It’s been a while…
Well, here we are again at the intersection of spring & summer '26. Sixteen months after my first post, (which was meant to publish quarterly), I'm rather sheepishly tying myself to the keyboard for a few moments to catch up with one of my favourite elements of what I do- communicating directly with all of you.
I do recognise this delay as a really good thing- I've been blessed over the first year of my business to be so busy that I couldn't find the time to blog with the regularity I intended. So, I guess the first thing I would like to say is a sincere thank you to all who have supported me so far....and for messing with my blog routine!
I'm thoroughly inspired by this time of year as I'm sure many of you are too. The first flush of bulbs has already given us multicoloured carpets of hope for the year ahead, seeds are poking through the soil we toiled over a month ago, and birdsong shapes our early mornings again. With the daylight hours expanding every day, our plants are waking up which gives us more to do to care for them, but also more time to do it in - a reminder that nature can have its own balancing effect. I love noticing the micro changes from a tiny bud one week, to a cluster of leaves opening up like an eye lash the next… and finally on to a canopy of green in such a short space of time. It feels like everything is coming together at this time of year and we can start to reap what we sowed.
May is the perfect time to prune any Camelias which have gotten too big for their space. As the new buds for next year will form in summer, you have a relatively short window if you need to reshape them, without removing next years flowers.
It’s also a great early season task to apply mulch to your borders- not only does it; inhibit weeds; provide nutrients & retain moisture for your plants to keep them healthy; it also has an instant transformational quality- brightening up tired, dry borders. Clay soil dominates in this area and water run off often leaves us with tired looking, baked, cracked beds. Mulching is a bit of a one stop shop for all of the above!
We can also look to enhance this with annual bedding plants in May for those who like to plant them. The frosts are on the way out and the light and rain conditions should create the perfect environment for them to thrive at this time of year.
We have a few weeks left for spring overseeding of lawns and scarification before it generally gets too hot and dry for the seed to take- if you can’t get this done now and keep on top of watering, there’s another window in Autumn and it’s best to wait until then.
Vigilant hoeing of weeds in our borders is an absolute must at this time of year as well, keeping them suppressed so that our plants can out compete them - and preventing them ever going to seed later in the season.
I’m off to four more gardens this week so I really must run off now! Thank you for reading and see you all soon :-)
