Ten First Flowers

I had a garden dream: an overflowing mass of flowering abundance, red and orange and yellow at one end of the front garden; blue and purple and white at the other.

But as the saying goes, the only place where success comes before work is the dictionary. At the end of autumn (i.e. May) I summoned my energies, such as they were, and built two garden beds in the front garden.

The results, it must be said, are not entirely what I had hoped for. For one thing, a heavy layer of cardboard and a few inches of garden mix were not enough to put off the weeds, which have grown back in profusion: creeping buttercup, convolvulus, dock…

But some plants did manage to make their presence felt despite the weeds. I therefore present you with the ten best blooms from late winter to early summer.

In the early days of expanses of bare soil relieved mostly by weeds it was a comfort to have the freesias (a thoughtful gift) spring up and give the impression this was actually a garden.

A cheerful cluster of small six-petalled yellow blooms rises above green foliage.
Freesia (Golden Giant? Golden Melody?)
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Beware the Agapanthus

I can’t believe people actually plant this stuff, deliberately! OK, it’s low-maintenance and mildly decorative, but so is convolvulus, and you all know how I feel about that. Another point of similarity with convolvulus: it spreads, and where it grows, nothing else survives.

Last week, I was having one of those days where all you seem to do is uselessly spin your wheels in the mud. You know the ones? I got frustrated. I got angry. I got a spade and a large garden fork and I took out my anger and frustration on the largest patch of agapanthus.


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