Late April Colour

There is no better shrub in any garden in late April than the Pieris. Our star specimen is a 15 foot tall Pieris forestii which will not be at its best for another week - so I've left this treat for your pleasure next weekend. This one is one of the dozens of new varieties that litter garden centres today. We grow a few of them, and keep the best, and this is the best. Its offers really nice variegation even when the bracts are not showing colour. A Pieris does like a good rich soil - even if it will survive almost anywhere. The little yellow plant in the background is a dwarf doronicum.

We grow several rhododendrons. One was featured on this blog last weekend, and there will be another next weekend. This variety is not particularly striking as a shrub, but it does carry brilliant individual blooms. Its still a young plant, but so far the downside is that there are not many blooms. Perhaps it will improve with age. But this one bloom has made it worth growing in my book.

And my third offering today is one of the Azaleas. We grow the deciduous varieties mostly, but I'm really taken with this one, which I bought for a fiver in an end-of-season sale. We've been around the Derwen Garden Centre today, and there were some super examples of this type of Azalea. Didn't buy because they were not showing full colour yet, and I want to know exactly what colour I'm buying.