Celebrate Spring

China Central Television has produced a short video showing the plant experiments growing on the Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou-16 crew has been in orbit for almost three months, and says their space vegetable garden has given a good lettuce harvest.

Spring is a busy time for gardeners, with seeds to be sown, digging and planting to be done, and the first weeds making an appearance. Green manures may not be the first things that you think of to sow, but there are many green manures that are ideal for spring sowing and bring many benefits to your garden.

Cornish hedges are an exuberant delight. I visited in April a few years back, and every lane was awash with alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum). This year, in May, they put on a stunning display that would put a Chelsea show garden to shame.

Lauren Alex O’ Hagan, Cardiff University

The fashion world used to work so far in advance that if you wanted a new swimming costume for your summer holiday, you would have to buy it in the spring. By August, swimming costumes were nowhere to be seen, and it was time to buy your winter coat. Things have changed with the rise in long-haul holidays; it’s always summer somewhere in the world, and you can buy clothes of all types year-round.

One of the great joys of spring is seeing trees leaf out and bloom. They bring so much joy, and do so much for us, and yet are rarely valued as they should be. In particular, ancient trees are wondrous, magical things. Impressive and complex structures, they have lots of nooks and crannies in which wildlife can find a home. As fungi feed on the tree they provide food for woodland creatures, and a hollowed out trunk provides shelter. Although ancient trees are in the final stage of their life, and technically in decline, they have a lot to give, and can go on living for a long time, depending on the species.

Ryan and I have just spent a few days in Dorset, and – apart from Friday when it rained non-stop – the weather was lovely. While we were there we popped in* to see Joy Michaud at Sea Spring Seeds, a small company that sells plants and seeds, specialising in chillies. You may have met Joy on the Sea Spring Seeds stand at a gardening event – she loves taking her seeds on the road and meeting her customers, even though there’s plenty of work to be done back at the farm!

Two things came together to prompt this post on edible spring flowers. The first was that we invited Ryan’s parents round for dinner on Mothering Sunday, and I pondered buying some spring flowers for a table decoration that I could later plant out in the garden as additions to my edible flower collection.

I spent an hour or so in the garden yesterday. What I went outside to do was take care of my ‘Ruby Beauty’ dwarf raspberries, which were planted together in one container (which is OK, they’re designed for relatively close planting). In 2015 they looked fine; in 2016 not so much. I think I forgot to prune back the fruited canes. So yesterday I pruned out all of the dead wood, transplanted one into a container on its own and repotted the remaining two in the same container, so they’ve got more space and some fresh compost underneath to lift them out of their ‘slump’.

We’re not quite done with April showers – it’s raining. Spring is a bit behind schedule this year, but it is May and there are spring flowers!

Penguin Random House LLC

For many gardeners the cold weather signals that the time has come to pack up their tools until spring, however that does not have to be the case.