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This is the perfect time of year to sow Echium seeds, our favourite annual at the Floral Hall. We plant it at the fronts of borders and as a trailing plant in our raised beds where its deep blue flowers go really well with the silver ‘Snow in Summer’ and purple sage. It attracts loads of bees and butterflies and flowers non-stop from June to September. If you haven’t got time to sow seeds then you can buy a pot or two of young Echium plants in our new plant sales area. We also now stock a range of annuals and perennials along with a selection of vegetable, salad and herb seedlings grown by trainees at our project for people with learning disabilities.

Our resident ducks are doing well. Florence still hasn’t starting sitting on her eggs. We are still finding abandoned clutches of one and two eggs in strange tucked away places under shrubs, but she and Dizzy seem quite happy making a big mess in the ponds and have yet to become truly domesticated and committed parents.

What’s looking good:

Outside - bright swathes of tulips in the borders
The Tropical House – bright pink bouganvillea; trailing tassels of Thunbergia flowers, gorgeous double apricot coloured Hibiscus flowers and the first Heliconiums just beginning to appear amid the lush tropical leaves.
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Now at last it is warming up outside and the sun has brought on all the early bulbs that we planted last autumn. There are clusters of white crocuses around the edges of flower borders, dwarf irises in the rockery, miniature daffodils unfurling their flowers, and grape hyacinths appearing under the bushes and trees.

The warmer weather has also warmed the water up just enough to wake up our Koi Carp, in time for our first school visit of the year. Feeding the fish is a popular activity for school children, but our Koi Carp stop eating during the winter, so we were relieved that the nursery class was able to feed a group of hungry wide awake fish rather than sleeping ones.

The children were also able to inspect our newly sited bird boxes to see whether any small birds have decided to make their homes there, as well as participating in making their own nests to take home for Easter.

The Floral Hall gardeners have been busy this week potting up plug plants, completing woodwork painting to give a uniform appearance to all our fences, sheds and gates, and giving a first spring feed to plants in the subtropical glass house.

Highlights at the Floral Hall this week:

Inside:
Grapefruit, lime and orange flowers (they also smell wonderful); pendulous pink flowers of Medinilla Magnifica from the rainforests of tropical Africa and South East Asia; fragrant purple flowers of Brunfelsia pauciflora ‘Macrantha’, orchids and hippeastrums.

Outside:
Spring flowering bulbs such as Iris reticulata, crocuses, dwarf daffodils and Pushkinia libanotica
]]> http://www.invernessfloralhall.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100212-143514 Welcome to our new blog!

Please stay tuned for the latest happenings
in and around the Inverness Floral Hall.]]>