The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything - Oscar Wilde
Three photos for April 2025 since this is the month of change in the garden. Photo 1 was taken on the first day of the month; the cherry blossom is still out and the deciduous trees are beginning to leaf up.
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| Photo 1: Back Garden Scene (1st April 2025) |
Photo 2, taken on the 10th of the month, is apple blossom time with the Reverend W Wilks eater/cooker in flower (behind the bench).
The warm dry settled conditions at the end of March continued into April (Figure 1 & Figure 2). Around the middle of the month the weather turned cooler and wetter before finishing on a high note (i.e. warm & dry again).
As is customary, we will now compare how April 2025 with its previous incarnations since we started collecting weather data from our Davis Weather Station in December 2019. Figure 3 confirms April 2025 was the joint warmest (mean temperature) with 2020 and noticeably warmer than the intervening years. The highest temperature of this month (28 ℃) was considerably higher than previous years with the exception of 2020 (30 ℃). For the last two years (2024 & 2025) there were no air frosts which would be great for gardeners if we could rely on this trend continuing.
Rainfall is highly variable in April with this April's precipitation well below average (Figure 4). Kitchen gardeners can handle such variations but it is much harder for farmers who may need to irrigate their crops. April sunshine hours in Hereford have been above average in 50% of the last 6 years including 2025 but below average in the other 3 years. So not particularly reliable! It seems you can get all sorts of weather in April: it can be wet & sunny (2020), dry & sunny (2021 & 2025), dry & cloudy (2022) or wet & cloudy (2023 & 2024).
The next three figures are taken from the UK Met Office's monthly report for April 2025 and provide UK-wide mean temperature (Figure 5), precipitation (Figure 6) and sunshine hour (Figure 7) data for April 2025. The County of Hereford is marked on the maps. From Figure 5, the mean monthly temperature for Herefordshire was somewhere between 0.5 ℃ and 2.5 ℃ above the 1991-2020 long-term climate average. Based on the nearby weather station at Credenhill where this long-term average (1991 - 2020) is about 9 ℃, the expected mean temperature for April in Herefordshire would be between 9.5 ℃ and 11.5 ℃ depending on location. My Davis Weather Station gave a rounded value of 12 ℃ (see table above) for April 2025; my reported (slightly) higher value may include an Urban Heat Island effect.
In Figure 6, we can see that Herefordshire received between 50% and 75% of its expected rainfall with a few places seeing only a third of the normal monthly rainfall. My Weather Station recorded only 20 mm of rain during April 2025 (see table), about 40% of the long-term average (50 mm) for Credenhill Weather Station. There was no filling of the water butts in preparation for the summer growing & irrigation season.
Sunshine levels were high throughout the United Kingdom (UK) and, according to Figure 7, between 100% and 130% of the long-term (1991 - 2020) average. Credenhill Weather Station does not report sunshine hours but the long-term average for the Midlands (April) is 156 hours. I recorded 180 hours (see table) for my garden in Hereford, or 115% of the long-term Midlands average.
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| Photo 2: Back Garden Scene (10th April 2025) |
And finally, in Photo 3, it is time for the red acer to dominate the foreground and the wisteria blossom to draw one's eye to the rear of the garden.
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| Photo 3: Back Garden Scene (28th April 2025) Daily garden photos in April are collated in Video 1. Video 1: Daily Photos of the Rear Garden Overall, April 2025 was warm, dry and sunny. Great for getting out and about in the garden though a little more rain would have been appreciated. The average Central England Temperature (CET) for April is approximately 8 ℃ so the mean daily temperature of 12 ℃ recorded by my garden-based Davis Weather Station is certainly on the warm side! [Note: the CET area does not cover Herefordshire though the county is close to the south-eastern edge of the CET monitoring zone; as such we should expect Hereford to be warmer, albeit not 4 ℃ warmer]. Summary weather statistics for April 2025 are listed in the table below. |
The warm dry settled conditions at the end of March continued into April (Figure 1 & Figure 2). Around the middle of the month the weather turned cooler and wetter before finishing on a high note (i.e. warm & dry again).
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| Figure 1: Min/Max Daily Temperatures for April 2025 |
All the rain came within a 10-day period starting from the middle of the month (Figure 2) - but there was not a lot of it!
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| Figure 2: Daily Rainfall & Sunshine Data for April 2025 |
As is customary, we will now compare how April 2025 with its previous incarnations since we started collecting weather data from our Davis Weather Station in December 2019. Figure 3 confirms April 2025 was the joint warmest (mean temperature) with 2020 and noticeably warmer than the intervening years. The highest temperature of this month (28 ℃) was considerably higher than previous years with the exception of 2020 (30 ℃). For the last two years (2024 & 2025) there were no air frosts which would be great for gardeners if we could rely on this trend continuing.
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| Figure 3: April Temperature Data (2020 - 2025) |
Rainfall is highly variable in April with this April's precipitation well below average (Figure 4). Kitchen gardeners can handle such variations but it is much harder for farmers who may need to irrigate their crops. April sunshine hours in Hereford have been above average in 50% of the last 6 years including 2025 but below average in the other 3 years. So not particularly reliable! It seems you can get all sorts of weather in April: it can be wet & sunny (2020), dry & sunny (2021 & 2025), dry & cloudy (2022) or wet & cloudy (2023 & 2024).
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| Figure 4: April Rain, Wind and Sunshine (2020 - 2025) |
The next three figures are taken from the UK Met Office's monthly report for April 2025 and provide UK-wide mean temperature (Figure 5), precipitation (Figure 6) and sunshine hour (Figure 7) data for April 2025. The County of Hereford is marked on the maps. From Figure 5, the mean monthly temperature for Herefordshire was somewhere between 0.5 ℃ and 2.5 ℃ above the 1991-2020 long-term climate average. Based on the nearby weather station at Credenhill where this long-term average (1991 - 2020) is about 9 ℃, the expected mean temperature for April in Herefordshire would be between 9.5 ℃ and 11.5 ℃ depending on location. My Davis Weather Station gave a rounded value of 12 ℃ (see table above) for April 2025; my reported (slightly) higher value may include an Urban Heat Island effect.
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| Figure 5: UK Mean Temperature Anomalies for April 2025 |
In Figure 6, we can see that Herefordshire received between 50% and 75% of its expected rainfall with a few places seeing only a third of the normal monthly rainfall. My Weather Station recorded only 20 mm of rain during April 2025 (see table), about 40% of the long-term average (50 mm) for Credenhill Weather Station. There was no filling of the water butts in preparation for the summer growing & irrigation season.
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| Figure 6: UK Rainfall (relative) for April 2025 |
Sunshine levels were high throughout the United Kingdom (UK) and, according to Figure 7, between 100% and 130% of the long-term (1991 - 2020) average. Credenhill Weather Station does not report sunshine hours but the long-term average for the Midlands (April) is 156 hours. I recorded 180 hours (see table) for my garden in Hereford, or 115% of the long-term Midlands average.
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| Figure 7: UK Sunshine Hours (relative) for April 2025 |
Jobs in the Garden
- Continue tidying the garden including rearranging the compost bins and installing the Mattis Rotary Sieve.
- Indoor sowing of French Beans, Sweetcorn, Cauliflower, Calabrese, Red Cabbage, Celery, Celeriac, Swiss chard & Spinach Beet.
- Potting up newly delivered strawberries
- Cleaning & sterilizing Quadgrows and Veg/Salad Planters in Polytunnel
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| Photo 4: Clean/Sterilized Quadgrows/Planter (7th April 2025) |
- Start harvesting asparagus (13 spears)
Flora & Fauna in the Garden
- Blackbird (x2, male & female)
- Blue Tit (x2)
- Collared Dove (x1)
- Great Tit (x2)
- House Sparrow (x8)
- Jackdaw (x1)
- Magpie (x1)
- Robin (x1)
- Starling (x20)
- Wood Pigeon (x5)
- Peacock Butterfly (3/4/25)
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| Photo 5: Peacock Butterfly (3rd April 2025) |
- Orange-tip Butterfly (10/4/25)
- Holly Blue Butterfly (10/4/25)
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| Photo 6: Holly Blue Butterfly (10th April 2025) |
- Speckled Wood Butterfly
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| Photo 7: Speckled Wood Butterfly (28th April 2025) |
And, finally, some photos from the garden ...
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| Photo 8: Apple Blossom About to Burst (3rd April 2025) |
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| Photo 9: Sun through Cherry Blossom (10th April 2025) |
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| Photo 10: Crab Apple Blossom (16th April 2025) |
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| Photo 11: Bluebells (16th April 2025) |
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| Photo 12: Secret Garden (16th April 2025) |
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| Photo 13: Tulip (17th April 2025) |
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| Photo 14: Front Garden (22nd April 2025) |
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| Photo 15: Iceland Poppy (24th April 2025) |
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| Photo 16: Paradise Garden (24th April 2025) |
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| Photo 17: Alpine Garden with Flowering Saxifrage (24th April 2025) |
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| Photo 18: Leopard's Bane (24th April 2025) |
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