A very British Easter

Well - it is the Easter weekend and it is raining. To be expected back home in the UK, but not good form at all for SW France. The up side is that it is lovely and warm. Yesterday our thermomenter reached 18.5 centigrade; so that and the wet weather means that it is a great moment for moving around seedlings and dividing plants.

Normally I like to have finished any transplanting at the end of March because it quickly becomes too dry for there to be a decent life support system for unestablished plants to survive, but this year I have had to delay things because the ground has been so wet. I move around things that do well in our garden, trying to put them in a similar environment or spreading them a bit further from the parent plant to create a clump of one species with impact. This is what I did yesterday:

We have an Acanthus Mollis which I bought several years ago and planted in a sunny but dampish spot. It has started to send out young plants and I hacked a couple off, moving them further from the mother Acanthus to give a lovely big clump of them. They have huge architectural leaves and tall flowers which continue to look good after the flowers have faded. Then I moved around a couple of species of hellebore which have seeded prolifically. Lenten Hellebores (appropriately enough) - my all time favourite - and Stinking Hellebores (unkind really as they don't pong; the leaves smell a bit 'meaty' when crushed). These latter were given to me by my friend Jill in the UK and they have proved to be absolute winners. A peony (Sarah Bernhardt) was moved next to her namesake and then I moved an Alchemilla Mollis. This does not thrive in our garden and this will be the third place I have tried it out. I spoke to it nicely and introduced it to its new neighbours in a very positive manner. Lets hope it works.

Took Spangle for a walk in the rain this afternoon and went to check on them all. Dog and I were drenched and wilting, but the plants all look great.