It’s been a bit milder over the last few days in Yorkshire and I’ve managed to get out in the garden to start a desperately needed tidy up. I was well wrapped up but it was really quite pleasant outside, I even managed my first cup of coffee of the year sitting in my arbour!

Several snowdrops have appeared this week, mine are really tiny and ideally need to clump up a bit, but they do look sweet. The camellia by the arbour has it’s first flower of many, it’s a lovely carmine pink colour.

I tidied up the lower garden by the arbour, one advantage of having a garden divided into several distinct areas is that you can easily get a sense of achievement from a couple of hours work as the photo from’before’….                …and ‘after’ show.

My pots needed rearranging so the plants that are about to look good, such as a corkscrew hazel and pots of bulbs, are brought to the fore. Plants which really haven’t decided yet if they have survived the winter are sent to the back! This area of pots was one of my more inspired decisions. When I was cutting up the turf to make the beds this area was solid clay, now I’m used to gardening in heavy clay but this wasn’t just brown clay, it was silver clay, suggestions came to dig it out, make a pond…I decided to level it, cover it in membrane, bags of pebbles and then lots of pots. It’s been brilliant, I start shrubs off here, give them a bit of a start before they have to face my clay soil, I have tree lilies, acers,  blueberries, as well as perennials. I even have a water feature in the middle.

I’ve pruned the summer flowering clematis on the arch and the obelisk as they were just starting to shoot. I noticed whilst mooching round the garden that the viburnum is just starting to flower, it’s buds are a lovely pale pink before opening into tiny white flowers.