Monday 17 March 2014

spring is all around

The unseasonably warm weather is bringing all sorts of flowers out in a rush.  Magnolia stellata 'Waterlily' has almost finished unpacking its blooms from their furry coats.  The flowers are spidery white doubles, carried generously enough to put on a good show even viewed from the other end of the garden, but the plant itself makes only grudging increase.  The RHS Plant Selector describes it as slow growing, and mine was planted a full decade ago and still can't be more than five feet across, and less than five feet high.  Mind you, it unexpectedly died back to the roots and started again from ground level when it had been in for a couple of years, which set it back.  I have heard of other instances of magnolias doing this, so if you've planted one that initially seems OK and then abandons its branch system, I wouldn't be too quick to grub out the roots.  Muntjac will bite right through the twigs they can reach, which doesn't help things.

Corylopsis sinensis var. sinensis has come out too in the past couple of days.  This is an acid loving woodlander for part shade, and mine seems very happy at the base of the rose bank.  When I planted it I seem to have mentally glazed over the fact of its ultimate height and spread being anything up to twelve feet or more, and I have to do a little gentle editing with secateurs to adjudicate between it and the neighbouring Amelanchier and Edgeworthia.  The Corylopsis has dangling racemes of pale yellow flowers, not wholly unlike a very upmarket primrose coloured flowering currant.  They coordinate well with the Edgeworthia, less so with pink Pieris japonica 'Katsura'.  If only I had more space, or rather a different balance between sheltered and vaguely moisture retentive growing conditions versus exposed sand, I would have separate pink and yellow gardens for spring.  I like both, only not necessarily together.  P. 'Katsura' is a handsome, newish cultivar, with deep red new foliage, and a very tidy habit.

Edgeworthia chrysantha is an extraordinary plant in flower.  It is related to Daphne, and once you know that you can see the similarity to D. bholua in the branch habit, three shoots breaking from the same point and heading up and out in rigid straight lines.  The twigs of Edgeworthia are incredibly supple, so that you can tie them in knots if you want to, which I don't.  The white and yellow flowers have a thick, waxy appearance, and are held in strange flat-faced clusters pointing slightly downwards.  The scent is piercingly spicy.  A bit like wintersweet, which I once had but lost, the leaves are pretty dull, and after the excitement of flowering the shrub does nothing much for the rest of the year.  The Japanese used to make speciality paper out of the bark.

There is a rash of seedlings around the primroses under the river birches, and it is a nice question which of the smallest ones are speedwell, and which are primroses.  I'm giving the lowest and tiniest ones the benefit of the doubt until I see how they turn out.  The speedwells develop stalks as they grow, making them quite easy to pull up.  The saying goes that a weed is a plant in the wrong place, but I can't think of any right place for speedwell in the garden.  I have pulled up a couple of young Hesperis matronalis, or sweet rocket, that I found outside the bed where it is supposed to live.  I love rocket, as do the bees, and designer Tom Stuart-Smith, who I read grows it in his own garden, but would never specify if for a client on account of its seeding propensities.  I am happy for it to seed close to where I originally put it, but don't want it in the ditch bed, crowding out the smaller things.  A self-seeded Geranium phaeum is earmarked for eradication as well, even though it is a nice plant, since I already have a large stand of it elsewhere, and it will overrun the ditch bed, given half a chance.  It feels wasteful not to pot up such strays, but I have sufficient, and lack the energy to nurture them in pots until I can find friends to press them upon.

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