April Garden Notes

From my notebook on nature and the garden - April 2024 (plus a list of the flower varieties I'm sowing this month)

Apple blossom, butterfly ranunculus, blue bugle, anemone the bride, wild garlic, white ranunculus, tulip pink impression, English bluebell, Spanish bluebell, lily of the valley, clematis montana.

An energy buzzes through April, it hustles you upwards and outwards. Everywhere you look things are growing, moving, greening. It starts slowly, a tentative unfurling, the first few pink-tinged leaf buds testing the air, loosening their grip, tender leaf-edges feeling for the light. And then comes the explosion; the leaves flinging themselves skyward, reaching towards the sunlight, dancing in the breeze, filling the countryside with every shade of green. 

April 3rd

April 25

Birds are everywhere, their voices swelling in harmony from first light until dusk. They weave in and out of the hedgerows, darting tree-to-tree, flirting, chasing, coupling, fighting. Their chorus loud in your ears, the alarm clock of spring after the dark silence of winter.