Gardening Day

Every year there's a day when you get out in the garden for the first time with secateurs, a rake and a trowel in hand and have an early clear. The sun shines low and bright, coats feel like a thing of the past despite it being 3ºC below less than two weeks ago and life feels like it's going to be okay again. Today was that day.

Starting at the front I raked the remaining drifts of leaves from under the rowan and wild service trees, gently urging them over a blush of blooming hellebores and the promise of spring provided by emerging bulbs. Long strands of decaying pine needles had also collected under the trees from the Corsican Pine next door. Sweeping these aside immediately created a sense of freshness and renewal as the carpet of long, thin foliage is too textural for the smaller bulbs to compete with.

With soil bared around the bulbs and a few weeds removed the garden felt like a different place, somewhere to linger in and observe on multiple trips out there during the day, not just a passing through coming in or out of the house.

Much loved perennials such as catmint, giant hyssop, salvia, verbena and Japanese anemone also got the chop after leaving seed heads to do their thing over winter – a truly satisfying job that i've been dying to get on with. I can now see the first snowdrops and crocuses, along with the push of irises, narcissi, tulips and alliums. Plus there are rosettes of foxglove leaves and Oxeye daisy, ready to form a backdrop to their beautiful summer flowers.

Out the back I cleared our 'Peace Corner' – the sunny bit by the wall – ready for a seating area, trimmed the Michaelmas daisies, lavender and verbena and repositioned the crocuses that had popped up in the lawn. I must have planted them way deeper than I remember as we didn't find the corms when we were relaying the lawn last year.

There are already buds on the jasmine, and new foliage on the violets and it won't be long before the prunus blossom is out. Love how the emerging leaves and flowers combine together to create a rosy, russet glow at the end of bare grey-brown twigs and branches.

Ah, for more days like this. Cannot wait.