I have borrowed a camera from my daughterjust in time to show you how the garden is behaving. The herbs are always quickest to start – someone said they have the souls of weeds, which give them incredible vigour and hardiness (translated, means they get out of hand very easily!), and the thyme which you can see here is bulking up nicely.

In the woodland garden – i.e., under the birch tree – the primroses are out, the violets are throwing up a lot of freshh green leaf, but no flowers as yet, ferns and aquilegias are coming through well, there are two erythroniums coming up this year, and the hellebores and pulmonarias look fabulous.