The wild garlic looks, shall we say jumbled, the pink azalea makes for a busy background, and the sunlight isn’t helping… unless you can see it all as a natural, floral patchwork impression of colours, angles and attitudes. An outdoor tea party of sorts was taking place just around the corner – if the azalea flowers were people, their floral dresses and sociability would have suited the event perfectly.
I don’t often see a Davidia involucrata in flower. Folk names include the handkerchief tree, the dove tree and the ghost tree and when you see the bracts turning and fluttering, it’s easy to see why. Even a still picture is quite hypnotic.
Susan Rushton 
Love the Davidia – it’s entirely new to me. As for the garlic, I don’t think I have ever met an Allium I didn’t like.
It’s a lovely plant to have in the garden because it is so kinetic, like a living mobile. I suppose all trees are like that, but the effect is pronounced and a touch mysterious with the handkerchief tree, even in a light breeze.
This is the second handkerchief tree I saw today. I grew quite a few of them, but never saw a mature one. They are not the easiest to grow in cans, but the clients assured me that they would grow into small trees.
I’m not sure how long they keep their bracts and was surprised to see this one in flower so early. There is another one in another part of the garden that was still green. It’s the time of year when Chelsea Flower Show is on TV (it is really well covered here) and you see images of large trees in leaf being moved in with their roots wrapped in burlap. That always seems a very risky manoeuvre.
We see them only on television, or in pictures from other regions. I sort of wonder if we will be seeing a few of them locally over the next few decades, as those they we ‘grew’ and sold mature. (It was not a crop that we produced. We just brought them in bare root, and canned them because some of our clients wanted them.)