13 May 1922: Three days of summer weather sees the gardens of south-west London blooming KewIt seems we are much farther advanced here than they are in north Oxon, for my plum has shed its blossom and the earlier pears (such as Jargonelle and Beurre d’Amanlis) have also finished blooming. (I suspect that they have also finished fruiting.) The three days of summer weather brought on the apples to overtake the pears, and the Morello cherry is also fully out, so that there is a jolly riot of blossom all at once. Scarlet saxifrages with snake’s-heads cropping up between run along one edge of a disorderly border in which white and blue Scilla campanulata makes big tufts springing between handsome young leaves of hellebores. Anemone pulsatilla has been and still is very lovely in a sunny border where tulips and the tall plume-shaped spikes of the pyramidal saxifrage consort well together. Here, too, is a dwarf quince tree covered with single white blossoms.Mats of various species of Dianthus and creeping Veronicas are studded with buds, and, all over the place, seedling plants of columbines and of Bowles’s black pansy are beginning to bloom. In the Gardens various kinds of Prunus serrulata are so covered with white, pink, or palest yellow flowers that the branches are hidden by them. Continue reading…
Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Country diary 1922: a jolly riot of blossom
