After a slow start the garden is truly waking up and making up for the long winter…and how! We have beautiful blossom and lush foliage in spades.

The stars of the show at the moment are the magnificent magnolias, stunning velvety ivory and pink flowers framed against blue spring skies and carpeting the ground like confetti where they fall. Among them are some grand specimens as old as the garden itself such as the many Magnolia campbellii – sourced and planted by the garden’s creators more than one hundred years ago and a testament to their vision.

Rhododendrons, towering magnolias and blue skies

The rhododendrons for which Bodnant Garden is famous are now really romping away, providing a breathtaking kaleidoscope of colours around every corner, from vibrant reds, purples and tangerines to pastel yellows and pinks.

In the upper garden tulips in every shape, form and colour are lighting up beds and borders, clematis are climbing the terrace walls (in a good way) racing to beat the budding wisteria and…wait for it…the drooping flowerheads of our famous Laburnum Arch are just poised to burst. Fingers crossed for a little more sunshine in the next fortnight.

Tulipa ‘Monte Flame’ and Clematis ‘Frances Rivis’ on The Terraces

In the Shrub Borders swathes of bluebells are taking over from the daffodils sweeping grassy glades and a variety of trees and shrubs are flowering. Look out Amelanchier lamarckii, Prunus ‘Shirotae’, Chaenomeles japonica, Fothergilla monticola, Weigela middendorffiana and Exochorda x macrantha. Your nose will lead you to the gloriously scented Osmanthus delaviyi and Viburnum judii.

Cerise Primula pulverulenta amongst greenery the Dell

In The Dell ferns are opening and herbaceous plants are suddenly providing a deep, lush pile. Dotting through this carpet are clumps of fluffy white Maianthemum racemosum and nodding heads of Leucojum aestivum, while fritillaries, primulas native and exotic, and sapphire blue pulmonaria, omphalodes and brunnera break through the green.

Let’s not forget the much-maligned but impressively sculptural skunk cabbage, Lysichiton americanus (seen left), which line the river banks underneath giant conifers. Love them or hate them they look so right here in the other-wordly space of The Dell.

As the garden hots up so does the pace of work. This week gardeners have been making pea stick frames to support growing herbaceous plants, mulching and feeding and furiously weeding beds while our arborists have been doing maintenance on trees.

But even the simple task of weeding takes on new meaning at Bodnant Garden, with gardeners getting into ponds and streams to clear debris and overgrowth and abseiling down cliffs to beautify steep banks. There’s never a dull moment, but as you can see it’s worth it!

For more pictures of what’s looking good at the moment see the album Now Showing on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/BodnantGardenNT where you can also see work going on around the garden.

‘Plants on the edge’ was the theme of Michael Boatman’s talk about his cruise around the UK with gardens looking very lush in the rain.  The garden’s theme was continued by Marian and Peter Badger who talked about ‘Four Welsh Gardens’. Spelling of Welsh words made noting down their names a little difficult, but I think they were Powis Castle with its fantastic topiary and NC of Laburnum,  Erddig with a superb 18th century formal garden and NC of Hedera, and on Anglesey Plas Cadnant a lost garden being restored on a grand scale and Plas Newydd, home of the Marquess of Anglesey.

Jeff Bull finished off the evening with some tips on pruning; wear a leather glove on your free hand to protect it from your secateurs which should be held in a naked hand to help with the grip; regularly clean the sap off the secateur blades and finally think about when the shrub flowers - for early flowering specimens, prune after flowering and for late flowerers, prune in spring.  Obviously this is much simplified but a very good guideline.

But for sheer DIY cheek, Brian Deaville with his talk on Simple Propagation was a star.  If you thought that Geoff Hamilton was a ‘make do and mend’ kind of gardener, then he could have learned a few things from Brian.  Using large glass jars he created the perfect environments for successful cuttings.  (See the pictures for how this looks).  Moss, gleaned from his lawn, in the bottom of the pot provides a reservoir of water, add compost, shaken not pressed, then fuchsia cuttings taken above a node and handled by the leaves only.  Seal up the jar and leave until signs of growth are seen, on a north facing window sill or at the bottom of a north facing wall once the weather improves .  Using a soup carton with its inbuilt ‘shading’ means that sunnier spots can be used without risking scorching the plants.  Short of space? A coleslaw pot with lid provides space for several leaf cuttings.  A foil tray from a chocolate tray bake, a polystyrene tray from last year’s bedding plants and a plastic container from the Sunday roast make a perfect mini greenhouse.  Needless to say, when asked if he used rooting powder, the idea was dismissed as ‘an unecessary expense’.

All this home grown knowledge and information, as Sylvia said in her talk ‘you learn something every time’.  And the winner of Anne Folkes’ fiendish quiz?  No time to mark the questions, so that accolade will be awarded at the next meeting on February 13th when  Andrew Fisher Tomlin will give a talk on ‘New Planting: a Prediction of the Gardens and Plants that will Become Iconic’.

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