Bursts of energy lift spirits; A walk in the garden.

Susie White steps out in the April sunshine..

APRIL is a busy month, particularly with propagating plants for the nursery. This is a great time for splitting up herbaceous plants because you can see the young shoots and make sure each division has a good growing point.

There are mounds of fresh foliage springing up in every border; it's a lovely moment with all this energy expanding and bursting out. There are lots of varieties of daffodils, ranging from clear white through cream and pale yellow to butter yellow and my favourite dusky pink, Mrs RO Backhouse.

There are little gems dotted about, especially in the west wall border: the curious green flowers of Hacquetia epipactus, the baby pink of Primula "Sue Jervis", exotic bells of Fritillaria pyrenaica, the exceptional white flowers of double bloodroot, blues, whites and pinks of different types of lungwort. Some of the most vibrant colours, however, come from foliage. Ornamental rhubarb with its red leaves is spectacular now.

There are two kinds of euphorbia in their element at this time of year, E cyparrisius, though a dreadful spreader, is a wonderful lime green and its cultivar, Fens Ruby, has crimson, ferny foliage that is delightful in April. I grow this around the Mediterranean pond where it is happy under a gravel mulch, though it will grow absolutely anywhere.

The two ponds are fantastic for wildlife and at the moment there are skeins of toadspawn in long threads among the water mint.

Toads, frogs, newts, dragonflies, water snails and beetles thrive in the ponds and the birds use them for drinking and bathing. There is even a little pond in the greenhouse for the frogs to cool off when it gets too hot! The wildlife is an important part of the garden's effective running as well as its atmosphere.

Our vegetable beds, set in neat box-edged squares, have been planted according to the biodynamic moon calendar: the potatoes were planted on a root day, the beans on a fruit day and so on.

We've been doing this for three years and it seems to work. Apart from anything else, it gives a structure to planting out the beds.

Visitors like to see what varieties of vegetables we are growing, how we encourage beneficial predators and our lack of pests, so it becomes a talked-about part of the garden.

. Susie White runs Chesters Walled Garden at Chollerford, near Hexham, which opens 10am-5pm daily. Tel: [phone]. Susie writes a blog thewalledgardenblog.blogspot.com..

CAPTION(S):

SPARKLE OF SPRING Clear white daffodils in a rose bed cut into one of the lawns.