It was the Harrogate Spring Flower Show last week, an annual pilgrimage for my friend and I, we always have a great day out, mooching round the stalls and ending up with more bags than we can carry! Friday’s visit was no exception 🙂

I can’t resist a pretty aquilegia…or two! Erysimums (perennial wall flowers) are a favourite too, I like the standard purple ones which flower their socks off nearly all year, but I love the ones with two colour flowers, this time I bought one that’s a lovely rich amber and red/purple, and another that is a more pastel version. I usually fall for a clematis or two as well, I’m hoping my purchases this year will have nice big flowers on.

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day so I started weeding round the pond area ready to start planting some of my purchases. Everything is growing madly at the moment, including the weeds! I had some seriously big buttercups to dig out and there’s spots of yellow all over the garden where the dandelions are appearing.

The pond area is looking lovely at the moment, the irises and the hosta leaves are starting to appear, there’s a pretty clump of erythronium pagodas, they always look so delicate. There’s also a few primulas in flower, I bought a couple of candelabra primulas at the show so I’ve planted those next to Hubert the Heron. Soloman’s Seal seems to appear from no where every year, it’s just starting to flower. I’ve got three brunnera plants in the garden (the one with little blue flowers) they all flower at slightly different times. This ones always the first to flower, it’s been out a few weeks now, whereas Jack Frost down near the house has barely started to flower, clearly position is everything!

The azalea at the front of the bed is another of my show buys, the flowers are a gorgeous coral pink, I planted one of the wall flowers and a pretty lavender and white aquilega next to it. I’ve had a bit of a clear out in the area next to the summerhouse, removing a couple of shrubs that were either not doing much or dead! I’ve got a camelia to go in there and I’ll probably fill the gaps with a couple more hostas. We must have quite a few toads and frogs around the pond as the hostas seem to escape major slug damage in this bed.

Our drive is greening up nicely, I’ve just today discovered why my golden philadelphus has never flowered…I’ve never pruned it! I love the leaves and it’s never got too big, so I left it, but apparently it needs pruning straight after flowering (I’ll have to pretend on that one!) to give the growth for next years flowers.

At the bottom of the drive we’ve got a Korean Fir, I keep threatening that one year when it gets too big it will be our Christmas tree, in the meantime, I enjoy the bright purple fir cones.

I’ve pretty much come to a halt with the house decorating so hopefully I’ll have more time and energy to sort the garden out…of course wintery showers are forecast this week! I finish with a photo of the blue camassias next to the conservatory. I’ve got several clumps of these around the garden and they always put on a good show.