Easter Monday Coombe Wood walk

Tulips....... explosions of wonderful colour combinations! Tall, short, single flowers, double flowers, cup shaped, fluted, frilly, rounded, pointy... all underplanted beautifully. I expect you can guess that I might have got a bit carried away with my camera! Severely edited - there's still a lot here!

Robins kept teasing me - posing right in front of me and then flitting away before I could photograph them.

A burst of tiny blue flowers. (Ceanothus?)

Pale pink

Dip-dyed mini tulips? 

Spiky green plant with bright yellow flowers.

Snakeshead Fritillaries

Bluebells.

White buds

A few of them are opening

Luminous green acer leaves with red stems and tiny red flowers.

 Judas Tree - jelly bean shaped buds covering every branch.

Young Golden Rain Tree leaves. 

Mounds of green

Red buds, white flowers and lichen on the twigs.

Blossom against the pale blue sky. 

Honesty 

A sea of allium buds waiting to burst open - one just beginning.

This will be amazing when they all open! 

 Pink blossom

Lilac magnolias

These were on Gardeners World - I've forgotten what they are already!

Korean pine flowers (inflorescences).

I love this little plant with its cascades of buds like neat little white bubbles and unruly flowers. Later it will have seed pods like tiny stars.

A carpet of lily of the valley.

A few flowers beginning to show. 

Azaleas - these are scented but weren't open enough to spill their perfume out into the air this morning.

Red acer leaves and flowers. 

Heart shaped leaves of the Candyfloss Tree. 

 Camellias. 

Azaleas/Rhododendrons? I forget which is which from year to year.

I could hear woodpeckers pecking overhead but couldn't see where they were, and there was a lot of birdsong all around.

I'm pretty sure this one is a rhododendron. The buds look like crinkly deflated balloons....

...the flowers are gorgeous pastel pink trumpets. 

Small bright pink rhododendron

 White spiky flowers

Gorgeous sugar pink rhododendron with freckles. 

 Stamens with very obvious double anthers. 

Lovely light through the trees as the sun broke through the light clouds.

Bleeding hearts like padded heart shaped cushions at various stages of development along the stem. Closed at the tip and fully open further along the stem.

 Tiny pink buds - so neat. 

The arch is reforming as foliage thickens. I like the magnolia dotted through.

Possibly Mock orange (I remember that the flowers smell of orange) - new leaves, seed pods and flower buds.

Spindle berry buds. 

Gorgeous blue

Peony stems coming up. 

 Some more bleeding hearts. They hang so neatly! 

The fast growing covering of foliage will soon camouflage the loss of so many branches on the big beech tree.

Lily of the valley lit up by the sun. 

 Honesty. 

No sign of leaves yet on this heavily pruned foxglove tree

Back to the tulips. 

Ragged tulips.

Red and white

Oh but is it red and white - these white tulips have touches of pink which I hadn't noticed from a distance.

More bleeding hearts - I love the way the colours blend here.

Another look at the red and white - a narrow curve of them beneath a sea of orange.

Huge red tulips on short stems above stripy leaves. 

Red white and blue.

Pink - with occasional purple. 

Glimpses of pale lemon yellow underplanting. 

Again a closer look shows that the pale lemon yellow not just in the underplanting - these big pink double flowers are tinged with yellow.

I stopped to watch a horse and rider pass then to the bulrushes - with sunlight shining through them.

 How different they all are in the way they explode their seeds.

 A last look at the tulips from the gate. 

Thank you very mich for joining me.