Garrya Elliptica on the first of February

The tassels of Garrya Elliptica cheer up a bitterly cold start to February

Highlights of my Garden Year

The exact time of bloom or harvest depend on the weather

January	At the front, Garrya Elliptica dangles its catkins in the Eastern corner. Viburnum Bodiensis “Dawn” displays pink vanilla scented  blossom in the back garden. Snowdrops  create a white  stream in the ‘mini-wood’.
February	Pale yellow primulas,  which may have been  flowering spasmodically  since November or earlier  are more conspicuous in the  front garden. Snow drops continue in the back. Leeks  add variety to winter vegetables.
March	Hellebores, purple, pink and white, flower by the path in the  front garden.  Early daffodils  herald Spring.
April	Bees venture out to visit cherry, plum and pear blossom. Forsythia flaunts flowers on leafless branches. Late daffodils and mid-season tulips welcome Easter.
May	Tall fluted tulips rise from a sea  of blue   forget-me-nots.  Pink and white apple blossom looks down on  scented narcissi. 'Purple Sensation' stands to attention. First lettuces. Last leeks.  A black bird sings from the tip of a holly tree.
June	Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’ flaunts fragrant blossom .  Allium ‘Star of Persia’parades  gigantic purple globes above now fading forget-me-nots. Delphiniums declare summer  and so do strawberries.
July	Crimson Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’  standsout against the greenery  of lawn and shrubs. Hanging  baskets of surfinias grace walls.  Runner beans and courgettes  provide their first produce. Tomatoes ripen. For fruit we have loganberries,   the first flush of Raspberry  JoanneJ and the intense  taste  of b lack currants.
August	Yellow daisies, (heliopsis, helenium, coreopsis and  rudbeckia) along with the first dahlias brighten bed. Plums and damsons ripen, as do thornless blackberries and first apples.
September	Dahlias are now in their prime.  Michaelmass daisies add variety. Mid-season apples clutter the ground if left unpicked. In the green house peppers hang red and yellow.
October	Coneflowers and dahlias continue Spiny Pyrecantha startles with   brightorange fruit. The second  flush of pJoanneJ raspberries  will continue into November.
November	Stately Mahonia Japonica  creates a spectacle with fanning yellow  blossom.  Late eating apples  promise to last until strawberries  ripen next year.
December	Blackbirds leave the tiny  fruits of humble cotoneaster but   strip flashy holly berries. The first fragrant flush  of  Viburnum Bodiensis  “Dawn” appears if weather  is dry.Dangling twigs of a birch tree glow orange in  low winter sun.

November 2013

On the last day of November a neighbour's tree still flaunts its second flush  of leaves

Bonfires  and Thanksgiving the only  constants,
Fluctuating  festivals hallmark  Gregorian November.
Divali flirts with October and Hanukkah favours December,
While Eid skips in once in thirteen years.
Deciduous trees more unpredictably fickle,
Usually embrace November with naked limbs,
But occasionally retain a veil of golden leaves
That they will drop only for darkly handsome December.

OK. I'm not sure about the arithmetic of Eid.  It could be once in eleven years or twice in twelve years. Please don't flame me for being poor at maths, but feel free to correct me in your best polite mode.

Batemans

I abandoned my own garden at the beginning of the month and went on a 5 day coach tour of the Gardens of Kent.
There was something to admire in each of the five gardens we visited but my most treasured memories are of Batemans, home for over 30 years to my favourite author.

Photo taken by Linda Spashett

I can imagine how Kipling must have felt when he first saw this isolated 17th-century house, with its mullioned windows and oak beams, set in the woodlands of the Sussex Weald. His wife apparently was not so impressed at the prospect of living so far from civilisation.
The property is fortunate to be under the protection of two societies, - the National Trust that owns and maintains it and the Kipling Society that provides enough help and information to keep a visitor occupied for a week let alone the five hours available to our party.

It rained much of the day we were there but I managed to get out between showers to wander round the gardens that provided the settings for Puck of Pook's Hill, Rewards and Fairies
and inspired

The Glory of the Garden.

Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You will find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all;
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks:
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.

And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.


And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick.
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

Rudyard Kipling, 1911

Linden trees

This is my favourite time of the year for taking an evening stroll or pottering about in the front garden watering or deadheading .
The linden trees (also known as lime or tilia or basswood) are in blossom- not conspicuous flowers, granted, but oh! the perfume, far more powerful this year than for several in the past. One very poor summer, two, or was it three, years ago, all residents commented that they had missed the perfume entirely. In any case, it lasts no longer than a fortnight. When at its best, one forgives the trees their tendency to block up gutters and drains with leaves in Autumn and drop twigs and small branches onto cars in all year round gales.
Most tall linden trees, like the ones in our road are remnants of the Victorian era. Nowadays many councils do not regard them as suitable for urban planting.
I am told that there are two dwarf varieties of linden 'Green Globe' and 'Lico, that look like lollipops on sticks and usually grow to know more than 15' in height. If their blossom is as well perfumed as the species lindens they may well become desirable street plants.
For a fuller account of Linden trees, botanically, pharmaceutically and historically see the article in Wikipedia

Opening Up

I had a patch in my garden, enclosed by a hawthorn hedge, dogwood and conifers. In summer an aspen turned the area into a green walled cave. In winter bare branches let in the sunlight and the ground was covered with snowdrops that few visitors ever saw. In summer I slung my hammock here and would stare at patches of blue sky glistening between aspen leaves in complete privacy. Shade and a thick hawthorn hedge made me invisible to neighbours only a few feet away.
The downside was that the very dense conifer which kept me hidden from the rest of my garden also hid the view of my favourite tree, the beauty pine. Whereas most pines have stiff prickly needles, the needles of the beauty pine slip soft as silk through one's fingers. It's large pine cones are beige crescent moons. In December I prune it and use great branches to stand in for a Christmas tree. While pruning this year however I noticed that the dense conifer nearer the house was excluding so much light from the the from the beauty pine that its branches on one side were dying. The dense conifer had to go.

Since the offending tree was at least 20 ft tall I asked Chris to cut it in three portions. The wood was soft so the sawing didn't take long but I was surprised by the weight of each trunk section. As usual I used each section of trunk to demarcate the side of a garden bed. The ends of the branches where foliage was green we stacked against a fence to dry out and I shredded the rest of each branch where the foliage was dead, I used the shreddings to cover paths in the vegetable garden. The next job is to cover the regained ground with lower growing shrubs.

I have lost my private haven but can now see the snowdrops from my conservatory window

Winter plants surviving after 15 degrees of frost

For the past three years winter here in the East Midlands of the UK has followed a middle eastern calender, with intervals of just 324 days between big freezes (so we had January 2009 to February 2009, December 2009 to January 2010 and November 2010 to January 2011 with freezes growing colder each year). However, while winter has been roaring in earlier, spring has been arriving later so, who knows, this winter may be twice as long as the one four years ago.

I wouldn't mind so much if tender pests were being killed off but the lily beetle that migrated into the East Midlands during the preceding spell of mild winters, was still with us last summer.

November's freeze ruined the first flush of the vanilla fragrant pink flowers of Viburnum Dawn that usually grace December and January in my back garden. The second flush is struggling from brown mush despite still heavy frosts and low daytime temperatures so if, for the rest of winter, night temperatures fall to no more than a few degrees below zero, I may still enjoy a shrub full of perfumed blossom while most other plants are sulking.

I am not sure how cold it has to get before the hardy evergreen viburnum tinus gets fazed, but its white flowers are happily opening over the porch although their coarse perfume holds no appeal to me.

Choisya Sundance brightens up the winter with its golden foliage but the flowers disappeared with the first mild frost.

Garry elliptica's catkins are still fresh and the leaves have not been seared. as they were a few years ago, by a less cold but fierce wind from the South West. Swirls of broom twigs too have a quiet beauty of their own.

Most other plants of interest this January, however, unfurling hellebore buds, emerging spears of snowdrops striped with white, primroses showing but single flowers on their spikes, escape notice unless searched for.

I don't seem to be able to position photos where I want them in this blog, the white buds are those of the hellebore (Christmas rose) the shrube is Choisya Sundance