My garden in March

This past month there’s been actual gardening, and our garden bin has been full enough to empty twice - isn’t spring great?! Though after cutting the buddleia down the bin also had more than its fair share of ladybirds so while the lid is up while I’m working, I always wedge it open with a small stone so they can crawl out of their own accord when the fancy takes them.

There was a few immediate things for my to do list, including taming the buddleia as I know it’ll need a couple more trims over the summer, and trimming the spike in the bush below. We can see this from the house and it’s the only one that’s peaked above the top of the wall, so it had to go.

BEFORE

AFTER

Ah, that’s better!

It’s been great to see things spring back into life this month, and to see so many insects too. I got lucky photographing this bee in the creamy green hellebores, and I’m glad it was enjoying them even more than me.

It’s also been a month for trying to get on top of the weeds, some of them have been huge.

But thankfully as the ground is still pretty wet they’ve come out easily. Though with weeds being weeds they’ve managed to grow in the awkwardest of places, which includes under the prickly mahonias so I’ve ended up with quite a few scratches getting to them, and getting them out.

A single hyacinth appeared in the side of the large plastic rhubarb pot, which then flowered and fell over - but looked very photogenic all the way through!

The wallflowers too have sprung to life. I’d noticed last month that they’d ‘bushed out’ quite a lot, this month flower heads started to form and gradually opened sharing their yellow, orange and pink flowers - these are such a favourite of mine and it’s good to see the plant doing so well. My plan is to keep some seed once they’ve flowered so I can grow more to use elsewhere in the garden. Last year I scattered some seeds, but I haven’t seen any new plants yet - though I could have ‘weeded’ them in all honesty.

The grass has had its first cut thanks to MOH. He’s also started to clean the patio, which will be a long job. Though after his success with the trial Monty Miracle we’ve bought some more to use on the rest of the patio.

BEFORE

AFTER

The crab apple tree, which was still laden with mostly rotten crab apples and much visited by the local blackbirds, also got a trim. I left some of the rotting fruit as I know the black birds have been feeding on these, but it had grown so much it needed a trim. My plan is to prune this alternate years, so hopefully that will work out fruit-wise too.

It’s already got green shoots on it following its prune, so that’s a relief!

We’ve had all the weather this month, but the wind and the rain was tough for the new olive tree. It started the month still wrapped in its winter bubble wrap, and I knew that it wouldn’t last this day. I wasn’t wrong and once it was off the pot - thanks to the wind - there was nothing else for it, but to go out and remove it entirely. I was concerned that otherwise the bubble wrap would act as a sail and the olive tree would be really up against it.

The acer by the back door has gone from just about showing leaves to unfurling its new growth in about a week and a half, and I’m sure it won’t be too long before it’s in full leaf.

I’ve had less success with my daffodils, managing a whole three flowers in total. I definitely need to show those bulbs some love once they’ve died back and I’ve decided to go more traditional and plant them in the flower beds. I’m probably also going to follow some advice shared in one of our local garden visits, which is to buy a pack of bulbs each time we got to a garden centre and shove them in the ground too. Thankfully we don’t go to a garden centre that often, but you know what I mean.

That way I shouldn’t have such a daffodil free spring next year!

It’s been great to enjoy some sunny days in the garden too, and managing to get our gardening time to coincide with at least a couple of those. And I’m so pleased that the rosemary outside the lounge window has also bulked out over winter, and it’s in flower too which I’m not sure I ever really saw from our previous rosemary bush - maybe it just wasn’t that type of rosemary.

I’ve still plenty to do in the garden, but that’s how life is for the next few months - and it’s going to be great!

Walking East Stoke's lanes: March 2026

With only one walk through the lanes in our village this month I didn’t think I’d have many photos to share, but seems I was wrong. It was a lovely spring morning when we headed out, and well after a long wet winter a spring walk was just what we needed.

And the blossom was very much welcome too.

There’s definitely something about seeing the first blossom starting to bloom and a direct link to feeling more uplifted isn’t there?

This month we headed down School Lane and then into Church Lane, and it was my first glimpse of the long and winding stone wall for quite a while. Even that has its seasons though, and we’ve already got to the flowering nettles stage of the year, but it wasn’t just the nettles that caught my eye. Look at that ivy.

I was fascinated about how it’s pushed the mortar out between the bricks and taken its place. I knew ivy was strong and forceful - and it’s why I won’t be having any ivy in this garden - but this shows just how much, doesn’t it.

I rather optimistically thought the track that leads to the River Trent would be as dry as the pavements around the village, but that was far from the case. And as I’d opted for the wrong shoes I was at first tiptoeing around the puddles, before calling it a day completely.

Lesson learnt, it’s most likely always going to be wetter in this section - dress accordingly, especially footwear!

It’s not often that I’ll stop and take a picture of Cleaver (or Sticky Willy as we used to call it), but I recently learnt that it can be foraged, with the tips tasting similar to pea shoots. I’ve not tried it as I can’t stand it sticking to me, but let me know if you.

On the way back we just had to stop and look at the sheep - no lambs at this point - but their interest was clearly piqued as we walked past, no doubt wondering if we had any food for them! It’s great to see the sheep back in the fields around us, and no doubt it won’t be too long before our village Facebook group is reporting the antics of escaped lambs!

I can’t wait.

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series.

This March...

I ended last month’s post on needing to sort myself out a wedding outfit, thankfully that turned out to be a relatively easy task in the end. I saw a dress online that I loved and ordered it, but when it arrived it was lovely, but just wasn’t right - a tad too flouncy for me, and I knew that I’d be fiddling with it more than I ought to be. It was the type of dress that was all chiffon and floaty, but it wore me rather than me wearing it if you know what I mean, so it went straight back.

So I took myself into Newark and wandered into the posh dress shop and well basically stood there looking overwhelmed which was absolutely the clue the ladies in the shop needed to jump into action. I tried on many dresses and left with one of the first ones I tried on.

I have a hat (well on a headband), a jacket or a silver cardy, one or other or both depending on the weather - it is in Wales in early April, so you never know. I have a couple of options on shoes - as you’d expect, and have also purchased a lovely green bag, and a pashmina too. So I’m all set.

Well apart from the food shop - we have three nights in an AirBnB with my parents and my brother and his wife. But that should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?

At times it’s felt like spring has arrived - and we’ve had lunch outside at one of our favourite cafes - and yet at other times it feels like winter is well and truly back. But there is hope of more blue skies to come, as the garden is also starting to wake up.

There’s been a couple of torrential downpours, almost storm-like conditions and way more than ‘April showers’ and we woke one morning to further issues with our heat pump, with it tripping the RCD which wasn’t great. Thankfully this was easy to resolve and shouldn’t happen again.

One of our old - and the most used of the two - sofas has been collected, which leaves one to get rid of which I’m hoping we’ll be able to give to someone who needs a sofa - but that won’t happen until I’ve sorted that out obviously.

We also have a brand new road through most of the village, and right outside our front door. It meant two overnights of work but it’s worth it. We no longer have pot holes and it’s much quieter with the traffic too. Though it followed a week of overnight closures on the nearby A46 which meant increased traffic for those nights, so it’s been a long slog of interrupted sleep. But with the roadworks cleared on the A46 there’s definitely less traffic passing through the village - there’s still some speeders, and these are much more noticeable with less traffic so there’ll still be ongoing speed watch sessions I’m sure.

MOH flexed his cooking urge making slow cooked lamb shank and artichoke ragu from the Padella cook book which he received at Christmas. It tasted fabulous and while the original plan was to also make the pasta, that was shelved for another day, which is fine as I’ve got two more meals-worth in the freezer ready to go.

We’ve been out and about a fair bit this month too, even heading to Nottingham twice in a few days once to watch some Super League Netball games, and the other for Alex James’ Britpop Classical. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in and around the netball community, and even then in a totally different area, but it was great to see a friend umpiring one of the games.

We’ve been enjoying listening to Alex James’ Sunday evening show on Virgin Radio and it was great to see the Britpop Classics in person, as well as having a good old 90s singalong and bop around to the songs.

It’s been a busy month for making too. I’ve set out my quilt plans and non-quilt plans for the year and it’s helpful to have a plan. Last year my sewing was dominated by the one a month charity quilts (aka my ‘stretch’ project) so it’s good to have time to explore other things.

And I have. Already I’ve explored some miniature makes and taught myself how to use the Flying Geese rulers I’ve had for a while, and which will be a game changer for my Teal Flying Geese quilt. I’ve even finished my most recent hand embroidery project which I already love - and it’s so my colours.

I was also pleased when my skein from Vicki Brown’s 100Skeins project arrived this month in ‘my colours’ - I have no plans for this at the moment, but it’s a project that I love and I love to support. Each year Vicki dyes 100 skeins which are all different and does this with the support from backers who pledge to buy at least a skein. Times are tough right now, especially for small businesses and so I was really pleased to see this initiative continue, and it’s even better when she sends a skein that matches your preferences so well.

So that was a busy March, April is already looking just as busy but with the lighter evenings I’m here for it.