The Yellow Trumpet

Of Hope and Folly…

The fact that I’m sitting down to write my March garden update on the 27th might tell you something about what kind of month it’s been, as even now I scramble to tie up the loose ends of winter projects. Nevertheless, writing this towards the end of the month gives me the opportunity to reflect on what has been a busy and changeable few weeks. Intermittent beautiful sunshine and heavy downpours were punctuated by a warning shot, fired by winter somewhere around the middle of the month. This gave us a week of beautifully crystalline snowy mornings which thankfully melted away by lunchtime meaning we could get on with regular work. It wasn’t as severe as December’s cold snap but still meant I loaded the dahlia tubers into my car to stow away in my frost-free garage until April. Fool me once, etc.

In preparation for the season ahead we have been taking time to clean, sharpen and service shears, loppers, and mowers, for which we were thankful of a rainy day. The seed order was finally placed and arrived, though I haven’t done anything so extravagant as unpacking it yet. The prevalence of social media in our industry makes it hard not to compare your progress to others’, but in our part of the world sudden drops in temperature and daylight are still possible so I feel ok about a later start. Most of the seeds and dahlias will go into our new cutting garden that is currently in progress, and I can’t wait to see it in full swing. In late February we also trimmed the very large holly hedge that snakes around the flower garden. This isn’t a hedge that has ever been shown a brick line but rather is a hulking, pleasantly amorphous blob; the haircut has given the whole thing a satisfying plump crispness that was sensational in the snow that came a couple of weeks later.

 Whilst sprinting from pillar to post I have taken great pleasure in seeing the first of the daffodils emerging on the estate, as the snowdrops bow out for another year. Particularly sweet are large populations of what appear to be our native daffodil - Narcissus pseudonarcissus - and likely various subspecies and hybrids thereof. Much like our common bluebell this hybridises readily with more vigorous garden cultivars so can vary a lot, but it is generally fairly diminutive with a bright yellow trumpet and slightly rumpled pale yellow petals. By late March and early April the whole parkland will be a cloth of gold and we do hope you’ll visit over the Easter weekend to share in it, but more on that in my next update. In the meantime I’ll sign off with an interesting snippet I came across last week: in Floriography, or the Victorian language of flowers, daffodils are said to represent ‘hope’ and ‘folly’. If that’s not an accurate synopsis of a gardener’s mindset in springtime I don’t know what is.

Kate