April in our courtyard garden

I have a real love of container gardening. It's a new passion of mine that has recently grown over the past few years. This week it's National Gardening Week and I'm going to celebrate it by bringing you a few gardening themed posts!

I love getting outside in our small courtyard garden.Over the past few weekends we have had the relief of mild weather at last. The sun has been shining and being out in the fresh air pottering round the courtyard has been great for clearing my head and starting a fresh for spring. Recently there have been tiny noticeable changes to our courtyard space signalling that spring has well and truly arrived.

I’ve been poking around our plants checking to see what is still alive and what is growing. Our blueberry bush has new leaves, the mint has burst into life, the clematis has small leaves appearing, the chives have grown...

the lillies I separated last autumn are all growing happily in their new pots, and my three strawberry plants are still alive and have a few new bright green leaves growing. In my cold frame the home grown geraniums are still alive and growing from last year...

Our bulbs are blooming with the daffodils and the blue and white grape hyacinth being the first to flower. The tulips have started to grow but no flower buds are appearing just yet. I cant' wait to have these flower too so we can have different pops of colour brightening the courtyard.

I’ve been busy sorting our space, digging the soil in the empty containers and pots ready to start growing new plants, sweeping up, tiding dead leaves and dead parts of plants and moving a few empty pots and containers around. I moved a few of the pots around so that we could see some of the flowers from our lounge and put a few small pots of Grape Hyacinths to the window ledge while I decide what to add to the window box. I had the company of another lovely Robin both afternoons who was darting around the courtyard enjoying the worms, twigs and bugs I was stirring up.

I found a few hooks on our outside walls that I’m temporarily using for my two hanging baskets. I moved one of the small strawberry plants into one and hung it from a fixing on the wall. I hope the new location will mean the sun will get things moving and we will have a better crop this year. I’ve put some netting over the basket in the hope that any crop doesn't get eaten by visitors!