Mid spring: everything at once
Three weeks ago it was bare stems and mulch. Now it's a wall of colour, and the wind has found all of it. Staking, tying in, and waiting for Labour Weekend.
Spring in Tawa doesn’t arrive so much as switch on. Three weeks ago the beds were bare stems and mulch, and now everything is up at once — the magnolia, the tulips, the sweet peas climbing the netting — and the wind has found all of it in the same week.
What I’m doing this month
The first job is support, and it’s the one people leave too late. Anything tall gets a stake or a ring before it needs one. Once a stem has flopped and bent, staking it never looks quite right again, and the plant spends the rest of the season growing sideways.
The second is deadheading, with one exception. Take the spent flowers off the poppies, calendula and sweet William to keep them coming, but leave the tulip leaves alone until they yellow and pull away by themselves. That’s the bulb feeding itself for next spring, and cutting it off early is how you get one good year and then nothing.
Waiting for the soil
The garden centres are full of tomato plants by the first week of October, and it’s still too early for most of them. Cold soil stalls the roots and the plant sits there sulking until December. I wait for Labour Weekend, and even then I watch the forecast — one cold southerly can set them back a fortnight.
The same patience applies to courgettes, basil and beans. Everything in its own time; the garden is rarely impressed by enthusiasm.
A note on the wind
Tawa sits in a wind corridor and the soil underneath is clay, so I plant for both. Strong stems, tough leaves, and things that don’t mind a bit of movement — lavender, bearded iris, grasses, the spring bulbs. A plant that needs perfectly still air will spend its life being propped up, and you’ll spend yours doing the propping.
If you get the planting right, spring here is genuinely spectacular. You just have to build for the weather you’ve got, not the one you’d like.
Jobs for right now
- Stake and tie in anything tall before the wind flattens it
- Deadhead the tulips, but leave the leaves to yellow on their own
- Plant out tomatoes and courgettes after Labour Weekend, once the soil has warmed
- Mulch the beds now the soil is warm and the spring rain is easing
- Prune the camellia and other spring-flowering shrubs once they've finished
- Sow another row of salad greens and radish for a steady supply
Flowering this month
- Magnolia
- Tulips
- Ixia
- Sweet pea
- Primula
- Azalea
- Aquilegia
- Sweet William
- Camellia
- Crimson clover
- Fruiting cherry
- Calendula
- Poppy