Celebrating creation in Lent - Part 6: 5th Sunday in Lent to Saturday 1st April

 Sunday 26th March

At this time of year the shoots of perennials can be just as exciting as any flowers. I particularly love the scarlet new shoots of paeonies before the leaves turn green. This one, a cultivar of Paeonia lactiflora I think, will also dazzle with its large double carmine blossoms in May and June.

Monday 27th March

This pretty epimedium gives a splash of light in a dark corner of the garden, above its new bronzed heart-shaped leaves. I'm pretty sure it's proper name is Epimedium x versicolor 'Sulphureum'. Among the common names for epimediums are Barrenwort and Bishop's Hat: the former, it is said, because the roots were believed to be a contraceptive, and the latter because the flowers resembled a biretta. I don't buy either explanation myself, but I do love the cheerful, little flowers!

Tuesday 28th March

The first blossoms just opening on the wild Bullace, known locally as damson, with scientific name Prunus insititia. There are big old trees in the hedge along the roadside, planted in the past for fruit I'm sure, which seed everywhere - the garden would become a thicket of Bullace if left to its own devices. These flowers are on a seedling. They promise a plentiful harvest of small, sour, blue plums in autumn, which make a superb jam. Amy picked buckets of them for me last year.

Wednesday 29th March

The first rosettes of one of the 2 species of native orchids we see in our wildflower meadow - Twayblade, Listera ovata. This particular plant always comes up and flowers earlier than the other twayblades. We shan't see the flowers, like little green men, until early May, but I'm delighted to find it just as it emerges from the soil with its two leaves furled up. I must mark it with a stick so I don't mow or trample it.

Thursday 30th March

I have seriously undercounted the flowering stems of the fritillaries in the wildflower meadow. I estimated 60 plus 2 weeks ago. But recounting now I find over 100! They are spreading faster than I realised, and I'm delighted. 

Friday 31st March

This lovely small spring-flowering shrub is Viburnum carlesii, native to Korea and Japan, and named for William Carles, a British diplomat who served in Korea in the 1880s. I gave the young plant to Marty as an Easter present years ago, and it is now about 6ft tall and wide. It is usually highly fragarant, though in todays cool weather I could not smell it.

It is sometimes given the English name 'arrowwood', but I suspect this really belongs to a related American species V. dentata, which native americans used for the shafts of arrows.

Saturday 1st April

Last year's colourful shoots from the pollarded willows have finally been lopped. The pruning looks rather drastic just now, but within a few weeks new green shoots will begin to show. By the end of the autumn they will have grown a good eight foot tall, standing leafless through the winter like glowing yellow, orange and red fireworks in the low sunshine. In the meantime the wildflowers in the bed in front, red and white campion, blue meadow cranesbill and chicory, purple greater knapweed and wild marjoram, will have the light to flourish and flower in succession through the spring and summer. How generous mother nature is to us!