Work for the week

Amidst all the pomp and grandeur of oncoming May some charming bulbs are rising now in spectacular fashion.

Rains which followed the fairly long dry and sometimes cold spring has helped dramatically. In particular I welcome the Alliums (flowering onions) which are easy to grow, so long as you place them in light soil and full sun. My favourites are three in number; the elegant ‘Purple Sensation’ which used to coincide with a fine stately Laburnum now regretfully uprooted by winter gales, the spectacular A. schubertii which follows a little later, and the star performer ‘Christophii’ with mop-sized heads of perfectly star-shaped lilac flowers, each with a little green button at the centre. This latter variety opens its flowers atop long, thin stalks, so that when viewed en-masse the general effect is one of a vast mauve-and-green cobweb, quivering in its own lightness and buoyancy.

LUNGWORT: Several of the earliest-flowering perennials like leopard’s bane (doronicum) and lungworth (pulmonaria) will be coming to the end of their flowering season and it would be good husbandry to give them their annual trim, cutting growth right down to soil level with a shears or secateurs.