InTouch Magazine Articles Archive

Issue 17, April 2008

Gardening This Month

By Patricia Jordan. Author of "The Cyprus Garden" and "The Potted Garden"

April at last. What does April conjure up for you? Blossom, blue skies, bouncy white clouds scudding by and with the warmer temperatures around, bountiful flowers everywhere. What a lovely month it can be.

In the garden flower buds are bursting and the perfume of citrus blossom pervades the air. It is just so wonderful to walk amongst it and take it all in. The first damascena roses are out along with the tiny buttercup yellow Banksia roses which just love to scramble along a fence line. Iris germanica are sending up their tall flower stems to burst into bloom with the first drop of really warm sunshine, whilst the lovely species iris, Iris arabicum has been in bloom for some time now. After them we can enjoy the Dutch iris, Iris xiphium which come in pale and dark blues, yellows and whites and are best grown in groups for effect. Some early hollyhocks are showing their first colours and bedding plants are coming into their own with the increasing temperatures. They didn't enjoy the cold much either.

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