Spring is suddenly with us and with it a few days without rain have allowed the primroses to finally lift their heads. Since finishing the cutback in the last week of February, the stirring which we could then feel but barely see has sprung. New life, where just a fortnight ago we were looking at bare earth and imagining what is now vital and clear. The patterns and groupings in plan view, yet to be three dimensional, as you see them when working out a planting plan and having to imagine the volumes and interconnectedness.
In this brief window – which in my opinion is the perfect three weeks of the planting season here – I go back into the garden to assess where I need to make changes. Are the sanguisorba in need of splitting? They will resent it if you try to do this in the autumn. Can I get away with one more season without dividing the Iris sibirica? They also prefer division in the spring, but this needs to be done right now – preferably last week – before the shoots rush away further and are easily damaged. A monkish bald patch in the centre of the plant lets you know that it is time to replenish the vigour at the heart as it grows away in each direction. With the garden maturing this task alone is a good day’s work, so we pace ourselves, taking one or two groups a year and leaving some to provide a show whilst the new divisions catch up and can cover in relay for splits in future seasons. I note the plants that demand little or no attention. The amsonia, peonies and hemerocallis that rarely need division. These are the members of the community that allow you to give attention to those that need it most.
I don’t like to mulch until I can see exactly what has broken ground. There are seedlings from the Laser trilobum that need headroom to establish and will need to be carefully negotiated. The adults are relatively short-lived and, after three years or so, need a replacement. In some places, where the primrose yellow Eranthis hyemalis ‘Schewfelglanz’ has finally taken, we will not mulch at all because the seedlings need a spring to build a first corm. They have seeded downhill where they are planted on the slopes amongst the yellow hellebores, their heavy seed under the influence of gravity. This year I split the mother plants that have been growing in a display pot and planted a few uphill to reverse the tide a little and bring them closer to the path.
The newly sprung shoots are as optimistic and life affirming as the garden you plan for in the high summer season. Molly-the-witch (main image) has already broken the lipstick red buds that protect the first soft, grey-pink growth. It lasts just days in this exquisite state, and it is important to make the time to visit before the moment passes.
I make a note to edit the nearby Siberian melic, which has now got a hold and is showing how it likes to live and run in the shadows. This beautiful woodland grass is an early riser, at its very best in late spring and early summer, but then drops into the shadows with the other woodlanders. It is ideal where I am encouraging layering in the planting, and I am slowly filtering in shade-tolerant ephemerals that take the spring and are happy to sit under the rising canopies of the later perennials. Viola odorata, pulmonaria and the Balkan primrose, Primula vulgaris ssp. sibthorpii. I collected seed of a white and a pink form of this beautiful variant from a project in France a couple of years ago. In my mind’s eye I see it seeding into all the spaces beneath the willows on the edge of the garden that aren’t already taken by the summer cover of the wood asters, so they express each of the two shoulder seasons.
The living mulch provided by these shade-tolerant woodlanders is slowly reducing the amount of ground we need to physically add to with compost, but mulching is still necessary to keep the weeds at bay before the growth of the perennials closes over. Mulching has always been good practice in terms of looking after soil health, but it has become increasingly important that the soil is able to drain in our ever-wetter winters and conversely for soil to retain moisture in the prolonged periods of heat and drought we are experiencing. This year we are using our own year old compost and the cuttings from the winter clearance which have been put through the chipper on its mulch setting. The thinking behind the decision not to take the spent stems to the compost heap this year is twofold; to keep the cuttings in the garden so that they are not double handled allowing resources to be applied elsewhere and to save on the expense and transportation of bought in composted green waste. I will report back in a year to see how this new approach evolves and whether we have managed to cut out the middle man and become more self-sufficient.
Readying the garden for the growing season will be methodical in the remaining weeks of March. Looking ahead before mulching, weeding the million and one Lunaria ‘Chedglow’ seedlings back to the handful we actually need and making mental notes before the ground is put under its eiderdown. Logging where a last few splits of lungwort might concentrate the flit of blue and where we might have missed the odd dandelion that will only rejoice in its perfect living conditions if we don’t winkle it out right now. Slowly, slowly as the tide gathers around us, we are getting to where we need to be.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 9 March 2024
