Moan, moan ,moan, yet another cold and soggy winter. We finally got a short spell of sunshine the other day so I nipped out into the garden to see what had started to come through. The usual snowdrops, narcissi, a few crocus, hellebores, and yellow erythronium are just coming up. Some of the hellebores have buds, some have a couple of open flowers and others only have leaves. The old leaves need to come off as they are pretty manky looking and new leaves will pop up soon.
The rhododendron and the pieris have promising buds and hopefully (if I can keep the pigeons off) the choiysia will have some buds too. The sarcococca has a few buds on, the lonicera fragrantissima (winter flowering honeysuckle) only has a few flowers so far, but it did get a prune in autumn as the branches were overhanging the path. The corkscrew hazel has a few catkins on but the witch hazel only has a few brown wizened leaves on it. It usually has beautiful spidery orangey-red flowers on by now. I do hope it is ok. This is what it looked like this time last year. I have asked around and some people think it may not have had enough water during the summer (well I was on bed rest most of the summer) while others think it may be wind scorch. It may well be dead but I have tried the scrape the bark test shown here Is my tree dying? and just can’t make up my mind if it is or isn’t so I will just leave it alone and see what happens. The leaves did put on a bit of an autumn show but then just went very dark brown and didn’t really fall off. There are some buds but they look small and skinny so I am a bit perplexed as it has been in that position for 12 years now and was only 3 meters away before that – we moved it when we got rid of the greenhouse and made the stumpery.
The hebe Pink paradise always has a few sporadic flowers on it as does the viburnum Bodnantense Dawn. I took out a lot of the golden Japanese rush (Acornus Ogon) as it was creeping everywhere and getting in amongst the roots of other plants but it is a nice golden colour in a winter garden when potted up in a window box. However it needs a bit of TLC now. It lives under the bird feeder, behind a the rose Gertrude Jekyll, as it not only helps prevent the seeds from the feeder getting into the bed, but also stops the rush getting out and spreading through the bed.
There are loads of evergreen to see in all parts of the garden to break up the browns and greys of winter. A lot of ivy and ferns, cyclamen, heather, hebe, sarcoccoca, berberis, variegated holy, tree heath, epimedium, some grasses, and the saxifrages and succulents. Even the young foxgloves and dead-nettles look ok during the winter.
At this time of year when the sun is still low we don’t get much sun sunshine in the garden. I can see it flooding the golf course out the back and I can see it across the playing field out the front, but not much gets into the garden.
The conservatory gets a little bit more, but only for a short time and the patio only catches some rays on the table top through the conservatory window.
In the conservatory the crocuses have flowered as has the hyacinth and of course the cyclamen. The oxalis palmifrons is still not showing any buds. I did see some paler growth which I initially thought might be buds coming up but they were actually very young leaves that were not very green. Everything needs a bit more sunshine – including me!
While I was deadheading the crocuses the spring on my Darlac cut-n-hold snips broke. Darlac tools have what they call a ‘limited ‘’lifetime’’ guarantee’ so it is worth holding onto the packaging and write the date of purchase on it and keep your receipt. I couldn’t find anywhere on their website about how to get a replacement spring. Apparently they were taken over by Fothergill’s but their website didn’t give any clue about how to obtain a replacement spring either so I phoned the Darlac customer services and they took my details and said that Fothergill’s would send one out to me. I use quite a few different tools from Darlac – check out some of my favourite tools. Thank you Darlac.
So the end of January – beginning of February looks very cold, wet and grey still but there is so much coming through that the garden will soon be full of colour again.
