm delighted to see heads on the daffodils but a bit nervous to see such leaf growth on the tulips. Small heads are appearing on the Muscari and I've just seen the first shoots of the Erythronium that I also planted last autumn. The Frillilaria meleagris, looks gorgeous with its nodding checker-board heads although I confess I cheated a bit and bought a couple pots of them from my local garden centre, so they were ready to plant out.

One tip I read last year was to not put all your Allium bulbs in the ground but instead pop them in pots so that 1, you can be assured of not digging the bulbs up by accident and 2. you can pop them into a space as a full plant. So I have a few pots of Allium caeruleum in the cold frame with leaves at six inches tall, and a few somewhere in the front bed that I assume are going to appear at the right time.

Although I keep notes and take lots of photographs, I spend so much time rearranging plants and adding things in that I can never fully predict what the garden is going to look like the following year, its always a bit of a mystery and my planting scheme is less designed and more, to use a phrase from the wonderful landscape painter Bob Ross, a happy accident!

A few weeks ago I received a copy of the Scotland's Garden Scheme guide book of open gardens and although I had already seen our entry on the website it was exciting to see it listed in the book. But it has put on a bit of pressure. Being a novice gardener is fun. When you don't know the rules you can break them with impunity and you soon find out if a plant is not happy and needs a shift, but now I am finding myself being more analytical, looking more at planting styles and schemes and being a bit more precise, and in reality its taking a bit of fun out of the process. I do want to have a continuity of flowers available, it is a wildlife garden and although there is a nod to certain colour pallets, my garden really is about what I like and the plants that bring me joy, the colours that soothe me in the combinations that please me.

One thing is for sure, its going to be an interesting year!