Bloomin’ Marvellous
It looks like a fantastic year for blossoming trees and shrubs. Spring is truly in the air. Apple and cherry trees have rarely looked better and promise a great harvest. Lilacs of every shade, from pure white to deep purple, are filling the air with their captivating fragrance. The rich yellow flower clusters of Berberis thunbergii combine perfectly with the deep burgundy-coloured foliage. What a superb hedging plant. And I can’t remember seeing so many Magnolia trees in full flower in private gardens – it seems the purple flowering type are the most popular. Forsythia hedges provide splashes of bright yellow and arched Spirea stems are heavy with clusters of small white flowers - popular in parks. Warsaw is becoming a city of flowers! Trees like Magnolias and shrubs like Forsythia are in flower for such a short time. This is the perfect moment to catch them at their best. Here are a selection of photos from today’s wander.
Magnolias are currently at their best, but the flowers will all be gone in just a couple of weeks - don’t miss them!
Forsythias are very popular as hedging plants and as specimens. The bright yellow flowers appear before the leaves and glow in the spring sunshine. Like Magnolias, the Forsythia loses its flowers within just a few weeks.
A slightly less common shrub, the Prunus triloba – flowering almond, provides a stunning display of soft pink flowers contrasting perfectly with the young acid-green foliage. It is generally grown as a garden specimen.
Berberis thunbergii is a colourful hedging plant with year-round interest – yellow flower-clusters seen against rich burgundy-coloured foliage give the plant a dramatic impact. The thorny stems help if fulfil its potential as a protective barrier.
Spirea forms beautiful cascades of drooping stems festooned in small white flower-clusters. It works as a specimen or as a dense hedging plant where room is available.
An apple tree festooned in flowers is a beautiful thing. They are in full blossom right now, which should mean bumper apple crops later in the year! The individual flowers are very beautiful and worth a closer look.
As with apple trees, the cherry trees seem to have more blossom than I can remember for some years - wonderful to see.
As well as feeding the soul, all of those flowers and blossoms provide food for insects, butterflies and bees too. Bloomin marvellous!
Happy gardening, from SeeHow
The above Photographs and Text are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow (07939 226417) for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.
Wicek, now semi-retired, is a multi-award-winning architect. He is also a writer, horticulturalist and keen gardener. He lives in Macduff on the dramatic north Aberdeenshire coast. He invented the unique interactive SeeHow - Gardening Books concept, which actually gardeners how plants and veg grow throughout the calendar-year. Because SeeHow books work visually, anyone can use them - from school children to garden design professionals. Pictures really are worth 1,000 words!
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