We are almost a week into March and it is time to sum up the highlights of gardening in February. We like this time of year a lot and it is probably because there is so much promise in nature now. Thousands of buds are ready to burst open, the pond is full of frogspawn and the daffodils look very cheerful and bright.
This is a time to reflect on all the beauty and power in nature, before everything explodes into a frenzy of colour and activity. We are spending as much time as possible in the garden, clearing away dead stalks, cutting back shrubs, removing brambles and pulling up couch grass. Some plants just tend to take over if left to their own devises and it is good to tackle them early in the year, when the ground is damp and they are easier to remove. Big parts of our garden are left for wild life to enjoy, as well as ourselves and if this spring clearing gets done in good time, it is very easy to look after these parts for the rest of the year.
Before
After
We spent some time this morning cutting back the lemon-balm, sage, oregano, lavender, French tarragon and rosemary in the herb garden. We were happy to discover that now in their third year, these herbs have grown big enough to compete with less wanted plants so there was very little weeding to do.
One of our ponds is full of frogspawn and we are looking forward to all of the little baby frogs that will grow up and hopefully decimate our slug population. In our bigger wildlife pond we had a couple of hundred smooth newts last year, but we have only seen one of them so far this year.
In our main circle not much is happening yet and we have spent some time weeding and tidying up all around this area. The lungwort has started flowering and will be very useful for any early bumblebees that might visit our garden this month. We cleared some blanket weed out of the pond and put it on the artichoke bed. It is easy to garden organically as there is always somewhere to put everything, maybe on the compost heap or maybe straight on the soil as a mulch.
East
South
West
North
As we said earlier we are very thankful to be able to spend time in the garden this time of year, when so much is getting ready to burst into growth. We hope you have a garden too and some time to spend in it. Gardening is really a great way to exercise and calm the mind at the same time, getting away from the stresses that are sometimes part of everyday life and just focus on something beautiful and alive. Hope you enjoy these pictures of some plants that are flowering right now in our garden.
thegreenerdream 