Speaking of wildflower walks what is more glorious than walking through a Bluebell wood in spring? My home town of Hitchin is blessed with several in the surrounding countryside notably Hitch Wood (above), Wain Wood and West Wood. The Bluebells are early this year, mid-April and they are in full flower.

 With spring well and truly underway wildflower walks will be bountiful. Cowslips proliferate in the churchyard of St. Paul's Walden so that was a good place to start...

 

 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.