Garden Centre

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

What’s going on in the garden?

My list of plants in bloom is pretty extensive:

1. Five hellebores (all of them except the niger, in fact)
2. Both Mahonias
3. Violets
4. Snowdrops
5. Polyanthus
6. Jasmine Nudiflorum (winter jasmine)
7. Clematis cirrhosa (winter clematis)


I always say I’m going to pick flowers for the house, but I almost never do – not even the violets, because I have this weird feeling that removing them from the garden destroys an irreparable part of the eco-system. Now, this is absolutely not true, as the horticulturalist in me constantly points out, and many plants, the polyanthus among them, actually need to have flowers removed to produce more and better blooms.

Still, at this point in the year, when most of the garden is bleak and bare, there’s a daily excitement to going outdoors to see what has poked its head above the mud (we haven’t been blessed with snow this year) and that little bit of a thrill increases a thousand-fold if I catch the wonderful earthy fragrance of a violet and have to follow it through the garden like a human bloodhound, bent double so as not to lose the track, until I find the tiny purple flower hidden in the grass or concealed under the overhanging leaves of a skimmia or rhododendron.

Labels: garden flowers, winter colour, winter flowers, winter plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:23 AM

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