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The Fernwood Almanac

April in the garden in the Fernwood Almanac, Ludlow, Shropshire

The month everyone plants too early. Sow hard, pot on, and keep the fleece where you can reach it in the dark.

PlateTulips massed in the top nursery, April
In flower

In the nursery and in a garden within about ten miles of Ludlow.

What is out in April

  • Tulip TulipaPeak. The late doubles carry on well into May.
  • Snake's head fritillary Fritillaria meleagrisDamp grass, dappled shade, and left completely alone.
  • Cherry blossom Prunus aviumA fortnight, and one wet night ends it.
  • Bleeding heart Lamprocapnos spectabilisComes up out of nowhere and is three feet across by May.
  • Wallflower Erysimum cheiriThe smell of a warm April wall, and nothing else does it.
  • Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scriptaNative, from the last week. Check the anthers are cream, not blue.
Planting calendar

Written for the Marches, where the last frost is usually the middle of May and the first is usually the end of October.

Jobs for April

Sow

  • Direct outdoors: carrots, beetroot, parsnip, radish, salad leaves.
  • Hardy annuals where they are to flower: calendula, nigella, cornflower.
  • Courgettes and squash under cover, end of the month.

Plant

  • Maincrop potatoes, earthed up as they come through.
  • Evergreen shrubs and conifers, while the soil is warming and still wet.

Divide

  • Late-flowering perennials: asters, heleniums, rudbeckia. Discard the woody middle and replant the outside.

Protect

  • Keep fleece to hand. A clear still night at the end of April will still take the top off a potato.
  • Slug patrol on anything newly planted, for the first fortnight only.
On the benches

What we have in during April

  • Vegetable plugs and seedlings
  • Herbs, hardened off
  • Bedding for the greenhouse (not yet for outside)
  • Clematis and climbers
  • Grow bags and tomato feed

Stock turns over with the calendar. If you are after something specific, ring on 01584 555 0234 before you drive over and we will walk out and look.

From the nursery

A note on this month

The single most useful thing you can buy this month is a roll of fleece and somewhere to keep it that you will remember at ten o'clock at night. It costs less than one tray of bedding and it saves several.

Tom Wray, Nursery manager
What's on

Annual fixtures, so the dates move by a day or two but the months do not.

Around this time of year