Plants have grown visibly in the few days I've been away, or out. Some of the shrub roses have reached heights I've never seen before, and are rising far above their rusted metal supports and flopping out over the lawn. Everything looks green and lush in a way that it doesn't always, in Essex, and much bigger than I am accustomed to thinking of it. Unfortunately the weeds have grown as well. The horsetail was an inevitability, since the roots are lurking through great stretches of the back garden, and nothing I can do will ever get rid of them. I'd hoped to be without the several species of grass infesting some of the beds, but they are returning in the absence of a spring mulch, and the priority now is to get them out before they seed this year.
The weather has been good for flowers as well as weeds. In the front garden, two patches of tall bearded iris that I replanted in enriched soil have thrown up a forest of flower stalks, one deep purple and the other a subtle thing in subdued shades of cream that might possibly be 'Lady Mohr', but I'm not at all sure about that. The rhizomatous iris need regular division and replanting of the best bits in refreshed soil, otherwise they stop flowering, or at least they do on our miserable light sand. In the course of replanting they tend to migrate around the borders, to accommodate the growth of shrubs and other inhabitants of the bed since the last time they were dug up. All in all it makes it difficult to keep a label attached to each patch, and by now I don't know what many of ours are, though I know that most of the bearded iris came originally from Kelways. I was pleased to see that I had managed not to muddle up the purple and cream varieties, since adjacent patches sometimes grow into each other, and out of flower it is not at all obvious which rhizomes belong to which group.
In the back garden a large, fat clump of foxgloves have opened white and not the common purple, which is lucky as white ones look better in that spot. A self sown wild campion in the dark corner by the new deck has opened white too, so it is Silene latifolia and not the closely related Silene dioica. Again, that is extremely good of it, since I wanted white campions in the garden, and if it sets seed I can save some and have a go at raising plants of local provenance. There is lots of white campion in the verges of the lanes, but generally those seem to get mown before it's time to collect seed. I noticed a Verbascum phoeniceum in a rather nice shade of pink instead of the usual dark purple, and thought it would be worth saving the seed from that as well, if I get round to it. I need to scoot around with some raffia and mark the stems of the flowers I want to harvest seed from, otherwise I'll forget which they are before it's finished ripening.
The Robinia hispida is just opening. This is a member of the pea family, with brown bristly stems (hispida means hairy or bristly, so crops up in several plant names, and that of a viper) and bright pink flowers. It is fast growing, with brittle stems, and often grown as a wall shrub to give it some protection. Mine is free standing, and makes a sprawling, open shrub. Pieces regularly break off it, but then they do off the boss's wall-grown one at work. At the moment a couple of stems are tied to wooden stakes to stop them falling out over the lawn, but that is not very elegant, and I must either find them some smart iron stakes or cut them off.
The roses are opening gradually. A couple of the old and shrub roses have come out in the past few days, but the main display is still to come. I think that is later than some years, since I remember we gave a party in mid June a few years ago, and the first flush was already past its best, but I'm not entirely sure, and it goes to show that I ought to keep better records. I don't, though. It isn't as if there is anything I can do about it. 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' will flower when it's good and ready, there'll be one intense burst of flowering only, and that will be that, no repeats. Whether it starts by the first weekend of June, or not until the second one, is outwith my control.
Faced with the burgeoning growth of weeds on almost every side, I decided to start on the island bed in the back garden. I have a couple of Cistus, a Phygelius (that's been sitting in the greenhouse since last year) and the third (and final. If this one doesn't take I'm giving up) Romneya coulteri waiting to go into that bed, and now is a good time to buy more herbaceous fillers if I need them to cover the soil (I have my eye on a very nice pale yellow Hemerocallis called 'Whichford'), so I might as well get the bed planted up and mulched, after dosing it with hefty allocations of mushroom compost, given I have to start somewhere.
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