what's looking good in april 2012

It has to be the 'good stuff', Armandii. I tried several varieties which had no effect, then bought a small pot of catmint and left it in the hall in a plastic bag while I made a cuppa. By the time I remembered my plant, the cat had already discovered it and had got hopelessly tangled up in the bag while trying to get a fix!!! When I planted it out in the garden, I would often find him stripping the stems and licking the juice . One day,after a particularly heavy session, he was flopped out in the flowers when a bird more or less flew into him. He hardly stirred. 'Nah', he thought, 'I'm just hallucinating.'

 

Maybe it varies from cat to cat , but I found that 'Six Hills Giant', which is often sold at garden centres because it is showy, had no effect at all. Nepeta faassenii didn't seem to do the trick either. Plain, unimproved Nepeta cataria is the one to go for - or, at least, that's what did it for my cat.

 

I am amazed how rich your gardens look already. Mine is coming to life, slowly.

Prunus tomentosa (nanking cherry). Flowers for the first time:





I didn't take the base of the tree, because this bed performs best on rose cuttings and is just covered with bottle tops.

 

Some scattered bloom of primulas, violettes, lamiums, chionodoxa, bellis...

 

A hydrangea leaf of last year...


And a tulip taken against its background...

 

Lewisia cotyledon is going to reward me with flowers soon:


And probably this tree peony:


So will variegated arabis ferdinandi

 

And the sedums and sempervivums group has enriched and looks compact at this time of year:

 

Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn' is performing better this year (as compared to the two flowers it had the previous season).

 

Here's a white Snakeshead Fritillary yesterday; the second picture is of the inside, what you don't usually see..




j