Spring is magic. Blossoms, scents, vases crowded with roses, grass green, skies blue … the real challenge of spring is how to most enjoy it. So here are the six top spring essentials.
1. A new gardening hat
This isn’t a ‘go to the races hat’ or a celebrity fashion statement, but a good garden hat shouldn’t be daggy either. Getting out into the garden — especially now — should be a joy and celebration. It NEEDS to be a new hat, one you love and will feel happy to put on. I love straw garden hats, especially ones that can be trimmed with fresh flowers or greenery, but go with your own fancy — just make sure it is really shady, fits well enough that it doesn’t blow off in every gust of wind but is still completely comfortable so you don’t mind wearing it for hours at a time.
2. Gardening gloves
I have yet to discover how to keep my fingernails clean and garden too — even gardening gloves don’t keep you pristine. But they do make a difference — your nails may still need scrubbing but there won’t be ingrained dirt or stains from plant sap and your hands stay softer too (you also don’t have to worry about spiders and other beasties that might bite your hands). I have two pairs so that when one pair gets wet in damp soil I can change into the other. Be sure to wash them often, so they don’t get stiff with dirt and become uncomfortable.
3. A rose
Doesn’t matter how many you already have — or even if you don’t have a garden. Buy a patio rose for a hanging basket, or a great glorious climber for the back fence. This is the perfect time of the year to wander down to the garden centre or, even better, to a rose specialist or open garden filled with blooms. If the garden centre doesn’t have the one you want, there are many rose nurseries online — a few minutes hunting and you should have the rose of your dreams.
4. Six pots of chives
Every cook needs lots of chives, to sprinkle into mashed potato or season baked pumpkin, to scatter over salads and into soups, to use to tie up bundles of elegant beans or asparagus spears or make cauliflower in vinaigrette dressing look gorgeous with shreds of green. I nip out to my chive pots every day — and this is the perfect time to get a giant pot of chives flourishing.
5. Vegies
Start a vegie garden, just a little one, with a punnet of bright-stemmed Swiss chard, some tomatoes well staked, maybe a few plants of basil, with lots of mulch to keep the soil moist and the weeds down. If you already have a vegie garden, this is the time to be more adventurous: plant the seeds of purple-stemmed asparagus, add some artichokes or a perennial veg like yacon with its big crunchy tubers, great thinly sliced in salads or fried in tempura batter. Spring is the time for new beginnings, and a veg garden is a lovely beginning to make.
6. Take time out
Enjoy it all — the flowers, the scents, the days of blue and gold and radiance. Head to your nearest park, hunt out open gardens, or just sit in your own garden with a long glass of something cool, a book, the kids or the dog … and your new hat. It is spring and every single spring of our lives should be enjoyed in full.
