February here – like everywhere was unrelenting and wet. When it wasn’t actually raining it was muddy. With all the rain and having builders and heavy machinery through parts of the garden building the new footbridge – you can imagine….it was mud with a capital ‘M’. But now we have daffodils, fritillaries, the hedges breaking into leaf, the grass has started to grow – it is spring. It is a busy month of course with seeds to be sown, pruning and planting to be completed, borders to be dug and mulched. However I always find the time to listen to the March birdsong. The dawn chorus is getting louder and has more energy by the day - it’s the loveliest sound in the world.
I have kept a gardening diary ever since I came here in 1997. It is surprising how the record builds up day by day, like a huge jigsaw describing the relationship between me and the garden. However it’s main function is to record what comes into flower or fruit and when, the weather, any nature observations and what I sow and plant. You think you’ll remember but you don’t. Anyway to my surprise I see that on March 15th 2017 I planted the clematis montana that grows along the wall of our jetty. In nine years the clematis has not only become established to the point of swamping the wall – but has become even more established as a fixture in the garden. It feels as though it has always been there. Our bridges although only built recently are already settling into the landscape especially now that all the landscaping and turfing around the new footbridge has been done and they too feel like they have always been here.
I was walking along our moat walk the other day when suddenly I got the pungent aroma of mint. I looked down to see growing out of the wet ground wild water mint. It looks like watercress with purple under its leaves. The flowers are mauve and held up by burgundy stems and they make a pretty little posy in a jar which is now filling our kitchen with the minty fragrance of the garden.
The daffodil season in this garden is long. The first to appear are the wild daffs Narcissus pseudonarcissus in our orchard around the beginning of March followed by the first of our National Collection of Engleheart daffodils ‘Magnificence’ in our walled garden. We have hundreds of daffs from the miniature ones we grow in pots to ‘Thalia’ – a lovely white with a cream trumpet to highly scented ‘Geranium’, ‘Cheerfulness’ and ‘Winston Churchill’ and last to flower the poeticus cultivars flowering through April and into May. Delightful daffodils – you can never have too many.
Kate Elliott came to Columbine Hall in 1997 when she was sixteen. She is now head gardener but also helps with managing the property generally and in conducting guided tours.