The Mitcheldean Garden 2025
The Best Spring Ever

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2025. Click here for the index.

As far as the UK end of our life was concerned, we were again well served by friends and our gas engineer when our heating system went on the blink but you wouldn't have known about it had you not been told. Outside was much the same, there had been the odd storm or two but it had been quite mild and spring was running ahead of itself. What made Spring 2025 very special was that it evolved into the driest and sunniest I have ever experienced  

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Such things were irrelevant to the hyacinths which are only interested in timing their flowering to coincide with our return from Penang. We were reliably informed that, this year, it was more or less a dead heat with the blooms starting to unfold just a couple of days before our arrival. While they can't compete with the bought version, our recycled bulbs put on a very good show, we plant the best of them (based on size) in front of the bungalow. We have so many now, that I have started leaving some in the 'forward' bed (to the right of Yuehong's picture below) and they seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement. There are now literally hundreds of them!

Our best magnolia is undoubtedly the Soulangeana in the bank running down to the road below. The weather was again kind to it and the display ran for the best part of a month until the flowers dropped and the leaves replaced them. It's the only one of our magnolias which can be appreciated by passers by, the rest being well hidden here or in the back garden. I have read that they can grow 6 metres tall (and 4 metres wide) so some pruning will be needed soon...

We have a second Soulangeana at the back above the summer house, it's also a prolific flowerer but to be honest it's a little bit crowded. Further down the Juneberry has never repeated its one glorious year, instead it produces a modest display and puts all its efforts into growing ever higher and wider, maybe it thinks it is a silver birch like its nearest neighbour.  

We have a Magnolia Susan just above the level of our summer house where it seems to be extraordinarily happy. It has just about filled the space allocated to it and produces a huge number of flowers each year but it's more or less unphotographable. I can't bring myself to give it the pruning it really needs. The one on the left below is of a similar vintage and just above the bungalow but it has never 'bolted'. I suspect that the villain of the piece is the Leylandii hedge behind. However, we have now removed the adjacent Forsythia which was infected with galls and that seems to have  helped and it had a very good extended flowering season. We have four more (!) in the bank below the bungalow, one of which is shown on the right below and all had a good season for their size as you can see.

We have two Magnolia Stellata in the same bank, these have taken a while to get established but are naturally the smallest of our magnolias.

Our wallflowers continue to happily occupy their allotted place on the patio and Yuehong cannot resist filling some tubs with pansies which will continue to provide a splash of colour well into high summer..

With the local deer population totally excluded from our back garden, our small Braeburn apple tree appears very happy. This year, it produced masses of flowers, many of which have subsequently progressed to small apples although I would guess that most of them will fail to 'go the distance'.

We have a double Agapanthus which looks like a giant bluebell and each year the flowers progress up to the top of its stalk. It does amazingly well considering Yuehong planted it in the shade of our gum tree...

These days, at the bottom, we unashamedly hide behind a barrier of flowering shrubs like camellias and lilacs, the former flower 'lightly' over several months but our lilacs (the white one is shown (the other is purple) flower in a single burst in May. In front of them are several fuchsias and potentillas. Until the deer destroyed them there was a fabulous line of roses at the top of the bank in front of the bungalow. So far this year we have seen just one in the area in front of the bungalow but it was one too many. To our north we have two houses which have been empty for a year with grass that is ready to 'bolt' now the drought has broken. To the south, our neighbours keep their grass under control at the front but let things rip behind, not that we can see them with our hedges.

We have noticed that country houses often have areas at the back where non-compostable items are sent to rot down over a period of years and, no doubt, provide a haven for all sorts of creepy crawlies. We don't have that amount of space ourselves but we do have an overgrown grazing field at the back which is ideal for the purpose. On the other side and lower down we have two wisteria vines. The one on the left has small insignificant flowers and is on its way out. The other has superb flowers and we are encouraging it to expand its spread. After flowering, it provides shade for the pergola underneath. If left unchecked Wisteria both would find their way across our greenhouse and up onto our bungalow roof.

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