What’s happened to spring?!

[SpringtimeSummertime]

I got a photo reminder on my phone of my garden this time last year and my garden was full of flowers and plants and blossom and bluebells. The clematis was in flower, peonies were in bloom, leaves on the trees.
This year, the exact same day, nothing! My trees have no leaves and not one of the above is past very early growth...
What is happening?! Has literally every plant/ tree died?! 😳

Yes, peonies are still stems here. Quite short too and it’s a huge plant.
Bluebells are just starting to come up. Lots of leaves but I can’t see much else!

Agapanthus, Hakonechloa macra and my climbing rose are growing very slowly. Scabious are all dead but for one plant, and all the leaf buds on my Chinese Virginia creeper have shrivelled up.

Fingers crossed everything will catch up when the weather warms up. Hoping for rain next week...

SW Wales here. We moved here three years ago from a considerably drier area in England so have been getting used to loads of rain/planting a fairly large garden from scratch and learning what grows/doesn't in these conditions.

Now it's completely dry/soil powdery/plants are a couple of weeks at least behind where they were this time last year.

We've had late snow/loads of frost's recently and have lost quite a lot of stuff...an established rosemary bush, lots of lavender (English and French), verbascums, salvias, diascia, erigerons, hellebores, potentillas, heucheras, acanthus, verbena and a buddleia globosa.....

However, our peonies have small buds, a few roses too, plus we have tons of bluebells flowering and the trilliums I feared were dead also have buds 😃

frosts

We went from floods to droughts!

We haven't had rain for weeks either. I've b watering pots and the garden twice a week. Our camellia is out, forsythia, daffs, narcissi have all finished flowering. Seasonal plants are all coming up in the beds - peony, lily of valley, hosted, etc., but slower than last year. Cherry blossom is out.

Our garden's a couple of weeks ahead of normal but we're south facing and have an irrigation system in as it's so dry during the summer. We've had to start using that already as plants were suffering. I think that without it we'd have seen a lot of shrivelled stuff.

South east here, the blue bells are flowering and the daffodils dying back, the camellias are loosing their blooms as through their season and the acers nearly in full leaf and the wisteria starting to show its flowers, the clematis bloomed awhile ago and the big trees like chestnut and sycamore nearly in full leaf too . So I think it’s location depenendent.

South east here and we have been saying everything is weeks behind

Have had a good look round my garden today. Could be better

Peony, well behind
Roses doing ok
Bleeding heart in full bloom...beautiful
Tulips still not bloomed,struggling
Hyacinths did beautifully but finished now
Diosma blooming
Clematis blooming
Pieris struggling
Rhododendron struggling (re potted in Ericacious)

Star of my garden is a polemonium....stunning
Wisteria struggling
Hydrangeas taking their time
Got 4 Astilbes in diff locations, all at various stages of regrowth
Kilmarnock willow nice and bushy
Azaleas perky dependent on location (got 3)
Buddleias....struggling

Brought home some frost bitten plants from work to save plus a half price Daphne
Picked something off death row last year, small pink flowers but it’s flowering and is pretty,no idea what it is

Snapdragons doing well ( few died from early frost)

Nemesis off frost bitten shelf doing well

Grass seed, rubbish, no growth so far....all hit and miss and now I’m obsessed checking every morning

My garden is definitely a few weeks behind last year. Due to lockdown I have pictures to prove it! I think it's been colder this April and less rain in the first few months of the year (remember all the pre 2020 lockdown floods). Things are coming I think just slowly. My cherry blossom only really started last week but it was end of March last year. Looks lovely now but I was worried for a bit. My tulips are only just coming but that may be my inexperience of using pots.

I've just had another, more thorough look around the garden and made the following observations....

(Bearing in mind most of the following has only been planted within the past three years)

Large Cornus Kousa has a few tiny buds (last year none, previous year loads)
Wisteria alba - no buds (last year a handful, previous year tons)
2 x wisteria chinensis - loads of buds (last year they budded, then all but one or two withered/died before opening)
6/55 roses have buds
60/100 (approx, lol!) alliums have buds
Bergenia flowers just opening
Magnolia Susan buds began opening over weekend
Established honeysuckle (predates us buying property in 2018) is full of buds
Younger honeysuckles - no buds yet
Clematis Montana (we have four all planted at same time) 1/4 began flowering yesterday
Large established rhododendron (again predates us) - budding
Younger rhododendrons - 2/3 have buds
Azalea - budding
Tiarellas, persicaria bistorta - loads of buds
Tulips (in pots), geums, Centauria, chaenomeles, ribes, bluebells, wild garlic, vinca, trachystemon and comfrey - all flowering
Eremurus, thalictrum, actaea, macleaya, eumocon survived the frosts!
Cistus - burned by frost
Astrantia and Astilbes - all ok
Ajuga - decimated but ok
Huge established Acer (30+ years old?) - in full leaf
Euphorbia - thriving!
Apple and cherry - some have blossom, others don't
Solomon's seal - spotted first buds today 😃
(Carmarthenshire, near Llandeilo)

My cistus also looking a bit burned.... thought it was because dog likes to wee on it! Mostly seems ok though

Im in the sw, loads of bluebells here but a week or so later than last year, some things are coming to life in my garden and others are struggling. My greenhouse is full of things waiting to go outside but we had another light frost last night so I need to wait a bit. We haven't had any rain for a month really, water butt's empty and I have been watering the garden every other day.

Hebeee
That’s a very impressive list!
I need to learn the names of the plants in my garden!

We have the same here - but dont forget, last year the weather was lovely and warm by now. This year we are still waking up to frosts. Hopefully a couple more weeks and everything will have woken up.

delighted its raining here.....at last!!!

I was just saying the same! Drizzle here all day! We need a real downpour now!

@Deereamer

We have the same here - but dont forget, last year the weather was lovely and warm by now. This year we are still waking up to frosts. Hopefully a couple more weeks and everything will have woken up.

It was gorgeous wasn’t it? I was out in the garden most days! It’s been dry but really cold this year.

Lovemusic33
Bluebells are starting to appear! Not many yet but a few!

We're still pretty sad here (eastern scotland) - only moved here last year so lots of relatively new plants but off the top of my head

Crabapple tree (newly planted this winter), leafing nicely and starting to blossom but is in a very sunny spot
Amelanchiers (also sunny spot) - blossomed nicely
Acer - starting to leaf out
Wisteria caroline - one has some fairly big (2-3") buds, other more shaded one is a bit behind
Magnolia Genie - was in full bid but the frost seems to have got them
Hydrangeas - lots generally pissed off, seem to have frost damage. Even one from garden centre is just dying rapidly. Newer ones (Vanilla Fraise) are just budding ever so slightly and doing a bit better.
Alliums (bought from garden centre rather than bulb) - don't seem to be doing much of anything
Roses - look healthy enough, seem to be growing, but no sign of actual flowers
Camelias...some blooms, but also some yellowing/browning. Just been treated to acidify soil which seems to have perked up a tad.
Ranunculus - dying
Lavender - dying
What I think are irises but could be gladioli (I mixed the bulbs up a lot) - coming through quite well
Peonies - about 6-8" tall so a fair bit to do yet!
Bay tree - wind battered and possibly dead
Grass - hating the crappy clay soil
Pampus grass (pink, no we're not swingers) probably dead
Jamsine - probably dead
Trachelospermum jasminoides (5 mature ones) all dead, cut back savagely in the hope it would generate growth but pretty sure they're gone.
Various clematis - struggling, oddly the internet ordered ones which were so tiny on arrival that I almost didn't plant them but chucked in as an afterthought are growing nicely although still small. Early sensation is budding, but armandii in particular (several in different sports) seem more like just dii...
Honeysuckles, growing well but not close to blooming

I really want lots of climbers to cover the fence but they're being temperamental assholes

We had -16 here (complete with the burst pipe to prove it) this winter and it seems to have wiped out even theoretically hardy plants. My hardiness requirements have increased significantly before I buy anything!

Still no rain here!

It absolutely pissed down today here, but it's the first rain we've had in weeks, it's been really dry and a combo of very sunny during the day and very cold at night.

I've got a two tier palette full of plants on the front drive (mostly 40 cherry laurel to replace the hedge) which will now be well watered.

East anglia here and a new garden to me as only moved in last winter. The daffs are still flowering (bulbs planted in November) and the tulips are just coming into flower.
Azalea (I think) has been in flower for a few weeks and is now going over. Daphne the same. Some shrubs are coming to life but the lavender I planted recently is struggling to take hold (it's teeny tiny). Pyracanthus is growing well. Bloody variegated ivy is doing very well... All billion plants of it
No rain here for ages.

@Misty9

East anglia here and a new garden to me as only moved in last winter. The daffs are still flowering (bulbs planted in November) and the tulips are just coming into flower. Azalea (I think) has been in flower for a few weeks and is now going over. Daphne the same. Some shrubs are coming to life but the lavender I planted recently is struggling to take hold (it's teeny tiny). Pyracanthus is growing well. Bloody variegated ivy is doing very well... All billion plants of it No rain here for ages.

I’m in East Anglia too. It doesn’t rain here. I think it technically has less rain that some deserts. I don’t think it’s rained here since March really. I also remember that it didn’t rain in the first lockdown.