Garden Centre

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The subtle beauties of winter

At this time of year you sometimes have to search pretty hard to find things to admire in the garden. Of course, the canny gardener will have planted for that catch-all phrase ‘year round interest’ but sometimes objects of interest can be far and few between.

Lichens and berries come into their own at this time of year. Fruit trees, in particular, seem to be host to a lovely crop of lichens that are only really noticeable when the rest of the garden is bare of leaf and brown of stem, and berries which would be insignificant at any other time of year shine out like Christmas decorations amid the gloom.

This hawthorn is probably a chance arrival, deposited by a windblown berry or in a bird’s droppings. It’s been in the garden for a long time, long before we moved in, and it sits between the compost bins and the back fence, hardly noticed for most of the year. But in December it becomes a real focal point, not only because the birds turn up to eat the berries, but because the bright lichens on the branches suddenly demonstrate all their complex attractiveness of both colour and texture.

Other trees that are wonderful for lichens are oaks, particularly mature ones, crab apples and plums. We planted a crab apple for the millennium, which means it’s still too much of a baby to develop any lichen (there seems to be a relationship between the maturity of the branches and the lichenous growth which I’m sure a clever person could explain but it’s a mystery to me) but I’m hopeful that in the next couple of years it too will start to shine out in winter.

Labels: berries, hawthorn, lichens, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:16 AM

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