After the miraculous tomato resurrection earlier this week, and with spring now firmly in the air, I feel the first stirrings of gardener’s itch. I’m not so inspired as to have done any actual work as yet, you understand, but I have taken some pleasure in wandering about enjoying the fruits of earlier labours. The daffodils are up and the wonderful ornamental winter cabbage is looking fresh and well tended despite months of neglect in freezing temperatures.
Planting bulbs in your garden
Let me digress for a moment to share with you a blinding insight that has come to me years too late. Ignore the instructions when planting daffodil bulbs that tell to you leave a certain number of centimetres between bulbs. Plant an uneven number of bulbs – five, seven, nine – together if you want to avoid my mistake of single daffodils popping up here and there. I would much rather have clumps of daffodils even if that means having to dig them up and thin them out every so often. I should be so lucky. I made exactly the same mistake with my tulips which should be along shortly to prove to the world that I am nothing if not consistent in applying my peculiar technique.
Ground cover to save time on weeding
When I first planted my present garden, I tried to select plants for ground cover that would keep weeding to a minimum and to choose a variety of plants that would give me some points of interest throughout the year. Because I know so little about plants, it has been a haphazard exercise. There are lots of mistakes in the planting but there are also some unexpected successes. 
Among the successes is the Vinca Minor (pictured) which I saw mentioned in a gardening book and bought as a small shrub. It gives excellent low ground cover and it grew rapidly spreading nicely and doing well as a weed suppressant. The Vinca Minor requires little or no attention. I planted mine in a position where it can trail down a wall spilling from a bed in the main garden down towards a patio about 4 feet below. It disguises the wall beautifully, is evergreen so there is something to look at all year round, and blue flowers appear in April in profusion lasting quite nicely and really bringing colour and life.
Citrus
Meanwhile, indoors, now in its second year, my orange tree is showing the benefit of weekly feeding with citrus plant food as an abundence of white orange blossom appears. I am keeping my (green) fingers crossed that this will lead to lots of fruit later in the year.
I have two citrus plants in the conservatory and they seem quite forgiving of my many mistakes in caring for them. Initially I watered them sparingly thinking that they are native to drier climes than here. I put them in the conservatory where I thought they would like the light and the heat in summer. In fact, I think they like a good dowsing of water and a bit of feeding with a citrus feed and also they don’t seem to like too much strong sunlight. They don’t like too much room in the pot so if you have one and are thinking of potting it on, just go one size up – that’s a tip the garden centre gave me and seems like good advice.
They seem to fruit easily and it’s a pleasure to see the oranges appear but they’re very bitter to taste – perhaps they know the sunshine here is not the sunshine they were meant for!
Alyssum should be easy but isn’t always
Of course, it has not been a year of unqualified successes. The alyssum seed that I planted, and that germinated beautifully, all died when I transplanted them on to pots – too soon – because I needed their tray for the tomatoes.
Still, all in all, it is a satisfactory start and today, on the first sunny day of April, I definitely feel the sap rising and am beginning to wonder where I left the gardening gloves and whether the time might not be right to get back to work.
