UP THE GARDEN PATH
Louise indulges in some springtime yellow fever…
Have you noticed how the colour yellow, in its many shades heralds the joyful beginning of spring and how it is the key colour of numerous plants in the garden coming back to life?
After the seemingly endless blur of grey days through the winter months, it’s as if someone has suddenly switched the light on when we get those first beautifully bright clear sunny days. Even if the temperatures are still bitingly cold, the sun bathes us all in its glorious golden yellow light. You start to notice daffodil shoots appearing and everyone’s mood is instantly improved. I am definitely keenly aware of that feeling of hope and renewal, so I wanted to take some time to celebrate the colour yellow and share with you some of the yellow ‘flags’ that bring me joy and are my spring wake up call.
As the strength of the spring sunshine starts to intensify, one of the first flowering plants in my garden is the common primrose (Primula vulgaris). They are found in woods and under hedges, and are aptly named as the name means first flower of spring. Several clumps have spontaneously appeared in my garden and tentatively showed a few small blooms as early as late December, they should continue to bloom until around May. What was one tiny clump has now luckily spread to other areas. Being a bit of a purest, I love the delicate, subtle yellow flowers, nothing like the deep purple, pink and orange colours of the hybrid Primulas that pop up in many shops in spring, and I must add that seeing these small yellow flowers putting on a show throughout the recent bleak months as I’ve popped out to feed the birds, have given me a well needed moment of hope and joy for the coming spring.
Another signal that things are on the up and up, are my Narcissus Tête-à-Tête. These never fail to surprise me as they pop up in an old galvanized bucket on my deck that I planted some bulbs in several years ago, but that I seem to forget about until the moment in February when I see the shoots poking up. I really love Daffodils and I’ve been enjoying them aplenty on my walks, there are so many gorgeous variations these days, two tone versions where the trumpet is a darker yellow than the petals and doubles that are very frilly, all of them are very striking and it’s tricky trying to choose just one to show you. It’s difficult not to think of the Wordsworth poem with line ‘a host of golden daffodils…’ when you see a drift of them with their heads nodding in the breeze.
However there’s something special about the Tête-à-Tête, it’s small but mighty in a ‘mini-me Daff’ sort of way. At only about 15cm high they are sturdy and resilient and don’t get knocked over by the March winds as much as their leggier Daff cousins. A note on their name just in case you aren’t aware, Tête-à-tête is French for a conversation between two people, so as they quite often have two flowers per stem it can appear as if they are chatting together.
My final choice of yellow beauties to delight you with isn’t a flower at all, but a flowering shrub. Forsythia is an often over-looked inhabitant of many garden borders or hedges. Most of the year it’s just a rather boring green leafed, type of twiggy shrub, but my friends it has its moment of glory. In early spring the bare stems produce masses of golden yellow, star shaped flowers, just when everything else isn’t doing much more than producing a few buds, suddenly the Forsythia goes bang and has a few weeks of shining brightly like a beacon to the spring. They are in fact very easy to grow, I’ve stuck a broken off twig in the ground and they’ve taken root and grown into lovely shrubs. A word of warning about correct pruning of more mature bushes, they do need a bit of thinning out, as they benefit from letting the air and light through to encourage new healthy growth. Also it’s important to prune them just after the flowers have finished, if you do this later in the year you will be cutting back the new growth which holds the next years flower buds, so don’t be tempted to snip away in the autumn, as you won’t get much of a spring show.
It’s onwards and upwards now, enjoy the spring everyone and get out into nature and your gardens.
