The amount of time spent potting has increased recently because we are due to begin supplying a third National Trust property with plants. Silly me, I was supposed to be thinking about taking things a little easier this year and then I found myself offering to supply these extra plants. During the last two or three weeks I have been splitting clumps of plants dug up from the garden, finding seedlings such as Geranium ‘Bill Wallis’ to pot up and also sowing seeds. The weather has been warm and sunny, in fact there have been times when it was a bit too hot to be in the polytunnel. The alpines are popular selling plants and today, in spite of the cold, I made 3 trays of new plants. I also potted some Geum ‘Georgenberg’ into 1 litre pots. My fingers and toes got really cold though so I kept popping into our shed to warm up by the fire.

There were no customers today unsurprisingly but there have been quite a few sales over the last week or so. George is always pleased to see new people although they are not always pleased to receive his attentions. Claire got quite annoyed with him brushing up against her black trousers……

Everything seems to be growing in the garden in a satisfyingly promising fashion. Bulbs are popping up all over the place, some leaves are beginning to show and some plants are looking their best right now such as Viburnum farreri ‘Nanum’. We planted a new tree the other day. It’s a Crataegus x lavalleei ‘Carrierei’. Although the root system wasn’t brilliant it needed a very large hole to be prepared for it. Lots of compost was added to the hole then we slowly back-filled with all the clods of clay. Fingers crossed that it will grow, I really should have bought a smaller tree but I am too impatient. Do come and check on its progress later in the year.