End of month view for April

Slightly belatedly, here is my end of month view for the coldest, wettest April I can remember!

All the ground in the side garden has filled up with foliage, day lillies, peonies, hardy geraniums, jostling with euphorbia and hellebores, these last still flowering away although the flowers are slowly turning to a pale, creamy green.  The colour here is mainly from tulips.  These are Hermitage, a new favourite.

Out in the field the little orchard is beginning to come into blossom and tiny tulipa linifolia is showing through the lengthening grass.

The apple blossom is in flower.

The peas are out in the vegetable beds.

The new native hedges are thickening up and beginning to deter dogs and small boys from crashing through.

The annual meadow is sown, fenced off from said dogs and small boys, but seems to be growing mainly scruffy bits of grass.  Sigh.

There are bluebells in the hedge bottoms, as always lovelier than anything I can create.

The new crab apple (Red Sentinel) which has replaced the little quince tree which gave up the ghost over the winter is beginning to settle down.

In the kitchen garden I am getting close to admitting that the hellebore might need some rationalisation.  By this I mean that cheerfully letting it self seed might be producing a kitchen garden which grows mainly hellebores,  not the general meaning of the term.