Nothing Comes From Nothing

As that great philosopher Julie Andrews sang in her magnum opus "A Sound of Music": "Nothing comes from Nothing".  At least, that's how it goes in my garden - things don't just happen or appear from nowhere even when it seems like they do.  I find it very reassuring to know that everything comes from somewhere.

Take this pot, for instance.  This was supposed to be a cutting of Rosemary surrounded by Tulipa kaufmanniana 'Johann Strauss'.

In fact, it now also contains a Cotoneaster, a Buddleia, two Welsh Poppies and, just for good measure, a Dandelion.  Now how did they get there?  Not by my hand, that's for sure.  In only a year and a half this pot has become a veritable nursery.

On the other hand, these leaves unfurling themselves just now came in my car all the way from Beth Chatto's garden in Essex a year and a half ago:

Lamium orvala
Balm-leaved Red Dead Nettle

While this Primrose is the only survivor of three British-grown plants bought two years ago in Freuchie but happily it is putting out seedlings:

Primula vulgaris
British Native Primrose

These hybrid primulas are survivors of a hanging basket used to make the front of my old house look attractive when trying to sell it three years ago.  They seem to survive on neglect:

Hybrid Primulas
Alongside self-seeding dark leaved Viola labradorica and
Galanthus nivalis (Snowdrops) all from Dobbies Garden Centre

These snowdrops below look much healthier having been bought mail order "in-the-green" two years ago from Cambo Estate.  I am extremely excited by the emerging dark flower bud of the Hellebore which was an unspecified seedling from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 5 years ago.  It is peeking out from under the Spanish Poppy Papaver rupifragum which hitched its way here in pots via two house moves - how its ancestors got here from Spain, well that's a story beyond my ken.

Lenten Rose
Helleborus x hybridus (Previously Helleborus orientalis)

The winter-flowering heather (Erica)  below one of the Yews (Taxus baccata - not in picture) was here when I came - brought here by who knows who?

The most recent arrival, at least that of which I am aware, is not a plant at all.  It is a bird box given to me by a friend from Crosshill and now sitting in its urban back garden glory on the Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris).  Maybe one day some Tits will take up residence and raise a family here but where they will come from I have no idea.  All I know is they won't come from nowhere.

"Somewhere in my youth or childhood

There must have been something good"

                                                                                                 Julie Andrews
                                                                                         via Rodgers & Hammerstein