It is still too wet underfoot to do much gardening but at least this dull weather is associated with a mild, westerly airflow so, although it is not very good for gardening, plants are growing. The silly Japanese plum, that flowers far too early every year, did not get caught by frost when in flower this year and it gives me hope that we might get at least one fruit from the thousands of blooms. The other plums are starting to open so maybe this is the year we get a crop of plums. Even the three-year-old damson actually has buds this year.

The past weekend was devoted to our first weekend selling flowers to raise money for Hope Cancer Support Centre. It coincided with Mothers’ Day and we sold 20 bunches, which was about all I could find in the garden and included two bunches of freesias from the greenhouse – there should be more for a few weeks. The daffs should keep going for many few weeks and then the tulips will be raided. These are all from previous year’s tulips. I lift them and sort them and replant in the raised beds in October. Some varieties are four years old and although they now get very mixed and the small bulbs do not all flower, a good proportion do and there are more each year. I only keep the largest to replant and am getting the hang of what a flowering bulb looks like.

A few small tulips are starting to bloom in the garden but the buds are refusing to open in the dull conditions. In the seaside garden Tulipa praestans is showing cheery red and should last a long time if the buds remain stubbornly closed.

Just the other side of the Grevillea ‘Canberra Gem’ which is just starting to bloom, is Pachystegia insignia, the Marlborough daisy. Not a common garden plant, it is worth growing for the shiny foliage alone, though the flower buds and open flowers are lovely too.

Rosemaries are starting to bloom and their flowers are popular with the early bumblebees, as is the grevillea. The creeping rosemaries are not as hardy as others but have managed to get through the wet winter and the early cold snap of -6c, as have the grevillea and pachystegia.

Elsewhere in the garden, after three years the Spiraea prunifolia is finally doing its stuff.

This is the first year it has waited for warmer weather to open its beautiful, though dainty, flowers and the plants are large enough to create a weak blizzard of bloom. It can only get better from now on. Much as the weather – I hope.

grevillea canberra gem, rosemary, spiraea prunifolia