Spring cleaning

The last couple of weeks - since the torrential rain stopped! - have been an extremely busy time in the garden.

Last year our escallonia plants - both in the front garden - suffered severely from black spot. The RHS online information was that this is something quite new, and so exact treatment has not yet been identified. I settled for cutting them back hard, removing as many of the spotted leaves as I could from on and around the plants, then treating them with a fungicide. I've used the one I bought for the roses, which is myclobutanil. One of the bushes was cut back much earlier than the other, and is already beginning to sprout new leaves, thankfully showing no sign of the fungus.

With the help of a borrowed pressure washer, the crazy paving has been given a thorough clean - the first pressure wash since it was first laid - between four and seven years ago! Mike was doubtful it would make a difference - but once it was all dried out the difference was quite noticeable. Two afternoons of work, but worthwhile, I think!

Before

After

The biggest single difference - and the longest to achieve! - has been the weeding of the long border along the east side of the garden. This was so overgrown that the weeds were higher than many of the plants. Now it's tidy once again, and our neighbour Véronique has given me cuttings of several ground cover plants which may help to prevent a recurrence of the problem.

Cleared east border

At the front of the house I made a planting error a while ago - I planted an ivy against the front wall of the house. It looks great framing our bedroom window, but would have been more practical against a garden wall instead. Unfortunately its rapid growth threatens the gutter and downpipe so requires annual cutting back to avoid problems. Two long sessions up and down a ladder, broken fingernails and scraped fingers - and this is how it looks now.

We were sad to find that our wonderful wisteria at the front of the house had been killed by bad winter weather a couple of years ago, but new shoots have taken hold and these have now been trained up to the wires originally installed over the front porch.

In the back garden the blackberry border has been cleared, as well as the pots in the poolhouse corner. The oleander has been looking quite sad for a year or two; I hope with some fertiliser and a regular check on the watering we may be able to improve this. The other pots contained a tree peony (now dead), lavender, and a blue hyacinth (bought using a gift voucher from my neighbour Jocelyne for my 60th birthday). All the pots have had fertiliser and top-dressing applied.

The composter has been reactivated using the screw mixing device and a chemical accelerator from Lidl. After some rainfall I collected a bumper crop of snails and consigned them all to the drainage system!

I've also sown a few annual seeds here and there: marigolds (orange flame), zinnia, sweet williams, and eschscholzia. The last named were sown first and have already germinated.