The magic and romance of the garden in May

Welcome to the month of May at Gaspar Cottage. May in an English garden is a month where so much happens. Every time you turn around there's new growth, new plants, new flowering and it's just magical. It's the very early morning, it's 5.15, 5.20 something like that. The sun is just behind the horizon and the colours are looking amazing. So through this area I try to mix the purples with the oranges which is slightly exciting. This rose is slightly redder purple than I truly intended but it's looking fantastic and since yesterday it's got twice as many flowers open. Yesterday there was going to be one open at the bottom and nothing for the rest of it but it combines beautifully with this Geum totally tangerine which is a very airy plant in a kind of thuggish sort of way. But these combinations, it's a classic, complementary colours. Taking in the sweep of this curved path your eye just can't decide whether it's focusing on the view or the plants and I think at the moment for me it's all about the plants. The cardoon foliage towering in the background. They are the most enormous leaves and provide a wonderful punctuation point in front of the yew hedge as do these alliums and the alliums are definitely multiplying but they look amazing. Notwithstanding the planting your eye is continually drawn to that amazing view. The orchard is the other area that is just stunning. For a true wildflower meadow you're definitely trying to reduce the vigour of the grasses but in May that lush growth is so fantastically welcome. But as you walk up the path and it is taking in all the plants as you go past. So that's the berries on the currants and the hawthorn blossom, the roses, the hostas through this area. You come into the shade of this little group of trees then you come out again into the sun which is still behind the horizon but it's coming and it's going to be a scorcher today. England is having a heat wave that means it's even down here in the country it's been 30 degrees which is lovely but doesn't lead to huge productivity because I just sit in the shade and pant all day. The blossom obviously is now all done on the trees but we do now have the beginnings of a crop of apples. Not quite as big a crop as last year. I was looking at these foxgloves yesterday and there's one which is a single spike and this one I don't know whether it got broken off or whatever but if you look there's a whole mass of stems but it does mean they're not yet flowering so they're going to take over albeit at a lower level from the first monster and then here we can set off down the little path that we keep strimmed through here which is hopefully quite inviting. This little path twists and winds through here and you're certainly this time of day fighting with the cobwebs. I'm being very brave and this little corner is really kind of colonized by basically just the wild flowers and there's a few things in there that we've that we've added. Gradually we're losing the telegraph pole and this area here once you come clear of this rose is quite open at the moment, quite sunny but of course these viburnum opulus are still quite small they're definitely shorter than me and they're going to end up I think as three to four meter shrubs which will completely change the feeding in this area so all of this mass of growth at ground level will will edit and change as the conditions change and then as you emerge back into the orchard itself you can't help but notice the purple of rhododendron just tucked in there at the back and it's taken a number of years for it to get to a scale that is really making much of a difference but we're definitely there now and then you come through this area down to the path and you end up at the pond which right now is looking very clear and rather inviting. Yesterday was very weedy so there is lots of weed I have got ducks I don't want ducks on my pond and there's this area of you know the wildflowers with various added extras along the banks. One of the more unusual things that we do here are the positions of our peonies so this peony which is about to erupt into flower I must be cosseting it not a bit if I just step back you'll see it's right at the edge of the drive in just a patch of wild grass it gets virtually no attention but it is very very happy there and then on the little fence there I'm trying to colonize these roses along here which is starting to really work coming into the studio garden is just a a feast for the eyes these two shrubs here so kolkowitza I think it's called I'll put the name in the video it's in full flower and and it's quite a kind of wall of foliage which I quite like I quite like hiding the studio a little bit but as you come round you have the little ornamental pond obviously there's a bench obviously there's a bench which the idea is it invites you around to this side of the pond you can enjoy the glory of these hostas which it's interesting as you see the blue ones are a lot less munched than the white edged ones who knew as you sit on the bench and turn a look one of the things that is in the design here yes you've got the sculpture but there's a kind of a gap in the planting through there so if I stand I think you can see it more you've got the clumps the cardoons but in between I try to keep it just that little bit lower so you see the view through the planting and you've got all the different textures here with the grasses and all the ground cover so this area of planting is now uh nine years old something like that did it in 2017 this started and there's a real sense of richness and maturity and everything jostling for space which is just what I like in a garden like everyone everyone making friends with their neighbors and when you come around the other side of that same bed and you start to look at the the newer area plantings this is in his second year so you know the shrubs and trees are are still fairly wee and at first glance it looks like very much the same same kind of thing but when you come in and then you look down you know suddenly you've got bare ground and space and there just isn't yet quite the same intensity of the perennial growth as we have in the more mature area not to say it's not lovely and a few splashes of poppy back there left from left from last year and as you come to this bench it's all about the benches in my garden really firstly you cannot help but look at these irises and all their magnificence with the lupins behind it's a very very dramatic combination more of the lupins and then again here i'm keeping this planting low so that you get the view firstly down towards the bog garden which at the moment is just a mass of oxeye daisies and over the railway and out to the view and the sun is just peeking over the horizon as they're probably going to get a flare on the video but who cares it's worth it up by the terrace and the privy it's a real sense of lush growth now around the pergola as you come around yes you admire my new adirondack chair which was quite fun putting together because there weren't any instructions so but as you look at this curveball i'm going to look at it from the front normally i walk up a little path in the middle but i just want to give that sense of the colour combinations and everything going on in here so my smoke bush being smoky there which brings in an interesting kind of apricotty orangey colour which against the mose is really rather lovely and very reminiscent of this little calendula that we've got in there and here the the punctuation at the end there is a giant dolphinium which every year is just hugely tall absolutely magnificent but then you are invited to come and explore the front garden so the sun has now come above the horizon but the front garden is still in that kind of pre-dawn gleam obviously being on the south side of the house hasn't yet got the sun on it later in the day this is in full sun but right now it's just this magical wonderland which i shall take you through ducking past the rose which you know you must always stop and smell roses but it's glorious and there's a very lovely section just to the left of the path here with the alliums and the verbascums some dolphiniums drains false gloves sweet rocket what else is going on gladioli yeah look at this gladioli this is not in the dame edna ever account this is very elegant and tasteful so this is gladiolus communis subspecies byzantium i think it's called i'll check it out i'll add it but right now is the moment when the rose over the front door flowers so this is the second half of the front garden the other side of the front door with a bay window which is rather a lovely thing but past the bay window you've now got this shrub which is a form of deets yeah i don't know how you pronounce that and i will admit that for much of the year it's pretty boring but that makes up for it look at what it's doing and they're just little pom-poms and the flowers are this very very delicate movie pink they are stunning but as i'm here the sun is now inviting me around the corner so let's just have one last gleam of sun and enjoy hopefully a shot of beautifully backlit foliage you