more weeding, more flowers

I spent today in the back garden, weeding, before the ground gets too dry to stick a trowel in, and acutely aware of how far behind I am with normal maintenance after losing so many working days to the snow and the cold.  We went to get another 20 bags of mushroom compost earlier in the week, and I've already used 6 bags of it, teasing it carefully around the primulas then romping across the blank spaces between shrubs.  The Pittosporum tobira has definitely had it, stone dead after the cold weather, another set of roots to pickaxe out.  I should mention one impressive survivor, a narrow leafed form of common bay that I got from the Architectural Plants nursery.  Many of our customers at work have sad stories of bay cut to the ground, but this one is looking only slightly burnt in a few places.  It makes a tall, narrow shrub, and is a fine plant.  The Architectural Plants catalogue said it was hardier than the usual bay, and I once tried to interest the boss at work in stocking it, but he didn't sound impressed.  I try to clip mine to a neat cone, which would be easier if it weren't planted on a steepish slope surrounded by other shrubs.

There are plenty of flowers to look at while weeding, apart from the primulas.  Osmanthus delavayi is just opening.  This is a lovely, slow growing evergreen shrub, with small, matt, dark green leaves, and small scented white flowers.  Left unclipped it will form quite an open bush, and I've seen it in woodland gardens in light shade from the surrounding trees, but in full sun and clipped over after flowering it forms a dense bush.  I've got it at the corner of a bed, an idea I'm pretty sure I copied from one of Christopher Lloyd's books.  There is a hybrid with larger leaves which is more vigorous, Osmanthus x burkwoodii, but O. delavayi is more elegant.  Good things are worth waiting for.

Among the polyanthus, and in the same rich pink part of the colour spectrum, is the pink form of Japanese quince that used to be called 'Appleblossom' and is now properly 'Moerloosei'.  It flowers late, for a Chaenomeles.  My shrub suffers from something knawing its bark in the winter months, I suspect voles or other small rodents, but has survived.  It has lost some vigour in the past couple of years, and I feel it will appreciate some nice mushroom compost, topped off with a dusting of fish, blood and bone.

The double gean is opening, Prunus avium 'Plena'.  This is always some days behind the single form in flowering, and will eventually make a huge tree, though not in my time.  In front of it is Exochorda x macrantha 'The Bride', which is well named.  As you would expect it has white flowers, looking very fresh against mid green leaves, but in addition it has a train-like habit, as the branches sweep downwards and cascade out across the ground.  I have learnt from experience that it requires its own space.  If any other shrub is allowed to grow into it the Exochorda will respond by developing a dead, bald spot, which takes a while to grow out when the interloper is tidied back within bounds.  Slightly squeezed into a space at the back of the bed, Exochorda serratifolia is making surprisingly good growth, given it is supposed to require full sun, but is on the north side of a tall hedge with other shrubs around.  That also has white flowers, held in more vertical sprays than 'The Bride', which I bought because I liked it so much, without proper thought as to where I could put it (a bad habit I have partly learnt to curb).  It ended up in a sort of gap where I wanted to thicken up the planting between us and the neighbours.  This seems a cavalier use for a fine shrub, but it has fighting spirit and is coping so far.