Whats Looking Good April 2025

Camellia Nuccio's Pearl still flowering. The petals on the ground show how it helpfully drops the finished flowers - I hate the ones that don't!

Abutilon - it's starting to get a little manky, so I need to take more cuttings, as they are very short lived for such a huge shrub/tree

Cypripediums bought from Jacques Amand last summer. I'm treating them with kid gloves!

Slightly cheating - bletilla that I selected for its colour intensity last year at Farmyard Nurseries. It lives in cold greenhouse but around here they are just about hardy.

 

Hawthorn is flowering


Bluebells

 

Tiny gooseberries

Pulmonaria shrimps on the barbie


Geum Tempo Rose


Choisya ternata


Braeburn apple blossom


Tulips

 

Geranium maderense.


Everything is waking up.

 

Don't they grow up to be VERY large?

It looks wonderful ... I do love a jungle

 

Well I have to grow them in pots as they are not hardy but I have had better ones than this that have reached 3ft with a massive flower head, well worth waiting for as the main plant often dies after flowering, usually about two or three years to flower.

They are strange in that they use the old leaf stalks as a support and are very wobbly if you were to remove them.

Well worth growing in my opinion, especially if you can grow them outside with no worry about frost, as you know minus 5c is not unusual around here on a couple of nights each winter.

 

What a lovely Camellia @CarolineL. They grow well here but wondered if Nuccio’s Pearl would be ok up here in the frozen north!?

 

Cistus - a little plant I got from the half-price section at B&Q last autumn, so first time it's flowered for me. Absolutely smothered in flower buds.


Tulip "Ballerina". I planted these in two batches, the first batch were shorter and paler orange. This later flowering set is much more what I expected. All bought at the same time from Farmer Gracy.

 

Euphorbia griffithi "Dixter"

Trozelia grandiflora, bought as Iochroma grandiflora

Dipelta yunnanensis

Azara serrata

Azara lanceolata
I also have Azara microphylla which has no flowers this year, due to exfoliation by cold winds earlier; fortunately it's leafing up at the moment.
Viburnum chingii


Choisya ternata

Cantua buxifolia

 

@hailbopp I don't see why you couldn't grow that camellia! Its leaves look pretty robust and shiny ie well protected by waxy coating.
@NigelJ your cantua is a couple of days ahead of mine. It lives in the cold greenhouse over winter because even here it died off in the border.

 

Some more pictures from the garden yesterday:
Thyme and common daisy flowers

Crab apple golden hornet flowers

forget me not in the new rhubarb patch

Rowan flowers

Chilean fire bush flowers

bumble bee still enjoying a Hellabore flower


Also posted a video of some of the blooms in the garden yesterday here.
Happy gardening!

 

@Macraignil Like the Chilean firebush, tried it myself about three times and always failed.

 

There are a couple of good examples of mature ones I pass on my drive to work so went out of my way to get some and since I guessed they would be difficult when I found some I got six plants that by natural selection are now down to two. Only the really sheltered ones survived for me but that has also limited their growth to some extent. Not an easy one to grow but they seem worth the effort when they mature and are in full bloom at this time of year.
Happy gardening!

 

@CarolineL Mine spends winter in the cold greenhouse and it needs a bit of a tidy up with the secateurs.
I bought it at a plant sale in Cornwall and it was covered in flowers; it didn't die in my border it just didn't flower so after a three years or so I moved it to a large pot and stuck it in the greenhouse; where it proceeded to flower year round, never a lot of flowers but a continual smatter of flowers.