April is here and there is so much going on in the garden. First, the roses — they are about to bloom.  Looking at them now, I’m comforted that I did not prune too much. Maybe the first year I pruned the climbers when I shouldn’t have, but every other rose seemed to take the aggressive pruning well. Buds are everywhere waiting to bloom. I cut my first rose on Easter morning.

The second news is somewhat disappointing but not uncommon to my garden—I dug up my seed nursery. Well now, what can I say? It had originally been the home of a nice fat Erysimum Bowles (mauve) that died. When it did, it left me with a garden hole, not one you could see, but one that was sheltered and became my “nursery” where many plants such as this nemesia self-sowed. But I dug it up and planted a new Erysimum Bowles “Mauve”, popularly called wallflower, and now, who knows.  The Rudebekia seeds were so tiny. I’m sure they are buried under too much dirt now. But at least, I had a “control” set in peat pots along with some Coneflowers. There are a few tiny sprouts now.

The Erysimum Bowles, by the way, is a great perennial. It takes little water, grows in a nice even mound, blooms almost continuously. The only complaint I have is that a few of mine have bloomed themselves out of existence after a few years. They grew woody and split open, which I’ve heard about lavender, but I seem to encounter that more with the wallflower—I read it’s “short-lived” somewhere so maybe this is expected.

I’m also not quite sure how to prune it. Perhaps this leads to the problem above (the splitting open), but the leaves and flowers seem to reside in the outer orb of the plant and when I’ve cut it back, it looks dead so go figure!

Let me know if you have any ideas. I have three in my front garden right now and they do look good against a wall.