Narcissus Thalia translucent in the morning sun.

 There's high tech and there's low tech. The compost heap is pretty low as tech goes: make a heap, turn it over once in a while, let time and nature do the rest.
 This particular heap will be all garden "waste" beginning with the stuff I've pruned, weeded, raked etc. from last autumn till now. I bagged it up as I went along as an interim step; the composting starts in the bags anyway.
 This is compost heap mark 2 compared to what was there before which was even more basic (just a heap basically). The canes are cut from the bamboo in the garden and the screen is locally sourced from artisans who work on the banks of the river Wandle.
 Actually I made that last bit up. The screen was purchased from a DIY superstore on the Old Kent Road. Sometimes it's not easy to be a completely natural man in the middle of London...

 The Wild Tulip. I have planted a dozen or more bulbs of Tulipa sylvestris in this bit of the garden and the species has a deserved reputation for being picky whether it chooses to flower from year to year. If a few do decide to stand up and be counted they bloom in a rich buttercup yellow.
 Note the bug standing right on top!

 The Summer Snowflake (Leucojum aestivum) flowers in spring despite its name. Confusingly there is also a Spring Snowflake (Leucojum vernum) which flowers when the name says it does. And they both look very similar (and both resemble Snowdrops).
 These are L. aestivum 'Gravetye Giant', a form selected from the wild by William Robinson around 150 years ago. The bulb trade seems to favour this variety as the most garden worthy.
 Robinson was a pioneer of naturalistic gardening and wrote 'The Wild Garden' which is still a very useful text on the subject. He developed his ideas and put them into practice at Gravetye Manor in West Sussex.

 Anemone blanda. Another autumn planted bulb, this is the proverbial "spring ephemeral". It pops up, flowers briefly then disappears till next year. This form is sometimes sold as 'White Splendour'- it's white, it's splendid.

 The aforementioned Grape Hyacinth. A favourite with bumblebees, they work their way round the spike of densely packed flowers and stick their long tongues in to get at the nectar.

 The humble Grape Hyacinth (Muscari armenaicum) is best planted in quantity. The bulbs are cheap as chips and widely available in autumn. It may be modest in cost and size but looked at closely it is a thing of beauty.

 This plant is a thug. At least that's what some gardening books say. In gardening parlance a thug is a plant considered to be invasive and best avoided. Actually I like it and I think there is a lot to be said for plants that spread rapidly of their own accord.
 Trachystemon orientalis  is sometimes called 'Oriental Borage'. This is understandable because it is of the Boraginaceae family and the flowers do look like a mutant version of those on the commonly grown herb.
 It has many virtues. It's tough as old boots and copes with dry shade (the toughest of all areas to choose plants for). It flowers early in spring and the bees mob it. The big heart shaped leaves form a good groundcover well into the summer.
 The concern about invasive plants needs to be qualified. T. orientalis might be rampant with a bit more light and moisture but in this spot the conditions rein it in. Similarly I have included other "thugs" around the garden. They're vigorous but not a problem in places where their vigour can be used to good effect. 

From Hamlet (1.3.48-52), Ophelia to her brother Laertes:

                                       "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
                                        Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
                                        Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
                                        Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
                                        And recks not his own rede"

                                                               WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 The Botanical Garden in Cambridge is a pleasant place to wander around. It's not as grand as Kew but I think it has more charm. I may be biased as I've been coming here since I was little.
 There are some very well tended beds and handsome specimens of plants from around the world. Besides that I like the way they have given over several of the grassy areas to naturalistic meadow style plantings. I was interested to see the simple combination of various narcissus species with Chionodoxa forbessi (sometimes called Glory of the Snow).
 I have planted the same pairing here in London and it's very pretty, though I have to admit the effect is not quite so expansive in a back garden!

 First pitch of the year. I went to an organic smallholding in Dorset at the weekend to attend a short course relating to Permaculture- a topic that will feature in future entries as it has a lot to say about food growing, ecology, sustainability and many connected matters. The teacher -who goes by the name of Aranya- is a particularly gifted communicator of the subject and a bunch of interesting people made the journey to participate.
 I've been visiting the area since I was a child and it's a special part of the world for me. Our lovely host Pat has been farming this plot for nearly 20 years, despite the considerable difficulties she has had to overcome.
 Springs bubble up from the chalk hills of the Bride Valley and feed the streams and rivers that run through the village of Litton Cheney to the meadows beyond on their way to the sea.
 Pat has made use of the old channels and sluices and extended them to water the crops; indeed one area of the smallholding is watered by directing the flow and flooding it.

 Early season daffodils bloom cheerfully in late February/early March. There are reckoned to be around 25 species of narcissus in the wild and from these plant breeders have cultivated literally thousands of varieties. In my opinion they tend to be either nondescript or gaudy but the simple crosses between wild species can be very nice in their own right.
 'February Gold' (top) and 'Tete a Tete' (bottom) both have N. cyclamineus as one parent. The former is said to be x pseudonarcissus and the latter x tazetta. 'Rapture' (middle) is clearly a cyclamineus hybrid but with what does not seem to be stated anywhere. In fact it looks like a larger version of the original which is rather dainty at about 6"/15cm tall. 

 A London peculiar. On a grass verge in Church Lane, Tottenham, opposite the cemetery gates grows a multitude of crocuses. Numerous species grow alongside each other (and have hybridized) to create drifts of colour.
 It rates a mention in Richard Mabey's seminal book 'Flora Britannica'. This was published over 20 years ago so I wondered if the colony still existed in this rather unlikely location. Indeed it does, flowering abundantly.
 I can find no reference anywhere as to how this spectacle came into being. It could be some long forgotten piece of municipal planting, though Mabey reckons it to be ancient. Perhaps they have persisted from the time when this was a rural district and manor, before Tottenham was swallowed up by the expansion of Greater London in the 19th. century. The setting might provide a clue: crocuses are often a historical feature of churchyards and cemeteries.
 In some obscure way this tapestry of flowers is a visitation from another age.

 Some years ago my father installed a deluxe pond in his back garden, which to the untrained eye may look like an old water tank. At this time of year it is full of mating frogs, probably 15 or 20 at any one time.
 They're difficult to photograph in their full writhing glory because they dive to the bottom if someone approaches but here are a few snaps. As I stood nearby with my camera there was a lot of croaking going on and the undergrowth was alive with frogs crawling and hopping to and from the pond.
 Any standing water in the garden is likely to attract them. On a smaller scale I dug a trug type bucket into the ground and every year frogs come to it, peering out from the murk.

 I saw some clumps of Helleborus argutifolius while I was out and about. There are many shades of green in nature but comparatively few green flowers. A strong contrast in colour between the flowers and the foliage of a plant makes it more conspicuous to pollinators.
 Nonetheless the bee above found the pale green flowers of this Hellebore, no doubt guided by the scent as much as the colour.

 Lovely Lungworts. Small but beautiful; hues of pink and blue in the flowers of Pulmonaria officinalis (top) and the intense gentian-blue flowers of Blue Ensign, a cultivar of Pulmonaria angustifolia (bottom).
 When the common name of a plant ends in "wort" we know it was once believed to have curative powers. If the Latin name ends in "officinalis" this too indicates it was at one time considered medicinal.
 Lungwort would have derived its name from the medieval 'doctrine of signatures': the belief that if a part of a plant looks like a part of the body it would have corresponding healing properties. The speckled leaves of P. officinalis in particular must have suggested an association with the lungs.
 

 Dank, mysterious Wistman's Wood- part 2. Of the entries in my diary so far the one about this atmospheric and otherworldly place on Dartmoor has been particularly remarked upon (posted 8th. February). So I've dug out a few more photos from my visit back in August 2012.
 It is thought that the Wood (mainly pendiculate oak) is a surviving relic of ancient forest circa 7000BC. Various explanations are put forward for the name Wistman. It may have been a dialect word meaning eerie or uncanny. Then again it might have meant Welshman or wise man and referred to druidic practises. Or it might be associated with the archetypal myth of the Wild Hunt whose hell hounds were called Wisht Hounds in Devonshire folklore.
 Researching the history of the Wood after my visit I found out that it is home to a large number of adders- fortunately (or unfortunately?) I didn't encounter any!
 As mentioned in my earlier entry it is included in Clifton Bain's excellent book "The Rainforests of Britain and Ireland". He cites it as one of the remaining pockets of temperate Atlantic rainforest, sometimes called Celtic rainforests due to their distribution down the westerly side of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England.
 One of the definitions of coastal temperate rainforest is that it receives at least 1500mm of rainfall annually. Dartmoor receives around 2000mm. I can vouch for the amount of precipitation. The day I took these photos the field I was camping in had flooded overnight. I had pitched my tent on a bit of raised ground so I was spared being woken by the rising of the nearby stream; others were not so lucky...