Spring. Spring! It jumps at you, doesn't it? No coincidence, for my money, that the name of the season is the same word as the verb that actually means a sudden movement, a leap. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, spring is a term that originally referred to the source of a well or stream and was then broadened to mean the first sign or beginning of something. In the 15th and 16th century, people apparently used the phrase "the spring of the year" which then became shortened to "spring". Before, this first season had only been known as lent.

And yes, it's no stretch of the imagination to link the season with a well, with fresh water bubbling from the ground. Because aren't many young shoots doing just that? And isn't the season as invigorating and life-affirming, if not to say life-giving, as a mountain spring? No doubt. But I still think the verb, the leaping and jumping, as much a name-giver as anything. The image seems so fitting: A coil released, all systems go! A sudden explosion of the vegetation after a few warm days.

Into this January, it had been unseasonably mild. But February and March, unlike in previous years, were consistently chilly. Plants took the hint and remained cautious. In April however, at least here in London, buds seemed incapable of any further restrain. So sunshine and a rise in mercury have now led to an eruption of foliage and flowers. The cherries are out at last, billowing clouds of white and pink blossom with hints of lime green or copper from the emerging leaves in between.

Seen against a blue sky I can never keep myself from smiling as everything inside me wants to skip and sing and dance and twirl, arms outstretched, finally collapsing in a heap under these miracles humming with bees. I wish we'd do like the Japanese and celebrate it with a national holiday and picnics and whatever else this sensitive people have come up with. Cherry blossom is when spring has well and truly arrived. Everything else before feels just like a prelude.

What still surprises me each and every year, however, are the horse chestnut trees (Aesculus hippocastanum) and their buds. I've seen it happen so many times and yet still can't get my head around just how quickly they grow and expand once the original "signal" has been received: all that penned up energy released, they race into action. You can almost watch the shoots growing, the downy leaves unfurling and spreading. And I'm still convinced that, if only I had better ears, I could hear them grow - in a whisper, a rustling, like tissue paper. And occasionally a cracking: first when those big sticky buds open and then when "joints" adjust to a different angle. In no time there are not just huge leaves but those candles full of flower buds, too.

In my own garden, suddenly there is fresh mint and lemon balm to pick for infusions. I consider my small plot entirely ornamental, but those herbs are an exception to the rule and we enjoy them never more than at this time of year. With the mint "running" (i.e. spreading via runners) and the lemon balm self-sowing everywhere, picking also helps keep them in check.

Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis, still widely known by its former name Dicentra spectabilis) now stretches at last and produces its lovely sprays with the dangling heart lockets. Was it the chill after early mild temperatures, was it a drought I didn't notice? It had started to bloom when the shoots were no more than an inch out of the ground: very sad looking since totally stuck and congested. I had worried that this might be it, but the plant starts showing its graceful arching flower stalks again. I grow both the white and the pink-with-white version but prefer the latter.

Both, however, go really well with another darling out in my garden right now: Omphalodes cappadocica. Their flowers very much resemble those of Forget-me-not’s and indeed both belong to the Boranginaceae family. I cherish both ‘Starry Eyes’ (blue stripes, like a star, on a white background that sometimes has a tinge of purplish-pink to it) and ‘Cherry Ingram’ (true deep blue of a luminious quality that is hard to find in flowers). Those cultivars, by the way, have bigger flowers than the species hence make more of an impact.

I grow both Omphalodes’ in pots, together with perennials which are slow to start - such as hostas or astrantias. That seems to work well: by the time those get going properly, the former have had a head start and begin to withdraw a little anyway. They are evergreen but in my experience benefit from a "haircut", i.e. cutting off the old leaves in late winter as you might do with Epimedium or Helleborus. 
Much as I’d want Omphalodes to light up my slim rim of a border aka open ground as well, they won’t oblige. Whether they dislike the clay soil more, though it is continually improved with compost, or the competition from their neighbours I don’t know.

Another winning combination is the likewise true blue of Corydalis flexuosa ‘Pere David’ and the small red flowers of Camellia japonica 'Shikibu’. A strong contrast, but perfectly in tune with the exuberance of the season – especially since the red of the Camellia is echoed in the reddish stems of the Corydalis.

While Omphalodes won’t grow well in my “border”, the latter is a joy at this time of year thanks to tulips. I grow new cultivars and combinations each year, restricted however to white, pink in all shades and really dark ones. Sometimes I add orange, sometimes I go for purple. I love other colours too, of course, but have banned the “warm spectrum” from the garden because too many would fragment such a small space even further. Orange tulips sometimes escape this rule because I like lily-flowered ‘Ballerina’ so much. (And yes, there is a handful of other exceptions such as my pride and joy, the Sophora tetraptera - New Zealand’s “Kowhai” - I raised from seed.)

I treat my tulips as annuals, i.e. once they have flowered I pull them up. There wouldn't be much of a show next year anyway, thanks to the London clay which they dislike. By the time they are finished, the space is also much needed by their neighbours which get into their stride. I’d rather buy anew each autumn and have a proper show to look forward to than hope against all odds that they might bloom again. I'd also rather avoid the annoying sight of yellowing tulip leaves from which there is simply no escape in a tiny garden. The upside of having a pocket-sized plot of course is that buying new bulbs each year remains affordable.

But there are some tulips I keep,  namely a bowl full of small Tulipa ‘Little Beauty’. And it lives up to its name: magenta-pink petals, white and blue inside towards the bottom of the calyx, and blackish-blue pollen sacs. All no more than 20-25 cm high and dainty and graceful, except for the by now rather uncombed looking narrow leaves.

This spring I can just enjoy them. Why not before? Well, after a handful bloomed a few years ago, I decided I really liked them and wanted to add some more bulbs to my stock. At the local market, I bought Tulipa ‘Little Princess’: There were no pictures but the bulbs looked exactly like the ones I already had and the name, for all I remembered, seemed correct and apt. Except the flowers came up purple and yellow…  Which, by the way, just goes to show that you should always buy from a reputable source if you are after anything specific. Because 'Little Princess' really is a reddish-orange species tulip with a gold yellow ring around a black centre! What I most likely was sold is Tulipa humilis 'Eastern Star'.  Anyway, the clash of colours was excruciating. I had to separate the beauty from the alleged princess.

First I tied twine around every purple flowering tulip, thinking I could thus identify them once the plants had withered. I should have known better. Once dead, the straw-dry stalks and leaves simply came off before I could dig up the bulbs they had been attached to, no matter how careful I was. Apart from that, the bulbs of course had produced daughter bulbs which complicated matters further. So last year I was ruthless and dug up every purple-yellow flower as soon as the buds showed colour. It worked, but the sight of the bowl wasn’t very pretty after that and the dug-up plants took it very personal. They are homed with Tulipa tarda now, a small yellow and white species, and I hope they’ll be strong enough to flower again next spring at which point I might pass that bowl on to someone else.

You can't outwit nature. Here we are in early April, and out in the North Devon countryside spring flowers are limited to primroses, celandines and daffodils. Just as you would expect for this time of year, perhaps. Except that I had been convinced we'd spend our holidays surrounded by lush greenery and a riot of wild and garden flowers.

You see - in London the first magnolia blooms were open in early January already, a good two and a half months early. And when we then had booked our Easter break, I had reckoned that come April everything would be far advanced. So no need bothering with a trip to Cornwall, I thought, to see the famous camellias and magnolias in all their glory. They would long be past it. After all, this blessed county usually is even more ahead than London when it comes to spring flowering times.

So why not go for North Devon instead? In previous years we had shunned this corner for the Easter break because nature tends to be still fairly barren while I crave flowers. This year, however, there surely would be fresh green leaves, bluebells, sea pinks, red campions and all sorts of other delights.

Not a bit of it! Of course I became suspicious when the same Leucojum plants in my garden that had dangled their white and green flowers at the start of the year were still in bloom by early April. As were, in fact, the magnolias in the neighbourhood. But by then it was too late. To Devon we were bound.

Here, the three usual suspects mentioned above are putting on a glorious show, but for anything else you have to crouch to the ground: some few tiny violets, some single forlorn stitchwort and a few similarly lost windflowers. Not even the blackthorn blossoms yet! And as for green: there’s no lack of it but it comes mainly in the form of ivy, moss and lichens covering each and everything – the British West Country’s very own rainforest vegetation. And very beautiful it is. Just not quite what I had hoped for…

Whilst we enjoy the walks, I thought I'd share a few pictures from before this blog was born. Same time last year I was in magnolia heaven: at Caerhays Castle Gardens. Half a day was spent in recharging solitude (the children and my man went elsewhere with grandparents) wandering amongst white, pink and purple flowering trees of unbelievable sizes and an understorey of camellias and rhododendron in all hues imaginable.

In essence, Caerhays is an enormous woodland garden in a wonderful setting in Cornwall. The focal point at its historic heart is the castle which seems like an illustration from a story book and looks out over a small secluded sandy cove. (I'm no architecture buff but it looks like gothic revival to me - apologies if it is genuine...)

The gardens were only begun about 110 - 115 years ago when the then owner J.C. Williams started to take a keen interest in rhododendrons. While he originally bought his plants from the famous Veitch nursery, he soon contributed substantially to several expeditions by their great plant hunters E.H. Wilson and George Forrest, the latter's third Chinese expedition (from 1912 - 1915) even sponsored exclusively by Williams. Soon seeds began to arrive - not just of rhododendrons but of a whole host of other Chinese plants, too, many if not most of them new to Western gardens.

Hybridisation, i.e. the deliberate crossing of two (related) species quickly commenced, resulting in a huge variety of new plants in the grounds. Several have since been named and registered with the Royal Horticultural Society and received numerous awards. What Williams is best known for and how most gardening-inclined people will have heard of him, however, are the x williamsii camellias. These originate from a crossing of Camellia japonica and the then newly introduced species Camellia saluenensis. Apparently, they are not just more floriferous and vigorous but also much hardier than their parents.

Today, Caerhays also holds a National Collection of Magnolias and an ongoing replanting programme aims to keep the gardens up to date. This means replanting for when the original plants reach the end of their life (in ornamental shrubs and trees that's usually after 60 - 100 years) but also expanding the various collections (the magnolias are just the most prestigious). The garden itself expands in the process - several fields have been added to it and planted with shelterbelt species and, once those are mature enough to provide protection, choice treasures. Oh, and they have continued to cross and breed new varieties since J.C. Williams' day, Caerhays still being owned by his descendants.

Funnily enough the current issue of Devon's Country Gardener, a free publication I picked up on the way to our current holiday quarters, informs me that Caerhays Castle has won the 2016 Garden of the Year Award from the Historic Houses Association. My pictures certainly aren’t Tourism Board grade (it was an overcast day and I had nothing more than a point-and-shoot camera with me) but maybe they nonetheless convey a little of the fascination and joy I felt on seeing all these magnificent blooms in such a stunning location.