One of the most important activities on the allotment: pottering around. Very important to potter round a bit then have a nice sit down. Job done.

 I took a walk in Wiltshire on Saturday. I find one of the best ways to deal with living in London is to get out of London regularly. There's a fast train from Paddington which takes only an hour to get to Pewsey in the heart of some very fine countryside. A pleasant stroll to the nearby village of Wilcott leads to the Workway Drove which runs up onto the hills beyond.  

 This range of chalk grassland -dotted with thousands of Cowslips (Primula veris)- offers sweeping views across the Vale of Pewsey to the edge of Salisbury Plain. Two hours out of central London and the only crowds are a few sheep!

 My route was particularly chosen to go via Gopher Wood.

 I came across this wood on a previous ramble. As you get nearer it becomes apparent that the woodland floor is glowing with a shimmering haze of violet-blue.

This is a Bluebell wood. At this time of year our native Hycinthoides non-scripta flowers here in astonishing profusion.

 But there's more. As you walk through the wood from north to south a few Ramsons (Allium ursinum) appear among the Bluebells.

 Then this sea of Bluebells meets a tide of Ramsons (or vice versa if you're coming in the opposite direction).

 To some extent they intermingle but for the most part Bluebells hold one end of the wood and Ramsons the other. H. non-scripta smells sweetly fragrant and A. ursinum is known as Wild Garlic with good reason! Senses working overtime as the song says. 

 I know of various great Bluebell woods and others that are thick with Ramsons but the combination of the two set among rolling chalk hills is quite something.

 White Dead-nettle (Lamium album) is a common wayside weed/wildflower in both town and country. Even so it seems to be especially prolific this year.
 Like other "Dead-nettles" in the Lamium family the leaves resemble Stinging Nettles but do not sting. L. album in particular seems to like growing among them, which is perhaps an evolutionary survival strategy. Lamiums are top bee plants and White Dead-nettle has clam-like flowers which bumblebees shoulder open with great determination.
 A friend of mine who grew up in the Scunthorpe area in the fifties and sixties tells me that children would pluck the flowers and suck them to get a small hit of nectar.  

 Some random thoughts in a garden. As well as being long the garden has low picket style fencing which creates an open, communal feel. Apparently all the gardens in the street once had fences like this and you could look all the way up (or down) the hill.
 The garden benefits from overhanging trees which are actually in adjacent gardens. On the left the evergreen Photinia has been a mass of white flowerheads (now fading) and beyond the Laburnum is starting to put on cascades of golden yellow flowers. On the right next door's apple tree has been blossoming all week. Most of the apples grow on this side! But we're part of the same housing co-op so fair shares will apply.

 The Lilac was planted before I moved here and it never flowered- until last year when it suddenly got more light. An evergreen oak was felled in the garden to its left and an ailing cherry tree came down in high winds in the garden to its right.
 The Greater Stichwort has run rampant this year which makes me very happy.

 Wonderful weeds! Garlic Mustard, Green Alkanet and Stinging Nettles. All grow in the garden free of charge.

 I love it when plants weave in and out of other plants. The maroon flowered Geranium phaeum was purchased from Beth Chatto's nursery as I recall; it's spread and settled in nicely.

 Up periscope! By judicious selection of plants it's possible to create a layered effect through the year; as some plants die down others grow through. NB sometimes referred to as "successional planting".  Here for example Stichwort covers the ground, the pointed fronds of Crocosmia push through the Stichwort and the airy stems of Tellima grandiflora rise above both.
 Three species from three continents (Europe, Africa and North America respectively) get along quite happily.

 Bees exist for flowers and flowers exist for bees. Angiosperms i.e. flowering plants and pollinators have co-evolved across a timescale of over a hundred million years. Greater Stichwort has clouds of daisy-like flowers yet mysteriously I have never seen them being pollinated- until today.

 The White Comfrey (Symphytum orientale) just goes on and on flowering this year. Interesting that white seems to be the most prevalent flower colour during spring. It's said that flowers have evolved so as to be most visible in their surroundings and season to particular pollinators

 It's been apple blossom time in the garden this week.

 I built this deck about 15 years ago out in Hertfordshire for my father.

 Recently however I noticed that the decking boards and timber frame had become quite badly rotted along one side. It's made of tanalised timber but a lifespan of 15-20 years is to be expected in the damp UK climate.

 Since most of the deck was still sound I decided on some drastic DIY...

 I ran a jigsaw slightly to one side of a joist thereby amputating the afflicted section of the deck. So it has lost about 24"/60cm in width but it's still sizeable and good for a few more years yet.

 A jigsaw gives a decent enough cut but having used one for the basic dismantling it was my intention to use a circular saw on a guide rail to give the deck a dead straight edge flush with the joist.
 At this point in the proceedings I became aware that there were a lot of bees buzzing around. I had disturbed a nest of Red Tailed Bumblebees! At first I was concerned that their underground nest might have been under the deck itself and that I'd bought it down on top of them. So I was relieved to see them coming and going from within a patch of nettles about a foot away from the footprint of the decking I'd removed.
 Understandably they were discombobulated by the seismic activity around them and bees returning from forage were no doubt disconcerted by the changed landscape so close to the entrance of the nest. I thought it best to let them settle down and will do the trimming and remove the debris another day. 

 Ramsons (Allium ursinum) aka Wild Garlic are flowering at the moment. I planted them in two of the damper, shadier spots in the garden which suits them. Native to the UK they can be found in many woodlands- and make them smell pungently of garlic.

 

 Spanish Bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) were here already when I arrived and come up every year. I'll leave them be as they do no harm in the urban context but ecologists take a dim view of the way they cross breed if they are in proximity to ancient populations of our native Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta). NB I wrote a long entry on this topic 21st. May 2017.
 I have planted H. non-scripta in the garden but they flower a bit later.

 Another wild onion/garlic: Three-Cornered Leek (Allium triquetium). This one is non-native and frowned upon by ecologists, in fact it's illegal to plant this species in the wild. It spreads very vigorously and out competes native species in their natural habitats. I've planted a few in the garden (not illegal) and will keep an eye on them. Like Spanish Bluebells they weren't born to bad, it was society that made them that way.
 I sometimes see neglected gardens that have been colonised by them but these are unatural habitats to begin with. I saw a front garden recently that was carpeted with Three-Cornered Leak and Green Alkanet to very striking effect. Actually if someone isn't going to do much with their garden I'd rather see that than tarmac or astroturf.

 A few treasures seen walking through Blean Wood in Kent yesterday. Lesser Periwinkle (Vinca minor) is probably an historical introduction to the UK rather than native but seems entirely suited to English woods. The flower above was in a patch of Periwinkle growing happily among a drift of Wood Anemones, a plant that has probably always been here. [See also recent entry 4th. April]

 Wood Spurge (Euphorbia amygdaloides) was quite prolific along sunny margins of the track which runs through the woods linking Whitstable and Canterbury. NB E. amygdaloides var. robbiae looks similar, hails from Turkey and is widely grown as a garden plant. The population in the Blean is our native Wood Spurge not the variant, indicative that these woodlands have ancient origins.

 Easy to miss: Bugle (Ajuga reptans) is low growing and spreads itself around by means of rhizomes which throw up spikes of flowers here and there. It's sometimes described as a ground cover plant but in its natural habitat like this is more apt to weave in and out of the plants around.
 Again this is a plant of sunny glades and edges. Much of the interior of the Blean has developed an understorey of scrub and bramble that most woodland wildflowers can't compete with. The walk which follows the long gone "Crab and Winkle" railway line is none the less a pleasant stroll for spotting some flowers of the forest in spring. 

 Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) is a tallish plant from the Mediterranean that grows wild in parts of the UK, particularly on the coast. It's certainly prolific on the North Kent coast as seen above -near Whitstable- where it can be found along the foreshore and on lanes and verges further inland.
 S. olusatrum is said to have been introduced by the Romans as a pot herb so perhaps its presence here is a legacy of their arrival on this shoreline.

 Continuing the theme of "naturalistic" gardens. The garden of the house I grew up in where my father still lives has become a fairly natural garden over the years by a mixture of accident and design. Yesterday for example I saw this shady lady taking the sun among the ferns and the bluebells.

 Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) is one of my fave wayside weeds/wildflowers. The daisy-like flowers adorn many a hedgerow and woodland edge in the countryside at this time of year.
 The patch above is in the back garden however. Several years ago I planted a tiny sprig of it from the South London Botanical Institute and it's gone mad!
 Re. my previous entry about naturalistic gardening. This is a good example of using chance as a design tool. I thought Stichwort would probably do well in this spot which corresponds to the part sun/part shade of its natural habitat. But I couldn't predict it would do this well!

 Naturalistic garden design is in a sense a contradiction in terms. But it is possible to design using natural processes and a deliberate approach to chance.
 I was struck by this attractive combination in the garden this morning: the Forget-me-not blue flowers of Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens), the nodding white bells of Symphytum Hidcote and the pink veined flowers of Geranium x oxonianum.
 Some gardeners will tell you that Green Alkanet is an invasive self-seeder, that Hidcote comfrey is too rampant, that G. x oxonianum spreads untidily. True, they're not appropriate if you want borders of bare earth containing a few well behaved perennials.
 But I let Alkanet do its thing in parts of the garden. I chose the comfrey for its groundcovering qualities. There were a few clumps of the Geranium when I moved here and I've allowed them to multiply. They intermingle and with a bit of light maintenance get along fine with each other.
 I note that these unruly characters are magnets for bees. It's reckoned that angiosperms (flowering plants) and bees have co-evolved on a timescale of well over a hundred million years. Nature is a good designer.

 Lovely colours in the garden today in soft morning sun...

 

 Lots of pollinating going on in the back (and front) garden today...