The White Garden in Spring

Hello and welcome back to the garden and I thought I'd start today's video here in the white garden. It's spring and the daffodils have just started to flower in the last couple of days. Now the white garden is one small area which I'm developing which is part of the quarry. This is the top of the quarry. You would never think it looking around that it resembles a quarry at all but it actually is. It's a small area that we've probably sectioned off with hedges to make it more of a confined space and last year I changed all of this middle section to make it feel more like a courtyard and I'm getting there. I did lose quite a few of the plants that I had added previously a couple of years ago around all of the edges, all of the path edges because the paths were changed, the positions were changed so I actually lost quite a few. So I'm now in the process of adding them back but the first thing that I'm doing today is digging up and moving around some of the perennials that I use in this white garden border and the first one is this Selenium denudatum, very much a mouthful but it's commonly known as the Baltic parsley and I love these particular types of plants. This is an umbelifer, it's a little bit like army major that a lot of people grow as an annual which I have grown for the first time this year and I'm going to add it in and around all of these alliums running all the way through the middle of this border of white alliums, Allium mont blanc and like all alliums the leaves will eventually in about a month's time die back. At the moment they're very greyish green colour, they're very pretty, look lovely and fresh but they'll eventually just die back and go brown and bedraggled so you do need to add something to hide them and what I like to do is is grow these umbelifers and as I mentioned this is the Baltic parsley, we'll use the common name for it and in about two months time it'll have grown to about four feet in height and about two to three feet in width diameter. It's perfectly hardy, it flowers late spring, very late spring, early summer and it'll go on flowering for quite a long time if you keep deadheading the flowers. The flowers remind me very much of a, well they're very much like a cow parsley that we have here that grow in the verges here in the British countryside but they are also very similar to an Achillea, they're flat on the top and pollinators and bees do love them. They're greyish, greeny grey, white, very pretty, also very much like the annual Ami Major which I've grown for the first time this year. So I already have them right through here and every year I dig them up, split them and spread them around even further. But let me add an image to the screen of what they look like last year so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. So if you like architectural, informal planting you'll also like this other umbelifer that I'm adding. Now this is Selenum Wallachianum, another mouthful of a plant but this one is commonly known as the milk parsley and it does look very similar at this point to the Baltic parsley. Lovely fern-like leaves, this one flowers later in the summer. For me it starts flowering around about August time and it grows anything up to six feet in height, one for the back of the border and width wise is about two to three feet max, probably not as much as that actually, two feet say. Beautiful plant, lovely white, star-like flowers. If you like the prairie style of planting this is definitely one for you. Again I'll add something to the screen now so you can see what it looked like last year. So the next plant that I'm adding is a Geranium. This is Geranium Sylvaticum Album. Now some people say that it is native here to the UK but I think it's pretty much native to Europe. I could be wrong on that, I'm sure someone in the comments will let me know, but apparently it has grown quite readily here in the north of the UK and it's pretty much a geranium that grows on the edges of woodland. So I think it will suit this garden with it having a lot of trees around. Now last year I had planted in here Iberius Masterpiece and it was beautiful, it flowered fabulous and it's just not come back this year and when I've dug around here I've got bits of root so it's obviously been just too wet for it here. So I'm hoping that these geraniums which like more of a moist condition, a moist soil, they'll grow in center partial shade again which is ideal for my garden. I'm hoping that this will be a better alternative. That's last of the geraniums added. Size-wise they grow to about 60 centimeters which is about two feet. Width-wise approximately 30 centimeters a foot in width and apparently, so I've read, they have one of the purest white flowers of a geranium. We'll see if that's true in a few months time. But what I didn't get done is in the autumn time I didn't get to add any of the Thalia daffodils either side of this part of the path. I just ran out and I couldn't get any more. So everywhere else the daffodils are Thalia, that's my favorite and I'll give you a close-up of those in a moment. But what I decided to do was is to add some of these Violas. Now this is just a regular white Viola. I'm going to treat this as an annual. Next year there'll be daffodils all around here but for this year I wanted a bit of white color so I'm going to add these in between all of the geraniums that I've just added. I think it'll look really pretty and I do have them grown in a pot just behind me. That's the last of the Violas added and depending on how big these geraniums grow this year I may put another annual in later on in the summer. We'll see, we'll see how these do as it's their first year. In case you're wondering what all of this greenery is, this is what's left of the snowdrops that I added about six weeks ago now. I'm obviously leaving all of this foliage to die back to feed the bulbs for next year. And all of these upside down hanging basket frames that cover the emerging perennials so the pheasants don't peck away at them and I don't lose them. Now the last plant that I'm adding here today in the white garden are lupins. Now this is no ordinary lupin, this is a West Country lupin and it's been bred by the West Country Nurseries. I think they're based down in Devon and I do believe they hold a national collection here in the UK of lupins. I could be wrong on that but I'm pretty sure that's what I've read. But these lupins have been bred with latest technology by the leading lupin experts here in the UK and they're bred to be very strong, lovely bushy, intense colour spiked lupins and I think they're pretty famous for the bi-colour, the two-toned lupins too. This one is Polar Princess. Now this one is a white one, obviously a white garden, a white lupin and they've been on my wish list for a while. I and the requirements for them are sun to partial shade, so this should be a good spot. They like moist soil but they don't like to be waterlogged, they wouldn't like that. Moist but pre-draining too. Sometimes that sounds like a contradiction. But the flower spikes are approximately 100 centimetres, about three feet in height, very strong, don't need staking at all. That's the beauty of these lupins. These Polar Princess have ice cool white flowers so I'm really looking forward to those here in the white garden and they'll flower early summer. And did I mention they're a hardy perennial too? Now these lupins are Chelsea award-winning lupins too, so I'm very hopeful that they'll win an award from me in the white garden. So I've got a few more to add and while I do that, I did manage to film a few sequences earlier on in the week, just after Easter, of the daffodils flowering here in the rest of the quarry garden. So I'll play that now and I'll bring you back as soon as I finish these. Why is it that weeds always grow in the most inaccessible position in the garden? But that's it for today. I've done quite a bit and I'm quite pleased with how it's gone but very much more to come over the coming months. So thanks for watching and thanks to anyone that's newly subscribed here following the white garden videos. Next time I'll probably be in the quarry garden but thanks for watching and I'll see you soon.