Everything is growing so quickly at the moment, including the weeds unfortunately, the garden has been sadly neglected over the last few weeks as I’ve been recovering from an operation. Well I’m back to work tomorrow and hopefully I can start gentle gardening at the weekend.

My favourite shrub at the moment is the cream rose in the front garden. It’s an early flowerer and a single flush, but what a glorious flush! It is covered in simple creamy-white blooms at the moment and it smells beautiful too. I think this is called a Scottish rose, it’s very prickly and I’ve never actually pruned it as I’ve never been able to find any information on how to prune these roses. This year however I’ve decided to give it a trim, it’s getting rather big for one thing. As it flowers so early it obviously flowers on last years growth so I’m waiting until it’s flowered and then I’ll give it a good prune, I might even be rewarded with a second flush of flowers! I can give it a feed too with some manure round it’s base.

I have several different irises around the garden, both Dutch ones and the bearded ones, they’re just starting to come into flower. The yellow one is down by the conservatory, this is one of the irises my mum ordered for me from France, so it’s a bit precious. It’s a bit of a muddy yellow but still very pretty. The dark purple one is up in the Amber and Amethyst garden, I love it’s deep velvety colour.

At the top of the garden we have a gate through to the back lane. A few years ago I decided to put an arch over the gate with a clematis Montana. It is known as a mile-a-minute clematis but I had the idea that I would train it along the fences. Well I wasn’t thorough enough with my training and it’s decided to escape up the ash tree instead! It does look stunning this year however the metal arch has completely collapsed, you can see it’s at a 45′ angle and we’re concerned it’s going to bring the branch down. I’ve decided to cut it right back once it’s finished flowering and build a new arch with my son’s help hopefully as it’s not going to be as straightforward as other’s I’ve made. The bit where it stands is on a slant, there’s three steps up to the gate, so I’m going to have to have back legs shorter than front ones, I can’t just make it on the flat and then put the sides and top together.

Another clematis is flowering too, this is a gorgeous purple large flowered one, it’s on a little obelisk in between the autumn bed and the amber and amethyst garden.

The deep bed by the big fence is mainly shrubs, it’s not the most exciting bed but it fills a big area. The purple sambuscus looks lovely but does need bringing under control a bit. There’s a wisteria on the back fence which I need to learn how to prune so it will flower. The pale pink flowering shrub on the right is a daphne, that’s another one that needs pruning after it’s flowered – I think I’m going to be busy! Although it’s a very green border at the moment, there are little pops of colour mingling through it, there’s the purple alliums at the front, a perennial cornflower and some aquilegias too. The peony will be the next to flower, together with the philadelphus at the back, then it will be the turn of the roses…

I’ve always found it a bit tricky choosing plants to go in the border right in front of the conservatory. The soil level is only about 8″ below the sill, so plants can’t be too big or too dense or they’ll block the view and light, they need to look reasonable from both sides too. This spring it’s actually looking pretty good, the shrub in the middle had a bit of a prune earlier in the year as it was blocking my view of the bird feeders! The seedlings on the windowsill are sunflowers waiting to be hardened off and planted out.

The view from the upstairs window does show just how high the clematis has been trying to go! The lilac behind the summerhouse is flowering, though parts of it are getting swamped by a honeysuckle. The mass of pink flowers in the middle is a variegated wiegela. It’s all looking very green!