mid-April 2018

I went to the South Downs one day last week and saw primroses in the wild.

I've never seen these horsetail in person before - very unusual - prehistoric-looking.

Back in my garden, parrot tulips are my favourite and this Professor Rontgen also has a fantastic scent

I haven't tried these Princess Irene tulips before but I think they are exquisite with that glaucous sheen.

these species tulips (Little Beauty and Little Princess) are usually in bloom earlier but they are overlapping with those latter ones above, I guess because of the crazy wearher we've had

I especially like what's growing on the bottom shelf

my chives have fat flower buds

this is the year of honesty, it seems to be doing so well, maybe it's benefitted from the cold weather? I have them all over the back garden and these are in the front garden next door I look after

these are in the garden next door to that which I helped with a few years ago now and shared honesty plants - they've self-seeded very successfully

in the back garden next door which I help look after

also in the back garden next door

at the end of the my garden where it's pretty shady

in the main flowerbed at the front of the garden

in the middle of the garden

in the shade

regular readers of my blog will know I love buds, almost as much as the resulting flowers, the honesty inflorescence (I hope I'm using that word correctly)

the snakeshead fritilary doesn't seem to have suffered with the freezing weather

the weather so far this year has been crazy; the auriculas were looking very poorly but at least a few have buds; 1 of the 4 auricula plants I bought last year appears to have died but the other 3 don't look very good, I don't think they'll bloom this year

I wasn't sure these hyacinths were ever going to bloom after thawing and refreezing at least twice but they are finally blooming and overlapping with tulips - crazy

Since at least 2013 I've been trying to grow corn poppies from seed for the centenary of World War I but they proved to be extremely difficult to grow from seed so when I saw these in the "wildflower" range at the garden centre I bought some.

They do seem very crowded in the pots but as the label said they don't like root disturbance I decided to just plant them as they were.

my rhubarb is unexpectedly flowering, I only bought them last year and I read they flower when they are older

I'm going to leave it to flower as I'm quite curious to see what it looks like and if bees like the flowers