The Spring Garden

I wanted to concentrate on those Spring flowering trees and shrubs that make the Spring Garden in Ireland such a delight, there are so many things that add interest and colour in the coming months that they really are worth celebrating.

Magnolias
What can we say about Magnolias that hasn’t been said before, they are just a beautiful Spring flowering small tree. I am so attached to mine that I have moved in twice and held up the paving in my garden for a full season so as not to disturb it. You have to be patient with a Magnolia but boy if you do it will reward you handsomely. The range of Magnolias is great and it is very hard to pick my favourite one. Leaving aside the Evergreen Magnolia group the deciduous ones really do flower well. With the simple stellata, a more feathery white flower that flowers really well or Purpurea which has a more tulip shaped flower, not quite as many flowers but a larger size and a great colour. We have a few new varieties to us that are well worth a mention Kobus, is similar to stellata but with even more flowers. Star Wars a really beautiful dark pink flowering Magnolia and my current fave is the Honey Tulip; goblet-shaped blooms similar to the well-known variety ‘Black Tulip’, but with these beautiful  pale gold petals and butterscotch anthers. The blooms retain their shape and  keep their colour well, flowering in early spring upon bare stems well before the foliage emerges.

Camellia
My Camellias are well in flower at this stage in the year and the best thing about these Camellias is the range of shapes, the nature of the Camellia means that it is easy to cut and prune into all sorts of shapes and styles. They make great standard trees including half standards or lollipop trees as they are sometimes known. We also create cones and balls out of this versatile plant. More recently we have cloud pruned the tree so it looks like a number of balls or plates going up the stems and lastly we have created parachute forms, multiple stems with a semi-circle of foliage above, showing off the beauty of the stems whist having the glossy green leaves with the abundance of flowers. The flowers of the Camellias are more often, what, pink or red and well worthwhile addition to your spring garden.

Cherry Trees
There is nothing better than the sight of cherry trees over their flowering time, I have rows of cherries up either side of my driveway and come the spring when they flower they are a real sight to behold. When we planted up the amazing Galgorm Hotel in Ballymena some years ago we added a Cherry Walkway and now its reached some maturity it has created the most beautiful effect which is worth visiting for, not that you’d need a reason to visit this fantastic resort which has the biggest outdoor spa in the UK, if you haven’t already pop it on your bucket list. My favourite Cherry trees are Oku-Miyaki for a lovely very soft , slightly weeping pink flower or Tai haku for a wider, more tabletop cherry tree.

Rhododendrons
All our Rhodos and Azaleas on the nursery are just ready, these group of plants are really floral centrepieces with an abundance of flowers in shades of whites, creams, pinks, yellows, purples and reds, thats a great colour palette with a huge amount of flowering interest. Rhododendrons come in a variety of sizes with some that grow only to about 60-80cm tall but others that, as anyone who has seen them growing wide in the south west of the country will know, can grow to 2-3metres tall with the same width, there aren’t too may cultivated varieties that grow quite as uncontrollable as this though. The beauty of these like the Camellias is that they have lush evergreen foliage all year round.

Apple Trees
Malus trees cover a multitude of different blossom, both apple trees and crab apple trees as well as ornamental trees too. Each one is different and beautiful in its own right. The flowering fruit tree has a less significant flower concentrating more on attracting those pollinators with its simplicity and scent rather than a flamboyant flower like the ornamentals. Malus Evereste is probably one of my favourites, as the name suggests a lovely white flowering tree. Crab apple trees are worth the effort as a good crab apple jelly is beautiful. Fruiting apple trees clearly have the benefit of lovely fruit and there is nothing better than being able to pick fruit from your own tree and I have loads of ways of using that glut of fruit as the trees matures to a bountiful crop. No point sharing now but I will in September when you Strat to harvest them.

With so many choices to keep your Spring garden at its best you now have to decide what to leave out. Planting any of these now will have them flowering in your garden rather that in the nursery or garden centre. Until next week, Happy Planting