Its been a very busy month and I realised the other day it had been a long time since my last blog post. I think I was a bit ambitious in January thinking I would manage every week when I spend every available moment in the garden now! Â Looking back to the beginning of the month so much has changed in the garden since then and most importantly the weather has too!
By the end of April I had had quite enough of the weather. There were more high winds and it had snowed again, causing several sleepless nights. It was one week until my first wedding of the year and what was the weather doing?! I knew the snow was forecast this time and lay in bed just waiting for it to start. 1 am, 2am, 3am I kept peeping out the window and no snow. Eventually I drifted off and woke up early in the morning to a garden covered in it. It was another of those crazy mornings of me rushing out to the garden in my pyjamas and wellies to clear snow off the tunnels before the weight of it collapsed them, crushing the flowers underneath. I got there in time and all was good, my flowers were intact. I spent the morning clearing what felt like never ending snow and was absolutely determined no weather was going to affect my flowers.
Then May came along and I breathed a very big sigh of relief. Despite the wind, rain, hail, snow and cold temperatures of April I had grown some beautiful flowers and could now cut and arrange them for the wedding. Its a privilege to be part of a couples wedding and I do my best to make the flowers as special as I can. Being creative and putting together flowers in a beautiful but natural way is a lovely part of being a flower grower. This was my first year of growing many new varieties of tulip and I just loved them. The Angelique, Rosalie and Gabriella tulips were gorgeous to work with for the bride and bridesmaids bouquets, not to mention the hellebores, honesty and narcissus.
Real petal confetti from the garden filled a basket for the flower girl and buckets of flowers from the garden were used to decorate the tables. I used rosemary, hellebores, small tulips, bluebells, muscari, hebe, heather, ivy  and forget me nots for the buttonholes.
With my time taken up at the beginning of the month preparing for the wedding I had some major catching up to do in the garden. The weather had been too cold to plant out any of the seedlings in the conservatory before. The cold frames and conservatory were bulging at the seams. I couldn’t get in the door for plants and it was starting to get impossible to walk across it without standing on them.  The last couple of weeks I have non stop weeded, planted out, sewed more annuals directly in the soil outside, watered due to our unexpected and welcome week of sunshine! and sewed more seeds indoors.
I managed to get these seedlings all planted out and I can now get in the conservatory without squeezing in the door and jumping over plants!
At this time of year the work in the garden is so busy that it is hard to think of next year, it seems a bit crazy to be planting seeds for then when I need flowers for this summer. However now is the time to be planting biennial seeds which will grow, put on leaves this year and flower next spring. Hopefully the wallflowers will then be a lot better than they have been this year! Last year I wasn’t the quickest at doing this so I have started now in the hope I will get sturdier plants. I have also realised that I need to plant a lot more hesperis and honesty in the garden as I use it so much as early flowering fillers.
Greenfly have started to be a real problem to me in the conservatory. I don’t remember haven’t the same trouble last year so I wonder what has changed? They seem to particularly like my indoor anenomes and ranunculus. Any tips for eradicating them will be gratefully received!!
Robert has been hard at work in the front garden creating new beds. Some are to be for family fruit and vegetables as we have all been missing out raspberries since moving house. Some of them though are for me. When I started Cloudberry Flowers I had 2 small beds cut in the top field. I never in a million years thought I would need to venture into the front garden! Once the beds are suitably rabbit proofed they will be invaluable next year. All the beds in the flower patch were made from many hours of Robert and I digging by hand. This time we hired a turf cutter and they were cut by lunchtime! I think we may need to hire a rotovator next.
I have fenced off the shrub border near the house from the rabbits and now felt safe to plant out my perennial penestemons, lupins, delphiniums, camassia, campanula and verbena knowing that they were protected for now from being nibbled. The slugs however are another matter…..
This month I was also asked to provide the bouquets for the winners of the Love Cross, a cycling race with a twist that is part of the local Tweedlove festival. It was nice to be able to use some of the last tulips for the season in these and I felt proud to see all the winners holding them and think how far Cloudberry Flowers has come in a year.
Photograph by Ian Linton courtesy of Tweedlove
The garden at the end of May is really coming to life. The tulips and daffodils are past now and the seasons move on. This week I have come across the first alliums and cornflowers flowering. Here are some pictures of what is flowering in the cutting patch just now. I wonder what is looking beautiful in your gardens just now?
The very last of these beautiful tulips are still flowering in the garden
Beautiful aquilegia just starting to bloom now.
These beautiful miniature white flowers are gorgeous but can anyone identify them?!
Gorgeous astrantia. My first year growing it and I love it!
Another first for growing in the garden are these geums.
Ravenswing
Alliums just coming into bloom
The first cornflowers of the year
May for me has been a month of very hard work in the garden, possibly the busiest in the year with all the planting, weeding, watering, arranging and seed sewing that has needed to be done. May also has been the most magical month of the year so far too. To make flowers for my second wedding that I loved and was proud of, to make the bouquets for a local event and simply to see the garden transform itself from its winter sleep into the beginnings of a field full of flowers. That is magic to me.
I’ll leave you with some pictures of flowers that have been my favourites on the stall this month.
Catherine x
