The Mitcheldean Garden 2023
Early Spring

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2023. Click here for the index.

After two years when Penang was 'off limits', we had both a short autumn visit and a longer winter one. Owing to the way the air fares panned out we had only just over 3 weeks back in the UK between them which put us under a lot of pressure to get the garden first tidied after the old season and then planted up for the season to come. In the end we didn't have much time to spare but when we returned we could see that everything had gone according to plan. This picture actually anticipates the next part, being taken from our stepladder during a sunny morning on 15th April, showing the tulips approaching their peak with the Juneberry in glorious full bloom. Within a week it had started to fade.

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This page covers the garden up till early April 2023. If you think that some of the pictures look familiar that is because we are not in the habit of moving bushes etc around and tend to put plants like hyacinths and tulips in the same place each year.

A mid-February return was earlier than we had planned but in the event it was much milder than average then and only in early March did we wake up to find snow on the ground. Our traditional 'first' camellia just took things in its stride.

I have tried to protect the upper garden from the attentions of visiting deer, they still get in from time to time but they find getting out with me watching over them so stressful that they don't come back too quickly. The front garden is another matter, we are in #33 and while we were away they got in the habit of jumping from the abandoned sheep field behind over the near broken fences into the back of #29 and #31, then using the connecting path and continuing south until they came to somewhere else they could rest up. Originally they were 'a gang of four' juvenile roe deer but now they all have the characteristic white rump and turn up in varying numbers. They make goats look like model citizens and it seems I can do no more than make life difficult for them. It doesn't help that a fair number of residents don't see them as a problem, they tend to be those whose gardens are neglected.

We have crocuses as permanent residents but these ones came with a set of tulips and we correctly guessed that they should be planted together. Despite appearances, all our forsythia bushes are in trouble, infected with galls for which there is no known cure. I suspect that in their natural habitat like northern China, the cold winters kill them off but we no longer get the necessary lows in the UK. 

Each year we carefully deadhead and remove hyacinth bulbs from their flowering position and replant on the 'vegetable patch'. After allowing them to die back naturally we then store them in the garage over the summer. Yuehong likes to buy a few extra new ones for her patio tubs and this means the numbers have grown and grown to over 300.

Our grape hyacinths are permanent residents, like the bluebells we let them decide where they want to grow. These ones are with the azaleas under our silver birch tree. In hindsight we should have planted fewer camellias or at least separated them more. None was more than 30 cm tall when they arrived...

They produce an extraordinary number of glorious blooms over a period of 2-3 months.

There is a pecking order for hyacinths, these ones in the vegetable patch are at the bottom end. By the middle of April, the tub crocuses were long finished flowering and these miniature tulips provided a replacement display.

We have small clumps of several kinds of daffodils spread around the garden. They always do well without ever threatening to run riot. The pink hyacinths 'escaped' some time ago and we have never bothered to remove them as there are so many other bulbs in the bed. Those by the door got planted there this year as we had run out of bedding options. Our #1 magnolia never fails to please as long as there is not a late severe frost but this year's snow did no damage.

Despite being hardy and very attractive, tulips are not an expensive luxury but we choose to dig them up each year which means that they can be planted in rotation. The main display is where our best dahlias will go for the summer, as I write this they are still tucked up safely in the garage, we find supermarket cardboard boxes for fruit and vegetables perfect for the job. The bulk of the tulips here are 'early reds', but watch for that row in the front...

I have been trying for years to get the aubrietia established here and if I can keep the dahlias from squashing them, I may have finally succeeded, next year we shall pop some hyacinths between the two of them. The pieris and amelanchier (Juneberry) add variety.