An Easter Monday of perfect spring weather up at the plot, sunny and warm enough to bring out brimstone, orange-tip and peacock butterflies along with the staycation plotholders and buzzing bees! Wallflowers, narcissi and daffs, tulips, Erysimum ‘Bowles’ Mauve, pulmonaria, budding aliums, muscari, erythronium, euphorbia, hellebores and cherry and plum blossom all in full flower and bumblebees, honey and solitary bees making most of the floriferous offerings. This year the pretty Cuckooflower, Cardamine pratensis, has spread across the end of our plot with it’s delicate mauve flowers, aka ‘Lady’s smock – a herald of spring, thought to coincide with the arrival of the first Cuckoo. Everything seems to be flowering and producing earlier than ever, apart from our ponds, bereft of frogspawn up our end this year. But I hear that down in the NW end they have a pond teeming with tadpoles, so it’s evidently now the ‘cool end’ for the frogs!
Patrick Barkham writes in The Guardian that it is indeed a very early spring tally: ‘First records for spring occurrences are being smashed as 2026 looks likely to be the earliest year this century for frogs laying spawn, blackbirds nesting, brimstone butterflies emerging and hazel flowering, according to Nature’s Calender, which has logged citizen science phenological records since 2000.’ (The Guardian, Saturday 4 April 2026). Nature’s Calender is run by the Woodland Trust, funded by the Postcode Lottery and volunteers send in observations and data from all over the country. Weather patterns are changing and this year so far has seen a far less cold winter, as Patrick Barkham writes: ‘This spring’s growth has been enhanced by a relatively warm winter, one of the wettest ever Januarys in many places and Britain’s 10th warmest March on record.’ It had felt like a much more ‘normal’ March to me with a mix of weather conditions, lion and lamb in one month without the worrying higher temperatures. Fears of climate crisis impacting negatively on wildlife ecosystems are being carefully monitored. Barkham says, ‘Fears that global heating could jeopardise wildlife with cold snaps killing off frogspawn, insects and blossom tempted out prematurely haven’t come to pass so far..’ and it’s possible that nature is adjusting to changes in conditions. I’ve heard chiffchaffs that are singing earlier, some that may have over-wintered in the UK rather than migrating south. However, not all bird species are doing as well: ‘The Guardian country diarist Nick Acheson said he had been “gobsmacked” by the number of chiffchaffs singing in southern England. “At the same time, the willow warbler has almost vanished and this is a proven result of climate change,” he said. “That’s the most obvious sacrament of the changing spring.”
There is an abundance of early flowers blooming in profusion on the allotment site. Barkham cites the nature writer Richard Mabey who, at 85 has ‘rarely seen such “sensational’ displays of early flowers.’ He and naturalist Matthew Oates ‘agreed that last summer’s heat combined with the heavy winter rain has probably helped produce this spring’s bounty.’
Meanwhile the lovely warm weather brings us out onto our plots to check on the early broad bean plants, plant up strawberries, check on the onions and shallots and cast an anxious eye over the sweet pea seedlings, while soaking up the welcome warmth of an Easter Monday sun.
Jenny Bourne
06.04.26
All views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author.