MAY 2025

The month of May can often feel like the overture to summer. We’re not quite into the main performance, but this month gives plenty of hints and introductions as to what is to come. The first of the roses have bloomed, indeed ‘Etoile d’Hollande’ is practically through its first flush of blooms. The lupins are just starting to flower, and the leaves of the dahlias are finding their way to the soil surface.

This is also the month where we say goodbye to the tulips as they are removed from the display pots, which are re-potted with summer flowering perennials, tender plants and annuals such as poppies and lobelias. As container plants are disconnected from the wider soil all of their water and nutrition requirements must be provided by the gardener. We therefore use a moisture retentive soil with plenty of ‘squashy’ organic material, place the plants close together to prevent water evaporation from the soil surface, and incorporate a slow release fertiliser when planting to help feed them over the long term.

The old removed tulip bulbs are planted in the wider garden to bulk up, spread and continue flowering in the years to come.

At this time of year we also remove any seedlings in the garden that have become too congested. We find it helpful to allow many plants to seed freely throughout the garden, foxgloves and aquilegias for example. This gives the garden a more natural overall feel, but as anyone who has grown them will know a foxglove produces many hundreds of seeds and could easily turn into a forest. We therefore edit in reverse to maintain the natural feel, but without any plant becoming too overwhelmed or overwhelming. Boo this week thinned through the Honesty seedlings; they are beautifully dainty and useful as dried flowers, but we only need so many and the remainder go to the compost to be recycled into the garden.

As the spring rains arrive and the temperatures warm the lawns need regular cutting. This can be a point of calm in the week as you focus on one task, and at other times a mad dash between rain showers to squeeze in the week’s cut. Some areas are left longer to allow other species within the grass sward to grow and thrive giving food for multiple insects, and to create some slightly more rugged areas. 

The lawn areas around the house are given a more formal and much shorter cut. This year they have also been scarified, where the moss is in essence raked out of the lawn, and then reseeded to create a thicker, denser sward for the year ahead. So there will be plenty of weekly mowing ahead!

May sees the last of this season’s ‘Growing in the Border’ courses. It’s been a great season, and lovely to meet so many people from all from different walks of life, hopefully now with a bit of fire to get planting in the garden.

We start our next main season of courses in September 2025, but before that we have Jantien Powell teaching Sketchbooking in the garden on Sunday 22nd June 2025. So if you’ve artistic leanings or fancy a day enjoying the peace of the garden then do come along, all bookings are through the website www.growingintheborder.co.uk

Finally, for all students of this year’s courses we hold an evening garden get-together in June so you all get the chance to see what your hard work over the autumn, winter and spring has produced. Look out for your invite in the next few weeks, and we look forward to seeing you all!