Needed a major restoration this year so lots of dug over well-manured ground waiting for plants. Thanks to Conor Hurst, whose two afternoons a week working with me has made all the difference.
Clematis nepalensis
Cleaning the soil
Ready and waiting
Front
and back
Snowdrops: large form
Snowdrop 'John Gray'
The green centres act as a kind of fingerprint.
Tall snowdrop rescued from excavations in a Victorian garden
Early daffodils
and rampant lesser celandines
A range of Harvington double hellebores
This imported soil is clay heavy and was full of noxious roots like nettles - always check carefully. We top-dress with sharp sand regularly to break it up.
and dig it in well
Clean bed beyond the snowdrops
Isabel's old boots
Jetfire
Iris Katharine Hodgkin
and friends
Bourganvillia, indoors
A new auricula theatre
The double hellebore bed
Lovely white ribes, flowering currant. Commercial names include Icicle White
A lime-tolerant rhododendron, just been moved, but seems to have survived
Pale blue grape hyacinths are named 'White'
Nice pink corydalis
Garden hellebores
Ornamental Japanese plum
Primroses galore
'Christmas box' smelling beautifully
Rosemary has been in flower all winter.
'Rapture'
Jetfire
Notice the small green petals at the base of the main flower
Clematis cirrosa
Clematis cirrosa 'Freckles' has been much hacked around
More soil
Clematis cirrosa in the archway
Lonicera (winter honeysuckle)
and with new shoots
A saxifrage hairdo
In waiting
My shadow...
