some March flowers

I've just taken a stroll round the garden to see what's blooming.  It's drizzling and 4.0 degrees C outside, and most of them look as if they wish they hadn't bothered.

The display of Hamamelis x intermedia is coming to an end.  The red ones are lasting later than the orange and yellow, having opened after them, with the variety 'Rubin' the last.  The hazels are showing what genetic variation there is in the wild population, as some still have bright yellow catkins while others are going brown and shrivelled.  Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' still has plenty of buds, and the white form hasn't really got going at all yet.  The Viburnum x bodnantense 'Charles Lamont' has flowers open, but the overall effect is a bit pink and brown.  The Ribes laurifolium is still blooming, but I think that whatever animal is terrorising the back garden has had a chew at it.  Mahonia japonica is flowering quietly in its corner.  It got rather overshadowed last year by a rambling rose that is supposed to be growing up a tree, but instead flopped around and over the mahonia.  I have a feeling I shall be returning to the question of training roses up trees.

Shrubs that are new blog entries for March include Corylopsis sinensis var. sinensis, whose yellow flowers are just opening.  This suffered dieback last winter, but seems untouched so far this one, despite it being colder.  Maybe the fact that the deepest frosts came before Christmas this winter helped, if it is less vulnerable to cold damage when still tightly in bud than when the sap is rising.  I think it is going to be far too large for the space where I have put it, and I wonder if I can trim the tips back after flowering.  I don't think the books recommend this treatment, but Chris Lane says it works for witch hazels, which are not supposed to like being pruned.  We visited Cornwall a few years ago, and I noticed how many of the gardens had terribly tall specimens of  Corylopsis, with bare trunks at eye level and the flowers carried way above our heads, so some pruning to keep new growth coming low down might be a good idea.

There are a few flowers on the winter flowering cherry, but I'm sure that when it comes into leaf there will be a mass of dieback.  The water table has risen under it and it's sitting far too wet.  I've been eyeing up possible spaces for a replacement in the front garden.  Pieris 'Katsura' is opening its dusky pink buds like giant heather bells as if nothing had happened, which is surprising and delightful after the winter weather.  I've a feeling the frost danger for pieris is to the emerging leaves more than the flowers, and the flowers were still in very tight bud when the worst of the weather came.  No flowers on the Edgeworthia, though.

At ground level the hellebores are looking good, the Lady series and their offspring in the front garden and assorted hybridus forms and their seedlings in the back.  A yellow form that has not been so vigorous is doing quite well this year, with several nice solid butter-yellow flowers.  H. x ericsmithii is flowering profusely, with petals of yellowish cream with pale plum backs.  'Pirouette' was a new purchase last year, and has made a chunky plant so perhaps it is a good doer.  It is a pinky plum with a formal double centre, and I planted it partly for its own sake, because it is very pretty, and in the hopes of some exotic babies in that part of the garden.  It got rather shaded last summer as a shrub rose leant all over it, but seems none the worse for the experience.  New hellebore varieties are so tempting, but not cheap, so I tend to try just one the first year and see whether they seem to have a robust constitution in a garden setting.

The primroses and polyanthus are starting to get going.  I love the wild yellow primroses, but like the pink ones too, and the more highly bred polyanthus, which I have in soft and strong yellow, and all shades of pink from pale and grubby to magenta and purple.  Some were from an alleged woodland walk seed mix, which came less true to description than any other seed I've grown, and some particularly vigorous yellow ones in a good clean shade of dark lemon were half price at B&Q.  The violets are starting bloom under the roses, my ambition being to cover the ground entirely with them and other ground cover so that there's no room for weed seedlings at all.  The white bergenia has two flowers on it, and not as many leaves as it should have, so something is eating it.  Driving back from Colchester today we passed a mass of a pink flowered variety, which reminded me how full and lush bergenia should be looking at this time of the year, if it is happy.  There are a few pulmonaria flowers out, in mid blue, bricky red, and a good red-blue with bright violet and purple overtones.  The pulmonarias started out as named varieties, but over the years self-seeding and the destructive effects of birds and animals on stick-in labels means that I don't know what most of them are.

The snowdrops still look good from a distance, but close up you see that they are starting to go over.  There are some flowers of Cyclamen coum, but not great sheets as I would like.  I plant a few more each year and they gradually spread and bulk up.  Something has dug up the majority of the crocus bulbs from the borders, though not so far from the grass.  I need to go over the borders and smooth down every last hole and scuffled area, then inspect them daily for fresh signs of digging to work out how often whatever it is comes.  We tried the trail camera on one badly affected bit of border one night, but didn't photograph anything.  It has been set up on that area again for tonight, and we'll see what we get.

The dwarf iris have just gone over, but Iris unguicularis is still sending up new flowers.

more winter flowers

A month into the blog I had another look around the garden to see what flowers were out.  That could be a regular posting for the first of each month, unless I'm on holiday, or ill.  There's not a lot of progress to report since the first of January.  The snowdrops are showing white, but still not fully out.  I think this is about the point that I worry each year that something has happened to them, and they have dwindled instead of making increase, then in a few more days they're properly out.  There are a few small cyclamen, but they look rather overwhelmed by the cold damp greyness of it all.  The witch hazels are great, glowing with colour and spicily scented, though I don't find they throw their fragrance across the garden so well as the Sarcocca confusa.  I wonder if that was flowering on New Year's day and got unfairly overlooked when I walked round the garden.  It was drizzling.  The buds on Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' look promising.  She has lost nearly all her leaves whereas she normally doesn't, but I think she'll be OK, given some other D. bholua forms are deciduous.  The buds on Ribes laurifolium are looking good too.  I'll return to the topic of those once they're fully out, as it is a good shrub that deserves its own post.  Viburnum bodnantense 'Charles Lamont' has opened some flowers, though the brown remains of failed earlier attempts slightly marr the overall effect.  Iris unguicularis is still not really performing, another subject to be returned to in a future post.  The Helleborus foetidus under the shrub roses have pulled themselves together in the past month and look much stouter and more cheerful, with greenish yellow flowers.  I hope these will start seeding about, as H. foetidus is wont to do, and start a colony in the gloom.  The catkins on the hazel along the edge of the wood and in the boundary hedge are looking really good.  We should prize our native Corylus avellanus much more if only it came from the Himalayas, and was expensive to buy and fiendishly difficult to grow.  The catkins provide an excellent pollen supply for early flying bees.

Overall the garden is looking rather beaten down and sad, with squashed patches where the snow has lain on evergreens and some of the twiggy deciduous shrubs, and the odd broken branch.  I'll just have to keep working my way round with pruning tools and string.

new year flowers

I had planned to make my inaugural New Year's Day post an account of the flowers out in the garden on 1st January.  There is normally a scattering of winter stalwarts and a few summer stragglers.  This year, practically nothing.  Viburnum x bodnantense 'Charles Lamont' had made a valiant effort, but the open petals were browned by cold.  At least there'll be some more along later.  Viburnum tinus opposite the dustbins managed a scattering.  It is never very floriferous.  Maybe it resents the mundane aspect.  Elsewhere a blank apart from one rather weedy Helleborus foetidus sporting a small tuft of green flowers on top of its single stem.  Among the leaves of Iris unguicularis I counted three tight buds, one nibbled by snails and one collapsed at the neck due to the weather. I haven't seen any flowers yet on the winter flowering cherry since winter began.  Some shrubs were 'showing colour', as plant nurseries' availibility lists would put it, but don't count for the purposes of today's survey.  Happy New Year.