A Whitewashed Garden

Wisteria tumbling over nasturtium leaves

Photo: Chronica Domus

There has been a frenzy of growing activity in the garden over the past few weeks which coincides with the warming temperature, the lengthening day and increased birdsong.  It is as though the landscape is suddenly awash in white.  Wherever I look, both high and low, there is a symphony of white unfurling in every corner of my garden.

 The wisteria beginning to flower, photographed February 25, 2014

Photo: Chronica Domus

One of the things I eagerly anticipate each March is the old wisteria as it faithfully awakens from its dormant winter slumber.  It is typically at its peak around March 15 and rarely a year goes by that it is not.  This year offered no exception, even as premature signs of spring had arrived as inconceivably early as January.  In that first February after buying our home, I was enthralled to have discovered the meandering bine covering the wooden structure, now serving as my potting area, was not in fact the expected, though beautiful, purple variety most commonly seen in our area.  It was instead a snowy white cultivar that provides a profusion of graceful hanging blooms to bedazzle the corner of my garden . What a lovely surprise indeed!  I was unaware that white existed in the world of wisteria.  Obviously, I had a lot to learn as a budding but curious gardener.

The wisteria in all its glory, photographed March 7, 2014

Photo: Chronica Domus

The Prunus salicina Santa Rosa is in full bloom and holds promise for a bumper crop of juicy plums later in the summer months.  I love to watch as the white petals are carried off by gentle breezes and drift to earth as though delicate snowflakes.  It is really rather magical.

 Future plums, if the bees assist

Photo: Chronica Domus

The cherry tree too is in bloom, as seen in the photographs that follow, set against brilliant blue skies.

 

Blossoms among the silvery bark of our cherry tree

Photo: Chronica Domus

Fingers crossed for a bumper cherry crop if these blossoms are any indication

Photo: Chronica Domus

The apple trees are just beginning to reveal their show of delicate fragrant blossoms. Some are touched by a tender blush pink color in their infancy.

Apple blossoms, blush colored prior to fully opening

Photo: Chronica Domus

The fragrance of these apple blossoms is divine

Photo: Chronica Domus

The narcissi are almost done blooming, but not quite.  Thalia, the purest of the white narcissi, have begun to unfurl beneath a small magnolia tree.  The graceful and demure drooping heads bob in the wind and resemble a flock of white doves in flight.  I have other white narcissi in my garden but these 1916 heirlooms hold no peer in terms of their beauty and grace, don't you agree?

Narcissi Thalia, among my favorite narcissi varieties

Photo: Chronica Domus

Oh, and look what I found peeking shyly from beneath the boxwood  This duo is Muscari botryoides Album, the white variety of the common grape hyacinth.  They reliably rear their milky heads just as the blue variety has concluded its performance, at least here in my garden.

Two Muscari botryoides Album

Photo: Chronica Domus

During the evening, the scent of the scrambling and rambunctious star jasmine along the fence begins to saturate the air, especially on warmer nights.  I often catch myself, as I walk towards my home at the conclusion of my evening dog walk, sniffing the perfumed air and marveling at how the strong odor has wafted well beyond what one might assume to be the reach of such sweet and traveling fragrance.  If truth be told, it is almost cloying to the nostrils.

Star Jasmine; pretty with a cloying scent

Photo: Chronica Domus

Gardening is such a humbling experience, especially when little accidents of nature occur, such as when one ends up with a predominantly white landscape, quite unplanned but entirely appreciated.  I estimate that my whitewashed garden will remain this way for at least another month prior to the profusion of color that will follow.  No matter what we plant, of course, nature always has a way of telling us what works best.  Did you notice the plenitude of blue forget-me-nots hovering behind the Thalia narcissi within the photograph of same?  For now, it remains the sole plant contributing color among the snowy shades of white, and one that lays claim to its domain by self-seeding.  Perhaps next year, I should do as Prince Charles has done at one of his gardens at Highgrove, his country residence.  He cleverly conceived an extraordinary black and white garden with examples of the palette in bloom throughout the entire year.  His spring landscaping includes black tulips and grasses.  I can already envision them transforming my white spring garden next year. 

Is your garden an exercise in meticulous planning, or is it much like my own, an on-going haphazard experiment with hopes that something will grow and establish itself in a pleasing combination?