Despite the bitter east winds we have been having, more of the new azaleas have started to bloom. The latest is ‘Caroline de Rothschild’. It is a different colour to the rest in this area and is double pink and sweetly scented. It is relatively new and was bred in New Zealand and named after this member of the Rothschild family from Exbury, famous for deciduous azaleas. It was raised by Denis Hughes of Blue Mountain Nurseries. He has raised other azaleas including a double white ‘Pavlova’. He hybridises a wide range of plants and has turned his attention to francoas among other things – which might bring these lovely, neglected plants into the limelight.

I think the flowers will become pinker as they age but we will see. Despite the fact that it is a bit of an anomaly among my collection of white and yellow azaleas I think I will come to like this a lot.

Dry, sunny weather encouraged us to finally paint the house. We named it the ‘Green House’ when we bought it and started the work finishing it and bought the paint soon after but it is only now that we have tackled the work. We will paint as much as we can till lockdown ends and we can hire a cherry picker but the first step is the most important!

The paint pots say sage green but it is definitely not the colour we expected. I suppose it is some sort of green.

(The white thing is a blown-down dust sheet, not a body at the bottom of the ladder)

azalea caroline de rothschild, Blue mountain nursery, Denis Hughes