April 2026 began with benign weather, and the garden was in early-spring mode, with daffodils and Camellias having their best year ever. A lack of too-high or too-low temperatures in the last half of March was ideal for both plant groups’ flowers.

After such a benign start, named Storm Dave arrived on April 4th/5th, and though its worst impacts were felt further North, we still suffered some very strong gusts of wind. We feared for the daffodils and the garden more generally, with our next garden open weekend on the 11th/12th, but our daffodils seemed incredibly resilient. Despite flowers being buffeted every which way, once things calmed down and the rain eased off, one would hardly have known ‘Dave’ had passed through.

Even better, just a day later, the temperatures rose by about 10 degrees C, and we enjoyed a couple of gorgeous sunny days, touching 22 degrees C – the warmest day of the year, thus far.

A pair of swallows arrived on the sixth – as early as last year, but this time instead of just being sighted and heard, they immediately checked out the barn – fortunately I’d remembered to prop the door ajar a few days earlier.

On the same day I took some of my best ever photos of a pristine Orange-tip butterfly, Anthocaris cardamines, nectaring on the flowers of white honesty. Shortly followed by seeing a lone Holly Blue butterfly flying past at speed.

Down at the stream, I missed the brook lamprey’s annual spawning, but found a couple of freshly disturbed gravel patches – redds – with attendant very young salmonid fry in evidence – I’ve never seen them this small, or this early before, I don’t think.

Once again I was able to fill all 4 blue bowls with different cultivar daffodil blooms for our garden visitors, and we enjoyed welcoming a small number over the weekend who were blessed with typically chilly and mixed weather including a heavy hail shower. But they all saw some glimpses of blue sky and April sunshine, when the rich, red Camellia ‘Les Jury’, glowed above anyone who squeezed past it, and looked upwards. Almost outdone by C. ‘Bob Hope’, however that’s barely a third of the size, after many years. The white and blue bells in the copse began to flower mid-month, along with a fair number of tulips which have survived in this location for several years.

The Amelanchiers were at their peak of typically short-lived blossom, and this year had their best display ever.

In the upper meadow, the Narcissus pseudonarcissus were tailing off, as more Fritillary meleagris flowers than for many years, began to appear along with widely spread dog violets.

I continued with a major photography, measuring and recording effort with daffodil varieties, which will hopefully make it onto the website with an updated page later this year, and was therefore a little relieved when this began to tail off around the 14th, as all but the very latest few cultivars’ flowers had opened.

But that feeling of relief from time consuming effort and too much time in front of the computer, was also tempered by disappointment that the show is nearly over for another 9 months. It’s been their best year yet. As they faded, I spotted a white flower crab spider on an ‘Irish Fire’ flower. And for the next 10 days I found it was not only a very successful predator of flies which happened to move too close to it, but also a species previously unrecorded on the WWBIC database, for many miles around us.   

After a reversion to mixed weather, at last a decent high pressure system arrive on the 18th and we enjoyed many dry days in a row, with rising temperatures. This allowed the honey bees to become more active (5 out of our 6 colonies are still viable which I take as a very good survival rate given many of the reports of honey bee losses this winter. In addition there was another significant emergence of solitary bees of various species, in the Malus/daffodil copse.

It was a lovely end to what’s often one of the most beautiful months in this part of the world.

 

My weather data for April shows how this month compares to previous ones, with maximum and minimum readings highlighted. It is, for us, one of the most reliably ‘dry’ months of our year.

2014: 136.9mm, 13 dry days  – N/A

2015: 34mm, 22 dry days, PV – 519 KWH

2016: 108mm, 9 dry days, PV – 394 KWH

2017: 47mm, 20 dry days, PV – 410 KWH

2018: 158mm, 14 dry days, PV – 346 KWH

2019: 94mm, 14 dry days, PV – 416KWH

2020: 50mm, 22 dry days, PV – 498 KWH

2021: 19mm, 20 dry days, PV – 522 KWH

2022: 53mm, 16 dry days, PV – 420 KWH

2023: 111mm, 12 dry days, PV  – 393 KWH.

2024:  225 mm, 8 dry days, PV  – 299.7 KWH – a record high, a record low!

2025: 118.8 mm. 18 dry days, PV – 488.9 KWH

2026: 95.5 mm, 17 dry days, (3 frosts to minus 1 Deg C) PV – 462.4 KWH