One of the joys of being part of this place is in the doing and the making good and the betterment. When we arrived, we started by disentangling the runs of barbed wire and removing the old bedsteads that had been pushed into the broken hedges. It was good to replace these missing teeth. In some cases whole runs of hedge that had been eaten away by the livestock or overwhelmed by elder. A decade on and the hedges run in unbroken lifelines to join the high ground with the low and our hedges with the ones that connect away into the distance.

Of note, we uncovered an old springhead with a rough hewn stone trough that had been all but submerged by years of trampling hooves, but there was little else to suggest that the land had been invested in as it had been in the older houses that surround us. You can trace the prosp­erity of the old manor houses in the walls that run back up the hill to the older properties. They mark an earlier time where boundaries were laid down in the stone that was cleared from the fields. The old walls each bear the signature of their maker and now the patination of time. Most are neglected and crumbled, lichened and overtaken by signs of the ancient woodland that once would have dominated the valley. Dog’s Mercury, bluebell, archangel and wood anemone and a cage of bramble that hides them entirely in the summer months.  

The camassia have risen, spearing into spring and soaring skyward to link us with the early days of summer. Their first ascending colour eclipses the last of the spring bulbs as the meadows quicken to swallow the Pheasant’s Eye narcissus. Spires that leave their fleshy foliage behind to blink one and then a succession of starry flowers. Each star lasts just a day as they fizzle up the stems, still ahead of the grasses – but not for long – to ride this pristine and to-be-savoured moment.

Camassia provide first height in a border, rising simultaneously with Thalictrum aquilegifolium and cow parsley. I have learnt a lesson or two over the years, having regretted planting the profligate Camassia leichtlinii ‘Alba’ in a border setting (not my own I might add, but a client’s) without having grown the plant for long enough myself to know its habits. The single form seeds into open ground if you do not deadhead it, so densely that you might have sown a lawn come the following spring. Seedlings that burrow fast into the crowns of anything that isn’t fast enough to eclipse their early growth, then forming a network of bulbs that are impossible to disentangle.

I have just returned from a week overseas. A week of spring at its most exuberant, and one in which so much accelerates. First leaf in the trees, the meadows on the rise and the garden surging. On the morning I left, I rose early to walk, absorb and to try to be present. To slow time by looking, rather than planning the next move to keep ahead or on top of the perpetual motion of garden tasks. Our given state as gardeners, despite the fact that one of the primary reasons we garden is to be in the here and now. In spite of best attempts to be witness to the very morning, my early walk was tinged by the pathos of what I might miss during my absence. A complete chapter that in our case here, is marked by the first blossoming of the crab apples.

Their presence on the banks behind the house has been carefully planned and, twelve years after planting, they are beginning to be greater than the sum of their parts. Significant enough to have the gravity it takes to be the happening on the hill that I had imagined when I staked out their positions in the winter of 2012. More than a decade on and the young trees are in their first flush of adulthood, reaching to touch and beginning to arch over the back track to make a tunnel between the hedge on th eother side and the open slopes that rise up behind us.

In the vegetable relay race of early spring, last year’s crops are now starting to flower on their mission to set seed. The leeks have sent up their flower spikes and the radicchios and chicories are finally coming to the end of their season and are about to follow suit.  The kales and purple sprouting broccolis have handed the baton to the spring greens, while the autumn sown chard is having its last gasp before being replaced by the plugs that I planted out last weekend. In the polytunnel, the autumn sown salads, spinach, herbs and spring onions are still producing but, with the lengthening days and higher temperatures, they too are starting to flower and are beginning to flag. So the aim has been to eat as much as we can, before everything bolts and is cleared out in advance of the tomatoes, peppers and aubergines.

This means we’ve been eating a lot of meals where greens are the primary ingredient. Pasta with a sauce of blanched and liquidised ‘Hungry Gap’ kale. Creamed kale. Kale in a cheese sauce. Kale risotto. Kale curry. Chargrilled and roasted spring cabbage with a dressing of tahini, garlic, lemon juice and mint or smothered in chopped olives, preserved lemon and parsley. Every lunch features a salad of spinach, mustard greens and the last of the winter lettuces. While we’ve had wild rocket for days. In salads, pestos, sandwiches, risotto. We can’t eat it fast enough, as it lives up to its name in exponential growth. It’s the first year I’ve grown it in the polytunnel and it has been so successful it will now be a regular feature.

I have always gardened with euphorbia and it would be hard to imagine removing them from my planting palette. Look at the tribe as a whole and they span several continents, shape-shifting within their huge genus as they navigate their chosen habitat. They have adapted to cool, leafy woodland, wet stream edges and modified their surface areas and foliage so that they can withstand extremes of drought and exposure in their most succulent incarnations. For this reason they are a genus that I return to in my uncertainty about what will happen next with our ever-changing climate and need to be adaptable.

The spurges are included in almost all the plantings in the garden here, though you might not always be drawn to them first, when they are sitting back and out of season. Their season is long and varied and their particular vibrancy is something that always brings with it new energy when they come into flower.

April, this most delicate of months. Soft with new growth, poplars silvering and wild cherry lighting the valley. We can be sure now in the knowledge that we finally have momentum. An unstoppable push with the flash of yellow dandelion, cowslip and cuckoo flower. Ahead of the grass in the meadows for these few days they have their moment, but not for long now that the rush is with us.

This second week of the month, the one just past, is a reliable moment to take in this brief and wonderful window. A time when the newness is as fresh as it ever will be, untarnished by the elements and at its most vital. As green, as shiny or downy and often saturated with an inky stain and bronzing. A colouring that is ephemeral, particular to now and to be savoured for the hand full of days it is at its best. This year we took a fortnight to be in the garden and to be part of it, to look and to do.

Wishing you all a very happy and peaceful Easter weekend.

Flowers & photograph: Huw Morgan

For our Japanese visitors last week, foraging for spring greens is a very natural part of the reawakening that takes place after the long Hokkaido winter. The gathering of sansai (mountain vegetables) is an ancient tradition and one that, unlike here, is seemingly unbroken from its hunter gatherer origins. Indeed, sansai provided an important means of survival even up to the 19^th century as the large population struggled in the face of wars, famines and earthquakes without well-developed agricultural systems. Wild foods are still a fundamental part of the Japanese diet with cultural importance.

Midori told us how one must be very careful foraging for sansai in the forest in early spring, which there comes in late April. When the brown bears awake they are hungry and grumpy after their long hibernation, leading to the dangerous combination of them being both confused and aggressive for food. Foragers wear bear bells to alert the animals to their presence and must keep one eye and ear on the surrounding undergrowth in case they should need to run. Not quite the relaxed and bucolic scene we might experience when gathering wild garlic in the woods here on a spring morning.

Dan Pearson

This week we welcomed our friends from Hokkaido, who have travelled all the way from their snowbound island to steal a march on spring and reconnect with their British gardening fraternity.

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.