May: Transformation

There is a brief moment in the garden in spring when the weather is warm and there is a gentle breeze.
Catch your breath and it’s overwhelming beauty is gone. Just a memory, but one that stays with you forever.

The apple, crab and cherry trees, weighed down with sweetly scented snowdrifts of white and pink blossom – now no more. Today the same trees are green and lush with new leaves. As if they were in their finery for a big event and are now back to everyday garb.

Suddenly the whole garden is transformed by new growth. All the red trees and shrubs look magnificent: the big red Acer, Hazel, Beech trees and hedges, Berberis, Physocarpus diabolo and Cotinus.

I’m so pleased with the variety of different foliage we have. Not just the reds, bronze and mahogany, but variegated plants, pale greens, dark greens and silver. New golden green is emerging on the Quercus cerris, vivid lime tufts on Larch and Taxodium. It’s not just about the colours, but the leaf forms, the textures, shapes all add to a wonderful new wholeness.

By the house, some of the tulips are still hanging on – bright and jolly and at rakish angles. The pansies, forget me nots and perennial wallflowers in the tubs go from strength to strength. Symphytum, a useful spreading standby plant is liberally speckled with a carpet of cream and white crab blossoms.

Down below the pond, thin fine grasses rise above spent daffodil leaves, with buttercups and ox- eye daisies floating above them, and the sun shining right through it all.

How quickly the garden has changed in the past ten days.