Garden Design Crouch End

Why a web site called
Garden Design Crouch End?

It’s about finding the right kind of service, educating the homeowner, and bringing up some great questions to think about when you come
to design or redesign your North London Garden.

This site is filled with lots of ideas, and resources to help you prepare you
to work with your Garden Designer, and to help spark  some important
ideas to inspire your creativity for your city garden.

Despite being  so close to central London, Crouch End has still been able to maintain that “villagy” feel, it’s all part of the mix that makes it a successful
and thriving local community.

In this section of Garden Design Crouch End, we have added a new
article by Kitty Butterwick to greet the beginning of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, which is usually around the 21st March.
The astronomical vernal equinox is often taken to mark the first day of spring.

SPRING!

Spring has sprung, the sap is rising and everything is beginning to burst forth!
It is such an exciting time of year with the garden changing day by day.
New shoots appear, buds swell and leaves unfurl and expand.
It is a time of hope, renewal, promise and sweet anticipation of all that is to come.

Gerard Manley Hopkins captures spring so aptly in his poem entitled Spring:

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring -

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.’
Spring is about new beginnings and rejuvenation.
It is worth visiting your garden every day to soak up ‘all this juice
and all this joy’(Hopkins).

It will fill you with energy and optimism.
You will also be surprised and thrilled daily as new plants emerge from
the bare earth and reveal themselves again after their winter dormancy.

As I write, the winter aconites are in bloom in my woodland area, giving cheerful splashes of yellow amongst the ferns and Anemone blanda are just beginning to flower, adding a contrasting splash of purpley blue.

The hellebores (Helleborus orientalis) are out and I have cut back all the old leaves, which look tatty after the winter, to expose the flowers.
The new foliage will soon break through and look fresh and healthy.

I do the same with ferns, whether they are deciduous or evergreen, cutting back all the old fronds once the risk of frost is over.  It is lovely to watch the new fronds unfurl and by early summer the ferns are fully restored and a gorgeous, fresh apple green.

I like to mulch my borders in spring, once I have cleared away the winter dead and cut back any herbaceous perennials that I left standing over winter.

I use a good quality manure, garden compost or finely shredded bark.
It looks good applied around the plants, setting them off nicely, and makes the border looks instantly tidy. Mulching has three benefits: it feeds the soil as it breaks down, conserves moisture and suppresses weeds.

If you missed the opportunity to plants bulbs in the autumn, it is not too late to add spring colour now.  You can buy bulbs potted up from the garden centre and these can be planted either in the earth or in pots for an instant display.

A pot of scented narcissi  such as ‘Bridal Crown’ or hyacinths by your front door will give you wafts of wonderful fragrance every time you pass by.

Also available are dwarf daffodils such as ‘Tete-a-tete’, muscari, lily-of-the-valley, aconites, English bluebells, wall flowers, primroses, primulas in a variety of bright shades, hellebores (Helleborus orientalis or Lenten rose), Anemone blanda, pansies and violas, many of which will establish and come back year after to year to give you a seasonal burst of joy.

Happy Spring!

By Kitty Butterwick

You can visit Kitty’s site here: http://www.planting-design.co.uk/home.html

via gardendesigncrouchend.com

Here is a great new article for spring by Crouch End garden designer Kitty Butterwick.