Perhaps surprisingly, I am still caught napping by that moment, usually sometime in May, when the garden seems to explode into life, growth, buzzing bees (and hover flies), and flowers. At last the veg take off, and everything seems to be rushing headlong, all of a sudden.
This is, of course, all connected with daylight length and intensity of ultra-violet light (there can be a lot of the latter even on a cloudy day), both of which most plants are programmed to respond to.
The result can be an early climax of flowering followed by not a lot after about midsummer. Careful advance planning is supposed to take care of this and extend the summer season until autumn-flowering plants like rudbeckias and Michaelmas daisies can take over. Some advocate the “Chelsea Chop”, cutting back herbaceous plants by 30-50% to delay flowering by some weeks (if you fancy this, have a look at https://www.rhs.org.uk/pruning/chelsea-chop - you might still just be in time to do this now).
Garden writers, many of whom seem to have more acreage (and help) than most of us, often speak of moving early-flowering perennials to a “spare bit of ground” – (something I’ve never had), to be replaced by later-blooming plants or by annuals, which, of course, you’ve been “bringing on” in another “spare bit of ground”, or, if you’re really blessed, a “nursery bed”. My response to this, my garden being only 30 feet by 20, is: “fat chance”, but then what can you do when your plans, carefully laid in March or April, may already be going awry? This year I planted some supposedly vigorous white poppies (Papaver orientale “Checkers”) in a good sunny spot, and the three plants have just sat there without putting on any new leaf, and looking generally disconsolate. There is no way that they’ll flower this season, so shall I throw them out, or give them another chance? Similarly, I thought I’d give lupins a go this year, and bought separate colours, which all arrived beautifully labelled and seemingly organised. They weren’t: the red ones are a wishy-washy salmon-pink, and the white ones miserably small – a total waste of money. They always look a mess after their early season is over, I have rarely bothered with them before, and probably never will again. However, such mishaps can also provide an opportunity: by this time of the year commercial nurseries are beginning to discount plants they have over-produced. A while ago I remember being lucky in this way with Alstroemeria “Indian Summer”.. Planted in June, it flowered non-stop till the first frosts, and has been a mainstay of my front garden ever since.
Supposedly, you live and learn, but I wonder sometimes, having been full of gardening plans every year for the last four decades, some part of which always fail to materialise. For example, you’d think a bed twelve feet by four in full sun from March to September would be a piece of cake, but, even after ten years of fiddling around, it’s still not sorted: the roses there are doing well (Rosa rugosa alba almost too well – it’s seven feet high already), but Allium “Purple Sensation” won’t flower (though they romp away in my front garden forty feet away), and the wonderfully-named, and supposedly hardy, Salvia “Jezebel” is not yet looking at all happy. Meanwhile most of the irises are congested, so need digging up, separating, and replanting.
I don’t grow vegetables in my small plot, but, with native asparagus pretty well over, I am eagerly awaiting the first broad beans. Last year I saw a lettuce for sale at Eynsham Country Market that was almost two feet across, and beetroot weighing a kilo each. I wonder whether, considering the extraordinarily dry spring we’ve had, we shall see their like this year? I’ve already had to water and water to keep established perennials going, but deeper-rooted shrubs seem perfectly happy, so far at least. Much less eagerly, I am wondering when Thames Water will issue their first warning of an impending hosepipe ban.
The odd setback notwithstanding, I’m glad to say that my enthusiasm for the gardening “bug” never seems to lessen. A couple of weeks ago I was fiddling with something in my front garden, when a non-gardening neighbour ambled by. He murmured, “It’s never-ending, isn’t it?” “Of course”, I answered, “that’s the point.”