Making a kitchen garden. A couple of days hard graft earlier in the week reviving a neglected veg patch at the music school. It will indeed provide some produce for the school's catering but the brief was visual as much as edible.

 First step was to hard prune some shaggy Rosemary bushes and open up the space by transplanting them to run north-south rather than east-west. Then construct a raised bed using four chunky 'sleepers' that have been lying around for years. The bed was filled with compost (made on site) to be planted with herbs. I planted a line of Munstead Lavender alongside the paving and retained part of the grass by the hedge and the flowery margin opposite. An 'A' frame for growing runner beans was the final touch.

 A satisfying project, I'll post a few more entries about it but here is the end result:

 Native and non-native. The felling of a dead tree has let in more light resulting in an eruption of Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens). The former is native, the latter not. 

 There is a certain amount of angst about 'foreign' invasive species but many of our natives are equally opportunistic. And don't they look good together?

 

 Two kinds of Honesty...

 In the foreground is the perennial species Lunaria rediviva which has the merest blush of pink in the flowers.

 In the background is the biennial Lunaria annua var. albiflora with flowers of pure white. To this we may add the third kind: the purple flowered biennial Honest which is the most common.

Busy bee on a Judas Tree.

 

 The remnants of hedgerows are vital for pollinators in an expanse of arable monoculture. 

 

 Spring come early will probably be a theme of this diary in the weeks ahead. Today was more like summer come early with temperatures in the mid twenties.

 I saw Bluebells in the hedgerows at the weekend; I would expect Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) to be out late April/early May. Having said that the ones I saw looked more like the hybrid 'Garden Bluebell' (H. x massartiana) which is a cross of H. non-scripta and the Spanish Bluebell (H. hispanica). Our native Bluebell has arching stems with downward nodding bells. These are taller, more upright with bells facing stiffly out and up. Garden and Spanish Bluebells flower earlier.

 It is supposed that hispanica genes can cross pollinate with wild Bluebells and perhaps that has happened here? I will have to walk further out to several ancient Bluebell woods in the next few days because they are definitely non-scripta.

 

 A couple more flowers of the purest white in my back garden: Narcissus 'Thalia' and Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa). I would like to say I have carpets of them but in both cases the conditions don't seem to suit. Only a few of the original plantings have stood the test of time, nonetheless they come back year after year.