We’ve had a dry few days and it has been a bit warmer too so I’ve managed to get quite a bit of tidying done in the garden. I started trying to tidy and weed at the same time so I could get each area looking good but it was taking too long in that a lot of shrubs need pruning now, not in a few weeks when I get round to their patch of the garden. So for the time being I’m concentrating on tidying…

Tidying is doing things like cutting or pulling up all the old leaves and stems on the perennials such as paeonies, geraniums, brunnera or sedums. I haven’t finished yet as I’ve most of the roses to prune still and some clematis, but it does look better, my OH took two big car loads to the tip!

The hellebores in the garden are taking centre stage at the moment, I’ve quite a few now as they do seem to like my soil, I’ve white ones, black one, purple, pink, speckled…but my favourite is the deep pinky red one, I just love the colour…

The pinky red one looks particularly good next to the hebe next to it, it picks out the purple edges on the leaves, This is part of the Amber and Amethyst garden, looking over to the autumn border. It’s looking a lot tidier than it did this morning. I’ve trimmed all the hellebore leaves, so the flowers are much easier to see. I still need to weed and decide how many of those self seeded foxgloves are staying round one of my roses!

The pond area looks much better too, though the snowdrops are past there best now. A few weeks ago we pulled the overgrown flag irises out of the pond, they had just got too big, you couldn’t really see the pond anymore! I’ve still some plants round here that are a bit thuggish which I tried to reduce a bit last autumn, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out this year.

One of the hellebore flowers was accidently chopped off, so I floated it on my mini water feature down by the patio. It reminds me of our holiday in Bali as they used to do this in the hotel we stayed in…

So the garden overall is looking much more looked after, though there’s still an awful lot of work to do over the next few weeks. This is the view from an upstairs window with the patio below, the Amber and Amethyst garden on the left with the autumn bed behind and the lawn, pond and summerhouse on the right. Hopefully the more spring-like weather will continue a little longer.