My garden in April

I ended last month’s post saying there was still plenty to do, and that’s what I’m starting with on this post too. But then again, there’s always something to do in the garden isn’t there, often though it’s just getting the weather to behave to spend enough time out there amongst everything else that’s going on, but as the month has gone that’s been more manageable - especially with an influx of plants from this year’s visit to the Newark Garden Show, oops.

The wallflowers have been fantastic, brightening up their little corner by the garage - I love how the colours change as they mature, which often means there’s a multicoloured display at any one time.

Our lavender’s have mostly done well - we have many of these large bushes, but one less than last year it would seem. One has mostly not survived the winter and while I haven’t looked at it in any great detail yet, there’s not much green new growth on it. In better news the small-ish self seeded plant that we pulled out from between our garden and the pavement has survived and seems to like its new position in our outer border. It’s a good few years behind the larger bushes but with one bush failing it’s a good reminder to take cuttings - so that’s another job on my list!

After the daffodils had a poor show this year - just three flowered - the tulips said ‘hold my beer’ - this was the only flower we had this year, and so some bulb attention is clearly needed too. I’d been growing both the daffodils and the tulips in pots, but I think the time has come to sow them into the ground and see if they do any better there for next spring.

The crab apple tree has been busy this month - the blossom has formed, flowered and gone! It’s delightful to watch the little tree come back to life, but it seems I have very few pictures of it this year - I’d given it quite a trim in March so I was doubly delighted to see it in leaf, let alone blossom.

The acer by our back door also sprung into life - and has since had a bit of a trim - but just look at the sunlight on those red leaves. Divine.

It’s not all been quite so rosy though, or in this instance rosey. One of my roses was looking decidedly dry, and I think it along with the small peach tree got caught out by that very warm spell at the start of April. We weren’t home for those few days either so it was a bit of a double whammy.

But with some careful pruning I think this one will be ok - it’s already started to form new leaves, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I know I say it every year, but I really do need to get these roses out of their pots and into the ground - maybe this year will be the year, who knows?

My succulents overwintered well in the garage (mostly) until they didn’t. I brought them outside and later in the month I lost the single one on the right. The two butting up against each other seem happy enough though, as does the tiny one on the left. My plan for my succulents is to load them up into the pots I have - partly as I think they look better en masse, but also to help with the the ongoing pot shortage situation.

The aeonium decided it wasn’t happy after all and so now I have a twig! My indoor one is also not happy, but a tad happier than this one - but I’m going to persevere with these as plants as I think they’re gorgeous - though I may need to buy one to replace this one, I’m not sure that one is coming back!

The gravel weeding can be a full time job, as well as the usual dandelions and weeds this month I’ve been pulling up baby trees. And I’m glad to do this while they’re still small as it’s a relatively easy job. The gravel is great for propogating plants on its own though, I’ve got a couple of buddleia and some lady’s mantle that I want to pot up (thankfully smaller pots aren’t an issue) and I think I’ve several hellebores forming too, though these are teeny tiny at the moment and MOH is under strict instruction not to touch them, or even walk on them - so we’ll see how we go!

The mahonia has been jewel-like and gorgeous in the sunshine. It seems we’ve lost the smaller of the plants we had, and I’m not surprised it seemed to be a lot wetter than the other two. But two of these is plenty enough, and the blackbirds are enjoying them as much as me, perhaps even more so.

It was really quite satisfying and mindful to sit alongside this lady’s mantle and remove all the dead leaves which had done such a good job of protecting the plant over winter. The leaves are fascinating and you can quite clearly see how they’re folded as they develop and before they unfurl themselves. This job was made all the better for its position in the sun, I have another large plant which doesn’t get so much sun, so I need to time that one right - and haven’t yet!

I also overwintered some amaryllis in the garage, leaving these in there a bit longer than the succulents. Imagine my joy then to discover that it looks as if I’ll be rewarded with a flower.

I mentioned at the start that we’d been along to the Newark Garden Show again this year, and this year I went with a plant list - taking my cue from visiting quilt shows! We even bought some of the plants on my list - irises, tomatoes, strawberries and foxgloves, but there was some off list shopping too, including a lemon coloured red hot poker and a glorious lilac rhododendron.

A RED HOT POKER (THAT’S NOT RED) AND MORE IRISES

TWO FOXGLOVES

A GLORIOUS LILAC RHODODENDRON

STRAWBERRIES AND FOUR TOMATO PLANTS

So now you now why I continue to have a pot shortage!

I also spotted that one of the hebes was having a crisis - a kind of Cruella de Vil kind of crisis, as it were with a central stripe dying back. It was as dead as could be, so it needed to come out, but it doesn’t look that much better after - hopefully I’ve been able to act quickly enough so that it can recover and grow more healthily - fingers crossed.

But it’s far from all bad. The new olive tree looks like its ready to flower soon - just look at the number of buds, so I’m taking it that its happy in the large patio pot.

And if this snapshot of the small crab apple tree is anything to go by, then I should also be in for plenty of crab apples later in the year. Which is good news as I’m hoping to be able to make even more chilli jelly this year!

Let’s hope there’s more ‘at least pleasant’ weather to come, as I’ve got a to do list as long as my arm!

Walking East Stoke's lanes: April 2026

Just one walk around the lanes near where we live this month, but it was so good to be out in the blue-est of blue skies - and so early on in April too. But first these gutter loving dandelions on School Lane caught my eye - very resourceful of them to grow there, and great for the insects but not so much for the upkeep of the roads in the village.

I did warn you there were very blue skies didn’t I? I took this as we spotted a couple of large birds - buzzards or kites - but couldn’t work out which so took the photo, and at a quick glance you can’t even see the small bird shapes, can you? If you look closely there’s one about two inches above the tree to the left…

But anyway, our walk took us down School Lane and onto Church Lane, which took us down to the River Trent. It was much drier than our aborted attempt last month, where we had the wrong shoes on for the amount of mud! It’s amazing how much difference a month can make, but as you’ll see, it has.

This month we could see the jetty - and it’s probably the clearest we’ve been able to see it on all of our walks along this route. I’d not seen the sign for the, sadly no longer running, Fiskerton Ferry but we did today. It’s a shame it’s not running as there’s a nice looking pub on the opposite river bank!

We also spotted possibly the remains of the ferry’s operations - an old wooden picnic table and some plastic chairs in the undergrowth. At least that’s what I’m hoping they’re from as I can’t believe anyone would dump them right on the river bank intentionally, but I guess you never know.

The skies were blue, and it was much warmer than we expected it to be - but there were no lambs yet. It wasn’t long though as not long after our walk there was the first ‘escaped lambs’ post in our village Facebook group. Two cheeky lambs had managed to get out onto the quiet lane, before being ushered back in by a concerned villager.

Escaped sheep (or lambs) is the best use ever of our village Facebook group. Fact.

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series.

This April...

As predicted April has indeed been busy, and it’s brought a few surprises with it too - not all of them necessarily wanted, but such as it is we’ve needed to embrace those and roll with it. It’s not my story, though clearly I’m affected but everyone is ok and it’s why my blog has been unexpectedly quieter than I’d planned these past few days. At some point I may share more, but not just yet.

The fields around us have turned a gorgeous shade of yellow, which I love, but which MOH quite literally sneezes at. Though he has discovered a major trigger for his hayfever, so there is that. It’s the first year we’ve seen so much rapeseed growing locally, it could be just the cycle of rotation though, at some point we’ll find out - it makes for a great picture though, doesn’t it?

The month started with a trip to Wales for my youngest niece’s wedding, and somehow the celebrations coincided with those two warm - actually quite hot - days. I’m not sure how they managed that, and I’m not sure they know either - but we’re all very glad it happened that way. Sunglasses were definitely needed rather than the cold weather options I’d been anticipating!

While we were there we had a look around Ludlow, and stopped off at Powis Castle on our journey home. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the 300 year old yew hedges there, and so it was a great garden for me, and a pleasant surprise!

I’ll be sharing more of my photos from there, but just wow to the size of these hedges - and to the job of keeping them in trim, that’s got to be quite a task.

It’s great to see the gardens waking up as spring really comes into its own, my garden has suddenly taken off and throughout the month the blossom on the crab apple tree has formed, blossomed and gone for another year - hopefully there’ll be plenty of crab apples later in the year.

Closer to home we enjoyed the Bluebell walk at local Flintham Hall. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bluebells before, but I’m more than happy to do so again. I was pleased to learn that the gardens will also open in May as part of the National Gardens Scheme, so I’m looking forward to another visit to see a different part of the grounds.

It’s also the time of year for the Newark Garden Show and we went along on the first day of the show, this year armed with a ‘possible plant list’ - we did buy some of those, but we also bought off list, including a lilac rhododendron, which has been on a longer term wish list. Though for some reason my camera roll is of random shots like the one below, which I guess means it’s more inspiration and future shopping based, than just a day out.

We’ve been holiday planning and looking at returning to the Loire region of France, this time travelling all the way by train. If we’re lucky we may add some cycling to this, or we may just stick with some walking, but our plans include staying at a chateau or two, some wine tasting and return visit to the Chateau and gardens of Villandry.

We’ve had our first barbecue of the year - amazing for April - and tried a new to us restaurant in Nottingham, thoroughly enjoying our meal at Skein, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be back. There’s been a Portuguese wine tasting in Newark, but I found most of the wines more ‘challenging’ than previously but the evening was designed to showcase the diversity in the region, and it certainly did that.

I also discovered that my gold trainers cause my achilles pain, so I’ll be giving those a very wide berth for the foreseeable future; and when in Nottingham last week I seemed to have randomly hurt the top of my foot, the same one obviously, so I’ve been icing and elevating it as much as I can, which seems to have done the trick. I know that for the RICE approach there’s supposed to be the ‘rest’ element too - but with the Newark Garden Show and a quilt show at Uttoxeter almost immediately after the random swelling, that was always going to be tricky.

I went along to the Quilt & Stitch Village show with friends from my sewing group. It’s a show that wouldn’t have even been on my radar before I moved here, but it was a great little show which is held at the racecourse, and as it’s just an hour and a half away by train, so that’s what we did. The station is right next to the racecourse, so as walking goes it was relatively lighter than expected, which was definitely good for me.

Though I never thought I’d be buying material with beetroots and onions on, but I did - and I love them. I’ve no plans yet, but I’d not seen anything like this before and knew instantly that they’d be coming home with me. It was great to see some new to me suppliers at the show, along with some familiar favourites, and of course there was also a quilt or two on display!

Over the past however long I’ve been crocheting larger granny squares at my crochet in the pub group, and this month I reached the eight squares I’d been aiming for. My plan is to use them to embellish a tote bag, but first I had plenty of ends to sew in. It’s not my most favourite job, but remarkably they were sewn in within a couple of days - look out for the finished project which I’m hoping to share soon.

I also realised that I probably had enough scrappy houses now to make my first ‘village quilt’, and so today I’ve finished my first charity quilt of the year. I’d hoped to have finished it and shared it before now, but that life surprise got in the way of this too, so that quilt update will also follow soon, I hope.

I signed myself up for the online taster weekend for the Thread Academy as I’d seen Jo Avery’s delightful ‘Dream Birds Coin Purse’ and thought I’d have a go at making my own. I mean, a bird shaped pouch - what’s not to like.

This is as far as I’ve got at the moment, and clearly the taster weekend has been and gone now, but I have enough information and hopefully wherewithal to finish it and to do it justice. Isn’t it super cute already though?

So that was April, both brilliant and at times uplanned and unexpected. I’m hoping that May, my birthday month, goes a little more to plan!