My English Garden in Spring - April 2020

Good morning and welcome to Paul T's World. In this video we're going to have a look around my English garden in the northwest of England in early April. It's sunny, the temperature's about 14 degrees centigrade. Very pleasant spring day. We'll start in the back garden where my pond is. It's a wildlife pond. I've got newts in there, all sorts of insects, water boatmen, pond skaters. I've planted up the pond with native British species. At the moment we've got the marsh marigolds in flower. Some of the irises and rushes are just starting to grow as we can see here. I'm putting on screen the Latin name of these plants so that people from around the world can identify them easily because common names are different in different countries. I've planted two pear trees. This one is a conference dessert. Looks like there will be a good crop this year. Ah, what have we got here? It's a butterfly. Yep, a peacock butterfly. There are a number of butterflies now in the garden. This particular one and I'm sure the others will have overwintered. Hopefully in my shed or maybe the log pile. Its wings aren't perfect. It's spent the whole winter hibernating. The pear tree is in full blossom. Hopefully there'll be plenty of insects about to pollinate the two pear trees and then behind the pear tree is this plum tree. Now one of the shrubs I like in my garden is the spirea. This is a spirea bridal wreath. I planted it about two years ago. It's still quite small and hopefully will grow to about five or six feet high. Let's follow the peacock butterfly around the garden and he's alighted on the honesty. The honesty self-seeds in this little patch of the garden which I call the woodland patch. It's only quite small but it's my little woodland. We've got a climbing hydrangea growing up the shed. Various British plants in this little woodland. I've got lily of the valley, primroses, honesty, foxgloves. I've got some logs, a log pile at the back of this area. I put leaf mould on each year and in the middle of this little patch is a tree which is a white beam. We'll be looking at that in later months as it flowers beautifully. And we have the first of the orange tip butterflies. I've got some tree stumps that I bought for the wildlife. In amongst here we can see some London, some lily of the valley, some foxgloves and of course the primroses. This butterfly is giving us a nice tour around the pollinating plants. Here in the foreground these are foxgloves. On the left hand side there's an epimedium and this is a little sandstone wall that I built a few years ago for the wildlife. Some vegetation's growing up it. Not quite sure what the name of this plant is but the butterfly seems to like it. Hopefully, well the reason I built the wall was for the newts to hibernate. The newts leave the pond normally about August or most of them do and spend the rest of the year until the following March actually on dry land. At the base of the old apple tree I've got some daffodils. As you can see they're past their best. I'll probably dead head them in another week and then leave the goodness to go back into the bulbs for the following six weeks. I've got a nest box that the blue tits nest in each year. Rhubarb grows quite well although it's not really wet enough here for the rhubarb. It tends to sag later on in the year but at this time of the year it's ready for pulling. This is a dunnock, one of my favourite birds. He's in my hawthorn tree. One of the best singers of the British birds. Moving through to the front garden I've I planted all probably about 10 or 12 years ago this June berry tree. I bought this because it looks so magnificent in spring and also in the autumn all the leaves turn red. Beautiful. This is my second magnolia. It's the stellata followed by a rhododendron and a pyrrhus in the background. These are all ericaceous plants which enjoy my garden which is slightly acidic as I'm on sandstone. This is quite an interesting tree, a corkscrew hazel tree. The rhododendrons do quite well in my garden. I'm not really that keen on them because they're not a native British plant as many of them aren't in fact. The leaves are waxy and are not useful to British insects however this bumblebee quite enjoys the nectar. Behind the flowering currant is a forsythia. Nice little yellow flowers, one of the earliest to flower in Britain. You'll see along all the hedgerows and gardens in Britain it flowering away at this time of the year. The old large camellia in the background is still flowering, past its best. Again an ericaceous plant. Some penstemon there in the right waiting to flower. I have a lavender hedge alongside my path. It drops the seeds in the path and many of these germinate so I pot them up and have plenty of free lavender every year. This is the first azalea to flower, also an ericaceous plant, does well in the garden. And here's the sandstone wall I had built. This choisea just behind in the middle here is not quite so happy, it's not a sunny position for it. But the berberis behind, this berberis darwinii, is doing well so I want this to grow up about five, six, seven feet high. Quite a common shrub grown in Britain. As is the orbrecia here, rockery plant growing over another sandstone wall. Starting to grow over the wall is a candy tuft. I really like this plant because it's so vigorous. Flowers like crazy every year. Easy to transplant, easy to propagate, so I've got them all over the place. I have a number of these flowering currants around the garden. They flower really early, one of the earliest to flower. And of course another pyrrhus, probably a forest flame that one. And here we are, back at the pond, in the back garden. I hope you've enjoyed the little tour of my English garden. 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