Welcome to April – Pink & White Arabis (great plants for the rock garden)

After being away in Vancouver for a few days and returning to Fintry I was  so amazed how much the garden had progressed.  In just a matter of a few days my tulips are blooming plus a lone daffodil, many of the rockery plants are in bloom, or are about to bloom, and buds are turning to leaves on some of my shrubs and bushes.  I guess with the stretch of sunny days it brought everything on.

One of my favourite plants, Anemone Pulsatilla is also partly in flower and I am always intrigued by the silver feathery foliage.

While down in Vancouver of course I was enamoured by the cherry and magnolia blossoms while we walked along Ambleside;  such a cheery site to see.  

On my brief stop in Kamloops, I discovered a patch of drumstick primula (primula denticulata) with their distinctive ball of flowers.   I find these plants in a group are very eye-catching and I will locate them in the nurseries here so that I can have them in a shady area in my garden.

Meanwhile in the greenhouse the seeds are really coming along well.  I have just potted up (2nd time) a variety of tomato seedlings.  We will certainly have a good selection this year from the cherry type to the larger beefsteak variety.  A second batch of lettuce seedlings have been transferred to the vegetable garden.  My husband very kindly made up a cold frame while I was away and had also worked in some compost to give the vegetable garden a good foundation.  The sweet pea seedlings have survived too despite the cold temperatures we had on occasion in March.  

I have started too to work on making up my hanging baskets although it will be a few weeks yet before I will be able to get the trailing stuffers from the Greenery.  However, the geraniums I wintered over are looking really healthy.  I did manage to pick up some annuals at Costco, although I was surprised at the amount of annuals they were selling as it is still very early days for planting them out.  My favourite of course is the osteospermum which I use in both my baskets and containers.  These of course are all safely tucked away in the greenhouse.  

Enough waffling on…thanks for reading my post..