May the 11th.

The past week brought a real mix of weather, grey days and haars, sunshine and showers. Despite the occasional days where sea mists rolled in and stole the view, most days brought warmth and light winds. A fleece and tee shirt week.

The garden is growing at a pace now, first light is around 4.30 with dusk at 10pm. The milder days, combined with the long hours of daylight, are bringing a rush of growth and colour to the garden. 

Catmints and camassias have come into flower, the former, brought up from our south facing and free draining garden in Yorkshire, shouldn’t really like our cool summers and wet winters but plants don’t read gardening books and so far, five years in, they are thriving. Of the varieties we grow, ‘six hills giant’ and ‘walkers low’, are favourites. The cammassias are plants of North America, natives of damp meadows, for here they’re plant and forget bulbs that do well in our soil and climate.

Pheasants eye daffodils have opened this week. Also known as the poet’s Narcissi, pheasants eye is the daffodil of Greek legend, associated with Narcissus who was said to have turned into a flower ‘white of petal and red of cup’. Along with a variety called stint, that we are trying in a front garden, pheasants eye are the last to flower here, in some years lasting until early June. As some daffodils are opening, others are being dead headed, early flowering  ‘tete-a-tete’, and follow on thalia, are both finished for the year. Their foliage, if not already lost amongst thickening clumps of perennials, is bent over and discreetly tucked beneath the soil.

Beneath the Red alders that give the rear garden shelter from worst of the winds that swing in off the moor, wild garlic are flowering. Cadged from the garden of a friend they are slowly but surely spreading. Also growing well are seedlings of sycamore that have spun in from two nearby trees. In the garden they are a pain, growing as thick as grass, hoed off or pulled out on sight, but in the shelter belt, for the moment, we’ll leave them be. The alders have a lifespan of 60 or 70 years, the sycamores 200 or more. In time we’ll thin the young sycamores out, leaving the best to grow on. Decades from now they’ll replace the alders that shelter them.

In a shady spot, hostas are pushing up broad spears of growth. In Yorkshire they were slug magnets, more lace curtain than plant, up here they grow pretty much untouched. We put it down to dressings of seaweed compost, perhaps there’s a slight seawater saltiness that acts as deterrent, or perhaps it’s just luck.

Another shade lover that has come into its own this week is solomon’s seal. A woodland plant of arching stems that gets its name from round indents on the rhizomes that are said to look as if a wax seal has been pushed into them. A plant we grow more for its foliage than flowers. Unless you get down to ground level, the flowers are easy to overlook, green tipped creamy white bells that hang from thin pedicels just below the stems.