Bird count tops 70! Garden opens tomorrow

The garden opens for the season tomorrow so we are rushing round doing some last minute things to get ready - but there is still time for me to post on my blog and to include this lovely picture from yesterday of drifts of chinodoxas in the border in front of the old espalier apple tree. These pretty little blue flowers self seed amongst the herbaceous plants and spend the rest of the summer dormant whilst the borders fill out with greenery and flowers. Then when everything is just starting to emerge after winter, they are cheerfully there, spreading across the border and providing nectar for early bumble bees.

Each year the amazing bird count creeps up and with two new species recorded by Alan Todd over the winter, it has just topped 70!! One of the new birds was a crossbill which is exciting - I think it is quite incredible that a small piece of ground, given all the right conditions of shelter, nest sites, food and water, can attract such a range of birds. Birders bring your binoculars!

I have just cut down the Verbena bonariensis in the formal beds, saving this job til the last moment and leaving the dead sticks on all winter to protect them. Today I'll cut down the wall germander, rue and lavender - all left thankfully over the winter which turned out to be harder than the last few years. I find in Northumberland that these pruning jobs are best left til March, along with buddleias and hardy fuschias.

The greenhouse is full of young plants ready for sale and daffodils bloom under the glass. The rosemary 'Tuscan Blue' flowers prolifically next to the pale pink of nectarine flowers against the white wall. All just ready and poised waiting for visitors to come and enjoy.

Snowdrops and snowflakes

The woods around Chesters Walled Garden are full of snowdrops at the moment, great undulating sweeps of them stretching away amongst the bare trunks of beech trees. Within the walled garden itself there are more snowdrops, as well as some specials such as the gorgeous, large snowdrop, Galanthus plicatus. It's a pity that the cold, windy weather is stopping early bees from benefitting from all the bounty. Other plants are in flower: sky-blue Scillas, spotted Hellebores in varying shades of pink and deep maroon, fragrant Viburnum farreri, rosemary in the greenhouse, fat buds on the protected peach tree and out in the garden, the lovely pointed bells of snowflakes.

I love their vibrant green, less bluey than the leaves of snowdrops, and the little green points on their old fashioned-lampshade shaped flowers. These are spring snowflakes, Leucojum vernum, yet there are already some sporadic flowers on the taller, so named summer snowflake, Leucojum aestivum. A seemingly odd name this as it always flowers about March or April but it was named by Linnaeus for whom it bloomed much later in Sweden.

Gardens in other parts of the world have been delighting us on Sundays with Monty Don's Around the World in 60 Gardens series. The most memorable for me have been the ones that widen my concept of gardens - the floating gardens of South America, the organic vegetable plots on derelict land in Havana or great sweeps of prairie grasses. I found it particualry interesting that in the last programme, from America, the two gardens that I loved the most were the two most modern and yet at opposit ends of the design spectrum - James van Sweden's fenland meadow and the stunning Californian house and garden.

winter aconites and snowdrops

Winter aconites are flowering in the garden and have done since the first week in January; I had thought this was rather early but looking at my gardening notes for 1993 I found that they were also out then. Snowdrops are in flower too, but this week of cold weather will hold them back a bit. I am glad of the frosty nights which are a natural part of winter but also glad that I had watched the forecast and thoroughly fleeced the fig and myrtles in the walled garden.

The nuts and seeds are crowded with birds getting food to keep the cold at bay; blue, great and coal tits, robin and dunnock foraging underneath and the splendid vivid colours of greater spotted woodpecker and goldfinch. A bird count is updated each year and is on display in the shop, showing what birds frequent the garden in each month. The teasels are left standing as long as possible for the goldfinches to extract their seeds (the downside is the plethora of teasel seedlings in the borders!) but I cut those down after the last gales had battered them about. The paths are littered with rose hips brought down in the high winds - a beautiful sight, their brilliant orange-red shapes jewelling the grey of the gravel paths. I am keeping a close eye on the tulip beds to make sure the bulbs are not dug up by pheasants again this year. They do so much damage with their large feet and claws, knocking over plants in their pots in the sales area and scratching around. Once we are open and there are visitors in the garden, most of the pheasants move off although there is always one each year that raises a brood of chicks, much to the delight of the visitors!