Once upon a time it was October, then June, and more recently it has become May. I have decided the fifth month of the year has become, at least for the moment, my favourite in the gardening calendar. And what a May this year brought us. From late frosts, to torrential rain, then finally a heatwave, it confused gardener and plants alike. But the end result here in south west Scotland was a frothy, vibrant and totally inspiring month when the Dumfriesshire Garden never looked better.
Here are some of the highlights.
At the very end of the month, something special happened. The small tree, Cornus Kausa Chinensis, five years after planting, came into flower for the first time. Not so many blooms right enough, but hugely uplifting with their delicate petals of pale, greenish-white. Pure elegance with a peaceful aura, and visible from the kitchen window too!
The adjacent Viburnum ‘snowball tree’, quick to flower when first planted, again produced another wonderful display, its colours subtly changing with hints of pink, as the month went on. I bought it a few years ago from a grower, who told me ‘it’s tough as old boots’ and he was right.
White was also a popular theme in a new garden feature. I installed a metal table just outside our living room and in full view from the indoors, and soon had to add another. Laden with pots of spring bulbs in April, in May they were home to geranium, hydrangea and saxifrage, with French lavender for contrasting colour. It’s curious how much pleasure these little tables are creating, as well as the mindful calm of deadheading whenever anyone goes out of the door or comes back in. More plants are in the pipeline for the tables, as the summer progresses.
In the various borders of the garden, May saw an explosion of growth, both in things I had planted and some that I had not. I was especially pleased with the epimediums, primulas, colocasia, rogeria, ferns and hostas, as well as early drifts of lupins, which in recent years have steadily seeded themselves around the big border. Couch grass, buttercup, willow herb, sticky willy and the insidious bindweed, were less welcome however, and had to be kept in check whenever an opportunity and the will arose.
Sadly, and in contrast to last year, May 2026 was a very poor month for meconopsis: lots of plants lost to frost, and late flowering from rather feeble specimens.
The azaleas, however, were in high gear.
As this inspiring month unfolded, I particularly enjoyed strolling around the garden in good light, when structure and exuberant new growth came together to produce vistas that made me wonder how my incremental and unplanned approach over many years had created such a harmonious effect.
Nowhere was this more marked than in the arboretum, now entering its eleventh year and providing an ever more fascinating place to wander. Circles of trees, mown paths curving through lush swathes of cow parsley and wildflowers. A long archway of hornbeam. The turf labyrinth. A new trio of sculptural railway sleepers. All of these delighted the eye and nurtured the spirit. Most stirring of all were the camassias. Fed last year after flowering, they put on a wonderful show of deep colour, sitting in a circle of nine mop-top beech trees.
In the main garden, the clipped lonicera nitida, known locally as ‘the donut’, was a favourite and quirky vantage point with a morning coffee. The box balls were a worry however. They looked good and have put on growth since introduced in February 2025, and I was pleased with the spreading carpet of flowering ajuga around them, but one of them seemed to have developed blight, and has now been removed. The exuberant and spreading flowers of a clematis in the rose arch, now in its third spring, was a pleasing compensation however.
All in all, the month of May 2026 was a splendid one in the Dumfriesshire Garden. It brought together all the elements that gardeners know so well. Erratic weather conditions, hits and misses, the sense that if we don’t keep up things will get away from us. But these sat alongside abundant rewards in the sharp light of lengthening days, the acid greens and vibrant colours that signal springtime is at its peak. Yes, Shakespeare’s ‘darling buds of May’ brought wave upon wave of daily delights as the garden built up to a tremendous finale of exuberant new growth, and with it, of course, the promise of summer.
Quotidian 