From the Allotment

Just as things are moving on in the garden, so they are in the allotment.  Our allotment gardener has sent some more images:

Here’s a young Bramley apple tree, just coming into blossom.  So many ways to use Bramley apples – makes your mouth water thinking about it!

Our gardener has added a raised bed over the winter.  Fortunately the work was done before the lockdown, or things might have ground to a halt….  I forgot to ask what had been sown in the bed – maybe we’ll get another picture later on.

There are flowers in the allotment, too.  This lovely tulip is nameless, but looks to me as though it could be Grand Perfection.  It’s similar to the flamboyant flamed tulips, the English Florist’s tulip, that kicked off Tulip Mania in Holland – that period of financial madness when a single tulip could sell for the price of a house.  The English Florist’s tulips aren’t commercially available any more because of the Tulip Breaking Virus that they carry – it affects other plants, including lilies, and is the cause of the dramatic colour breaks.  These modern flamed tulips don’t have that virus, and are irresistible for their drama.

This diminutive tulip, smaller in all its parts but utterly charming, is a species tulip, Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’.  Species tulips should be grown more often – they’re no trouble at all.  They don’t need digging up for the summer like their big brothers and sisters, they increase slowly but steadily, and they are totally reliable.  And at 6-8inches tall for most of them, you can squeeze a lot into a small space.

Thanks for sharing!