News

It’s a Kind of Magic

The National Botanic Garden of Wales continues to blossom in every way.  The plants in the Great Glass House really come into their own at this time of year.  It even smells wonderful.  Will there ever come a time when I go into the Glass House and fail to see something that I haven’t seen before.  One bit of sadness for me this week was to see that the beautiful Phylica pubescens has been cut right back so that not much of it remains.  This is my favourite plant in the whole of the Garden and I know that it had grown too big and straggly and really needed trimming.  I also know that when a plant is pruned it usually comes back and magically, is better than it was before.  I’m looking forward to that happening to my soft, fluffy friend and, in the meantime, I will continue to go and pay homage to its remains.

The magnolias are already shedding their petals and the cherry blossom is beginning to put in an appearance.  There’s new growth on all the trees and I even saw flowers on the rhubarb!  I know we usually keep rhubarb for its stalks rather than its flowers and perhaps you had never thought of it having any – but it does.  I’m not a grower of fruit and veg but as far as I can see all you have to do to get rhubarb flowers from a rhubarb crown is nothing.  If I’m wrong, no doubt someone will tell me.

I am continually amazed at how many plants appear in flower when you have been absent from the Garden.  We were in Devon and so missed our weekly visits for a couple of weeks.  When we got back there were tulips everywhere, muscari and fritillary in profusion.  Hyacinths giving out their heady scent on the way up to the Apothecary’s Garden, When was all this work done?  We all know that bulbs don’t plant themselves so it’s thanks to the gardeners for their ongoing work in enabling these lovely flowers to appear as if by magic.

It is magical isn’t it how, in the depths of winter, everything seems dead and you wonder whether it will be green again. Then before you know where you are all the bulbs are pushing through, leaves are bursting out and suddenly it looks like summer even if the sun isn’t totally convinced.   We were lucky enough to be away during that lovely warm sunny spell and it really did have a summery feel.  The swallows are back and that it in itself is magic.  It is just so lovely to see them sitting on the telephone wires.

We look forward to our weekly visits to our lovely National Botanic Garden and are never disappointed in what we see when we go.  It’s always possible to find the time to have a little wander and we always manage to find something that we haven’t seen before.  Magic.

Pam Murden

April 11th 2012