Birdsong and new shoots in the garden fill Jane Powers with happiness at this time of year
Isn't this one of the very best times of the year? Spring is well sprung, the birds are singing their heads off, and the sun - when it chooses to shine - is warm enough to bring a great big smile to your face.
The last of the daffodils are blooming, along with the first of the tulips, and a crowd of other spring bulbs. Primulas, dog's tooth violets and forget-me-nots are in full flight. All of these fill me with great bubbles of happiness.
And there is something else happening in the garden now that sends a rush of optimism through me. It is the reappearance of the herbaceous plants that last autumn withdrew their sap and shrivelled up, to wait out the winter in a secret place underground. This month's longer hours of sunlight are a vast and mysterious magnet, pulling a surge of plant life from the soil. For the last couple of weeks little fingers of vegetation have been silently and determinedly nudging up through the ground. Each leaf - or group of leaves - emerges as a tightly rolled bundle: a clenched fist of foliage, both powerful and protective, that breaks through the soil, yet with no damage to its own fragile tissues.
If you don't get out there and pay attention, you'll miss this mass eruption and unfolding of the season's herbaceous plants. And that would be a shame, as it is one of the most uplifting sights a gardener can see. Emerging shoots aren't something that is just happening in the present - such as cherry blossom or spring bulbs - they are a promise of future pleasures (as well as being beautiful in the here and now). These wads of fresh foliage are packages of energy and hope, full of the vigour of youth, and unblemished - as yet - by pest or disease.
The best new growth can be seen in plants that are entirely herbaceous, that is, those that completely die down at the end of the year. Peonies are among the most eye-catching, with their shiny, muscular, vertical stems and firmly scrunched leaves. Almost all are suffused with red pigment, which may manifest itself as anything from a gentle blush to a full-blown, liver-toned complexion, depending on the variety. Such rich hues are intensified when set off by spring-flowering bulbs. Blues go well, but so also do orangey-reds. My favourite partner for peonies is the low-growing tulip 'Toronto'. Its salmony-pinky-scarletty blooms are the perfect complement to the wine-coloured shoots. And because it is one of the Greigii tulips it comes back year after year - unlike many of the species.
Orange or reddish new growth also features on some of the coppery-foliaged euphorbias, among them, E. sikkimensis and E. griffithii and its cultivars (including the popular 'Dixter' and 'Fireglow').
Ornamental rhubarb (Rheum palmatum), Rodgersia and some of the dark-leaved, red-flowering astilbes have good wine-coloured spring shoots. All three like a moist soil, and look particularly good when massed near water - if you have the space for such a generous display.
Burgeoning seakale plants (Crambe maritima) are pleasingly alien-looking, with intensely-crinkled leaves borne on fat stalks - the whole lot in glorious, extraterrestrial purple. As the name suggests, seakale is a coastal plant, so it enjoys being surrounded by a pebble mulch, to replicate beach conditions. The juvenile leaves, blanched under a bucket or a special terracotta forcer, are a culinary delicacy. If you grow them for eating, the plants need a more nutritious regime.
Besides green, red is the predominate colour of new-sprung herbaceous growth. But there are blue-tinged infant leaves too, such as those of aquilegia and plume poppy (Macleaya). The latter are particularly striking: veined, hairy and vaguely palmate, like the hands of an embryonic creature reaching up from the earth. They make an arresting sight when issuing from black-leaved mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens'). The thing about some plume poppies though, is that they can be invasive, marching around the garden from year to year, so some plant combinations are no more than a bit of serendipity.
While we're talking of wandering plants with handsome young growth, I must mention the bamboos - although these appear later, from early summer. Some, yes, will stray a metre or more in a season, but others are quite happy to stay in their allotted billet. Yet almost all have exquisitely formed new shoots, wrapped in regularly overlapping sheaths, and rising from the ground like the nose cones of rockets.
Such perfect design is also seen in the immature fronds of ferns, which unfurl gradually from neat rolls that hoist themselves up from the crown of the plant. Many of these spiralling fern parcels are covered in hairs and a floury coating, both of which protect them from the rigours of spring weather. Be sure to clean away the tattered old fronds from last year, so you can admire the drama of their replacements unwinding. In the soft shield ferns (Polystichum setiferum) the dead foliage may harbour a fungal disease, known as Taphrina wettsteiniana, so its removal isn't just for cosmetic purposes.
Hostas, day lilies, irises, and fennel and other umbellifers are just a few more of the plants that push through the soil with a visual bang. Water plants, too can bring you to a halt. The native yellow flag (Iris pseudacorus) is one such, as it pierces the dark waters of a pond like a green Excalibur being thrust upwards by an unseen lady of the lake. Or is that a bit over-fanciful? All this rising sap has gone straight to my head. Perhaps I'd better stop now, and go do something useful in the garden.
• PAINTING COURSES: Dublin artist Patricia Jorgensen is offering two-day courses on flower painting during the last weekends in May, June, July and August, at her house and studio in Dublin. Courses cost €300 each, and include lunch on both days. Details from 01-6611094; www.patriciajorgensenstudio.com.