April in the Ednovean Farm Garden

As April flaunts the last of her spring credentials, the hotly anticipated Tulips have at last faded in our entrance at Ednovean Farm. The last of the silky white petals falling just as the first plump buds of the Irises emerged. Spring is dead long live the spring and on with the show!

The other evening I heard the unmistakable chee-weep of a returning house Martin and was rewarded the next day when I watched five of them twisting and turning low over the clover in the front field, so  to feast on the insects after their long flight from Africa.  It always gives the days a little lift to see that they have survived and returned to Cornwall. We tend to sit on the edge of the lawn on summer evenings, sometimes with a glass of wine and watch their last flight of the day as they swoop low over the garden. . The first of the summer visitors have arrived and they are oh so welcome after their long perilous flight.

Agaves and topiary have spent the witner under the warm courtyard walls

Spud and Louis enjoying th evening sunshine

Queen of the night

The beautiful simple flowers of spring have brought tnemselves to grow in the garden

But back to work in the garden and this month I spent several long afternoons dead heading the daffodils and developed a new admiration for the daffodil pickers that work in the flower fields of Cornwall as I bent and picked faded bloom after faded bloom. Now I must wait for five or six long weeks until I can finally strim the fade foliage as they finally retire to the warm womb of the soil to wait for another spring.

A sunny afternoon in the gravel border that flanks the Italian Garden

Echiums are springing up around the garden now

Through the hedges in the Italian Garden a flash of blue

I found Spud snoozing in a patch of faded grasses

With an eye to Summer I’ve topped up the compost in most of the pots of Geraniums to perk them up as they start to flower after surviving the winter outside and I’ve even had to start watering them after the long dry spring

This month has seen a step up in the battle against Ivy particularly after the monster plant that has taken charge of the front of the house and it has been tracked down ruthlessly elsewhere in the garden in its lawless pursuit of clambering over garden walls and loosening the slate tops.

The first of the Echiums has burst into flower along with a competing cast of extras around the garden It’s a sure sign that Summer is now firmly on the way.

The parterre in the courtyard garden at Ednovean Farm

Early morning sunshine catching the new growth

Spud cat gaurding the front door