Spring has sprung

SPRING IS THEmost exciting time in the garden. Some years, it starts almost imperceptibly, with a few shy bulbs poking out of the soil like the nose cones of miniature green rockets, waiting to blast into flower. And on trees and shrubs, buds swell, poised to break open and reveal packages of fresh leaves. Other years, the season arrives all in a rush, and the throb of growth and renewal is palpable.

With bulbs, this swell of energy has been building invisibly since autumn: below ground, the basal plate has pushed a few careful roots into the soil and the inner tissues have been quietly transforming into embryonic shoots and flower stems. By the time spring arrives, an entire plant-in-waiting – roots, shoots, leaves and flower – has been assembled in the core of the bulb. As the days lengthen, a pale and waxy hatchling emerges, surging upwards through the soil and turning green when it nudges into the light.

Bulbs are always dramatic, as the blooms arrive speedily and fully formed, unlike those of herbaceous or woody plants, for which there is often an agonizing wait while they muster enough supportive green material before they can think about flowering.

The season gives us crocuses, snowdrops, scilla, daffodils, bluebells, tulips and other bulbous plants. It is also the time for the perennial woodlanders, plants that in their natural habitat live under deciduous trees, where they flower early, before the canopy of leaves dims the light. Alpine plants are in bloom also. These are the showy little gems, such as gentians and pasque flowers (Pulsatilla), that grow on mountainsides in the wild, and in the rockeries and scree beds of plant fanatics.

Spring-flowering shrubs and trees begin to blossom too, with more abandon than the species that cautiously perform in winter. In the landscape, luminous gorse and blackthorn herald the new season: the first cheerfully golden and the second frothily white. They line the roads and motorways in Ireland, making me wish that my garden were large enough to have a wild perimeter of these optimistically flowered plants.

The weather in spring is changeable. These mercurial months offer bitter cold and frost, blustery wind and rain, balmy sunshine and growth-provoking warmth – sometimes in quick succession, and in no fixed order. The conditions may leap backwards into winter overnight, which explains the Irish proverb: ‘April borrowed three days of March to kill the old cow’.

Regardless of cow-killing freezes, the days become brighter, and soon there is ‘a grand stretch in the evenings’ – and in the mornings too. Which is just as well, as this is a busy time for wildlife. All the garden’s creatures have their minds on procreation. Frogs appear in ponds, the females heavy with eggs, the males charged with sperm and hormones. Their mating procedure, called amplexus, results in mounds of spawn. In many ponds the wobbly islands of jelly-insulated eggs arrive at the same time each year: in ours it’s usually within a day or two of Valentine’s Day, 14 February.

Snails and slugs, although they may have been active on warmer winter days, are more in evidence now. They also have l’amour on their minds, and may be found on mild, damp days tied into ecstatic knots. Dinner is likewise on their agenda. At this time of the year they can inflict grievous damage on emerging foliage by chomping through layers of still furled leaves. Seedlings may also be polished off overnight if precautions are not taken.

Meanwhile, the birds are preoccupied with claiming territories, and – in the case of the males – making a huge hoo-ha about what-a-great-bird-am-I. The shenanigans are mighty: strutting, dancing, fluffing, puffing, bouncing, fly-diving and all manner of showing off. Hen birds select their mates (or in the case of dunnocks, they may indulge in a spot of polygamy). Nest building and egg laying gets under way, with long working hours, from first to last light.

This is the time for gardeners to avoid disturbing nest places (such as hedges and other dense woody growth), and perhaps to leave useful bits of building material around. In our garden, we put hair from the dog brush on the bird table, from where it is carried off for insulation. (I like to think of a brood of blue tits cosied up in a nest lined with Milo’s and Lily’s warm fur.)

Spring sees the first explosion of aphids. In our garden they materialize on rose buds and tulips, and on the two evergreen spurges with the impossible names Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii and E. amygdaloides var. robbiae (in America the latter goes by the sensible and more pleasing appellation Mrs Robb’s bonnet).

Sparrows, greenfinches and tits go mad for the huddles of little green insects, and the euphorbia clumps shimmy with the busy rummagings of the birds. Early aphids are an important food crop, not just for the birds but for the larvae of ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings.

Butterflies come flitting into the open in spring: raggedy small tortoiseshells and peacocks that have overwintered in a tree crevice or shed; and freshly minted orange tips, holly blues and speckled woods that have just emerged from their pupae.

Honeybees return to work, foraging for nectar and pollen among the euphorbias, as well as other early bloomers such as anemone, aubrieta, bergenia, bluebell, crocus and dandelion.

Spring is harvest time for my favourite vegetable, purple sprouting broccoli. It’s nutty-tasting and tender, and leaping with vitamins and iron. I look forward to the first blue-flushed florets of the year with the barely containable excitement of a wine buff anticipating le premier verre of Beaujolais Nouveau.

A FEW BULBOUS CHARACTERS

(INCLUDING CORMS, RHIZOMES AND TUBERS)

Snowdrop (Galanthus), snowflake (Leucojum vernum), crocus, cyclamen, scilla, daffodil (Narcissus), bluebell (native Hyacinthoides non-scripta and its Spanish cousin, H. hispanica), tulip (Tulipa), anemone (including A. blanda, A. nemorosa and A. apennina), grape hyacinth (Muscari), glory of the snow (Chionodoxa), Fritillaria.

FIRST-PAST-THE-POST PERENNIALS

There are dozens of desirable early perennials, but we would be all day listing each and every one of them. Instead, here are just a few to be going on with: lungwort (Pulmonaria), bergenia (also known as elephant’s ears), erythronium, epimedium, Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum x hybridum), primroses and all kinds of Primula, and spurges (Euphorbia) aplenty.

SOME WOODY SPRING THINGS

If you are lucky enough to have humus-rich soil and a large garden, camellias, magnolias and rhododendrons are yours to grow. Rhodos and camellias require lots of calming green to offset their big, noisy flowers, and look out of place in a smaller garden. (Don’t even consider planting or doing anything nice to Rhododendron ponticum, the mauve-flowered beast that has naturalized in parts of Ireland and Britain. It is a plant pest of the highest order, smothering our native flora and turning parts of these islands into a monocultural rhododendron wasteland.)

The flowering dogwoods (Cornus) also like a lime-free, fertile soil. The Viburnum genus is more adaptable: most of these shrubs and small trees are equally at home in acid to slightly alkaline soil. Both the wayfaring tree (V. lantana) and the guelder rose (V. opulus) are happiest in very alkaline soil.

Spring also gives us blossom on the Rosaceae clan: the apples (Malus – both domestic and crab), hawthorn (Crataegus), rowan (Sorbus), juneberry (Amelanchier) and, of course, the cherries (Prunus). All are beloved of bees when in flower, and of birds when in berry.

Clematis are getting into their upward stride. Those flowering now include the evergreen C. armandii (the cultivar ‘Apple Blossom’ has bigger blooms than the species) and all the many manifestations of C. montana.

Buy the book

The Living Garden: A Place That Works with Nature, by Jane Powers, is published by Frances Lincoln, £25/€29