Dear Readers, the painters were finishing off in our house on Good Friday, so we decided to go out for a walk to leave them to it. What a great job they’ve done! The screaming monk on the wall has completely disappeared, our windows are freshly painted, and they’re going to come back to give my kitchen cabinets a new lease of life. But it will be nice to get the house back, lovely as they are. Anyhow, off we went to Waterlow Park, where we discovered Humpty Dumpty (see above). Hopefully nobody will knock him off his wall.

There are some really splendid specimen trees here. Have a look at this horse chestnut.

And there’s this amazing red tree, probably a copper beech (but feel free to correct me)…

And then there’s this Weeping Ash – look at the lovely flowers!

There are lots of new borders, some of them full of bluebells – hybrids for sure, but still pretty.

I love the red valerian against the acid-green of the euphorbia…

But I am a bit puzzled by this, and I’d love to know what you think. Clearly something has been pollarded, but I’m not sure what, or why. Could these be willows, and if so are they taking a leaf out of Wisley’s book? At Wisley they are doing all sorts of exciting things with live willow by plaiting it/turning it into living frames for climbing plants to clamber up, so maybe this is something similar. If nobody knows, I might drop them a line.

I always think of Cherry Laurel as being a bit of a pain-in-the-butt invasive, but when allowed to be a tree, and properly managed, it can be rather impressive. The hoverflies certainly seem to love it.

And finally, there’s this Pittosporum – it’s a variety called ‘Tom Thumb’. I almost mistook it for a holly.

And while we were here, we bumped into a couple walking the most extraordinary pack of well-behaved dogs of all shapes and sizes, from a floppy-eared Ibizan Hound lookalike to some small furry elderly bundles of fluff and an ageing labrador. Both humans and dogs looked happy, and the latter were well-behaved and relaxed. It’s so nice to see dog owners who understand their dogs, and know how to set boundaries for them. By contrast, one owner spent a good twenty minutes shouting at his dog, which paid no attention whatsoever. I think people sometimes forget that dogs have much more acute hearing than we do, so if your dog isn’t paying attention, it’s not because they can’t hear you. Sigh. Still, all in all we had a lovely walk in Waterlow Park. London as a city is so blessed with green space. We are very lucky.