winter flowers

The winter flowers are starting.  There are a few blooms on the row of Iris unguicularis in the narrow bed along the south wall of the house.  If I were feeling keen I would go through the bed with gloved hands and a bucket, seeking out the snails that lurk among the iris leaves and eat holes in the buds before they can open.

In the ditch bed at the bottom of the garden the first flush has appeared on Viburnum x bodnantense 'Charles Lamont'.  These hybrid, deciduous viburnums are good value in the garden, provided you have somewhere not too dry to put them, since they go on throwing out successive sets of flowers for months and if frost spoils the display there'll be another following on.  'Charles Lamont' has pale pink flowers, said in the Hillier manual of trees and shrubs to be a purer pink than those of 'Dawn'.  I have yet to see the two of them grown side by side in a garden setting to make the comparison.  Both have the RHS Award of Garden Merit, and I have a sneaking suspicion I ended up with 'Charles Lamont' because that was what happened to be in stock at the point when I wanted to buy one.  I like viburnums as a tribe, and would grow more if I didn't have such a dry garden.  As it is my tally stands at a measly four.

Rather to my surprise the Mahonia japonica by the lower lawn is also opening its flowers.  I think of it as following on from M. x media 'Winter Sun', but Hilliers reminds me that it is supposed to flower from late autumn to early spring, and I guess the twelfth of November counts as late autumn.  I don't think they can mean it will flower continuously from late autumn to early spring, because the display doesn't last that long, but when it does flower it will do so within that time slot.  The flowers are lovely, fragrant little lemon yellow globes studded along long, lax stalks.  My plant is coping valiantly with quite heavy shade, though it did try to grow sideways into the light and I ended up staking some of the floppier stems.  When it was younger I got almost no flowers one winter because something, presumably muntjac, ate the buds, but I'm hoping it's got to the height where they won't be able to reach.

The prize for floral persistence in the face of impending winter goes to Salvia involuctrata 'Bethellii', which is still producing its vivid pink flowers on five foot stems.  The plant is not entirely hardy, but on our sharp drainage mine has come though a few winters now.  I did lost a plant, but that was because ants undermined it, nothing to do with the cold.  In theory I could have taken cuttings as a precaution against a hard winter, but I haven't.  I never got round to it, and the greenhouse is already bursting at the seams, while I don't find salvias the easiest thing to keep through the winter under glass.  They seem prey to every outbreak of fungal disease going.  That said, I've got two plants in the greenhouse bought at the Great Dixter Plant fair while I saw them, one which is only ever destined for a pot as it is tender, and the other intended for the gap opened up by taking out the Coronilla varia, but not until the spring so that I can have another go at the coronilla as regrowth appears.  And Salvia confertiflora with its little burnt orange flowers made it through last winter in the conservatory, albeit I did have to prune some fungus infested stems out.  I fell in love with it at Kiftsgate and bought one from their plant sales area, which while small had more unusual things than the National Trust shop at Hidcote.  Now I know what it is I could buy a replacement from a salvia specialist if needs be, but I'd rather keep my souvenir plant going if I can.

Second prize for unexpected floral interest goes to the honeysuckle in the rose bank, that's producing a complete second set of flowers.  They make the back garden smell very nice as I crawl around doing the edges.  The honeysuckle is rather rampant and strangling, and as the years go by I'm afraid I'm losing species from the rose bank, until eventually it will contain nothing but honeysuckle and the rambling rose 'Sanders' White'.  I think I had better reduce the honeysuckle in places to give the roses a chance to breath, but might as well delay doing that until it's finished flowering.