March begins close to the ground.

You notice it in the smallest shifts. Tiny flashes of colour where there were none. Woodland anemones lifting themselves just above the soil, catching the light for a moment before folding back into it again.

Nothing dramatic. Easy to miss if you’re not already looking.

The ground loosens. The light lingers a little longer. And slowly, without announcement, the garden begins to move.

Not into fullness. Not yet. Just enough to know it has started.

It doesn’t stay that quiet for long.

You start low, noticing what’s just come through, but the longer you’re there, the more of it makes itself known. The birds, louder now. A chiffchaff calling from somewhere in the scrub, steady and repetitive. Movement where there was none. The sense that the whole place has shifted while you weren’t looking.

And with that comes everything else. Fresh growth draws attention. Soft, new, already under pressure.

You don’t go looking for it. It finds you.

The work shifts with it. What felt slow suddenly isn’t. You’re no longer just clearing space, you’re keeping pace. Moving between one thing and the next.

The work takes me across the plot, from one thing to the next. The frogs, for one. Still in place. Still needing care. An amphibian nursery I didn’t plan, but can’t ignore now that it’s there. I slow down in those spots. Take more care. And then I carry on.

Some of it isn’t clearing anymore. Building a backdrops along the fence borders. Not to look at, but to sit inside. To close it in enough that I can just be there without everything else pressing in.

Plants picked, what goes in. Things that will be useful. Forsythia, moved from where it never made sense. Wild roses. More than a few. Spiraea dotted through. Deutzia. Ribes. Foxgloves lifted from where they’d seeded themselves and set back in properly.

There’s more waiting. Three viburnum uncovered, two willows, still to find their place. Plants that have been collected over many years, never quite finding their permanent lodgings.

At the base, narcissus going in. Late, maybe, but they’ll come when they’re ready. This time next year, they’ll be there.

It’s slower work. More deliberate. Putting something in that will stay.

And from the graveyard plant pile, another forsythia. I’ve no idea how, who or where it came from. Apparently one wasn’t enough. But it’s here now, so it stays.

Elsewhere, things are already pushing on.

The peonies. The roses. New growth coming through, and I still haven’t finished where they’re meant to go. They don’t wait.

There’s still the ranunculus to get in, the bed just finished before the rain and an early spring cold snap move in.

Then the smaller things, re-emerge. Ladybirds tucked in along the new growth, still, almost hidden. Seeds coming up in trays, steady, unremarkable, one knocked off the shelf, but all the same regardless. Then some things stop you for a moment. Two butterflies circling over the beds, tight and restless, never quite landing. Then a third cuts in, sudden, and it shifts. Three of them now, turning on the same patch of air, quick and insistent. Not random. Not drifting. A brief clash, a sword fight over territory, over a female. Whatever it is, it matters to them.

Peacocks everywhere. Wings open, holding the sun. Small enough to miss if you were rushing. You stop, watch it for a second, and then you carry on. Because March doesn’t hold still. Easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them.