Garden Centre

Thursday, December 31, 2009

More snow and more garden winter plants

This is such a rare occurrence in my part of the world that I’m going to have to beg you to excuse me while I share another picture of snow. It was taken two days after the previous one and, astonishingly for South East England, it shows not just the same snowfall as the picture of winter jasmine, but a subsequent light snow shower that also settled!

I was a little concerned about many local trees and shrubs as a lot of people here have never ‘winterised’ their plants as we just don’t get heavy laying snow, so I can see already that some of the more tender plants in neighbouring gardens have suffered badly, and the weight of the snow with quite a lot of strong winds, tending to easterly gales, has snapped a few overly long branches on some shrubs, notably the hydrangeas that people hadn’t pruned back for winter and a neighbour has probably lost a pieris japonica that was elderly and had damage to its central stem – now the snow and ice damage appears to have split the main stem of the plant wide open.

But most trees have coped really well, possibly because any big trees that were going to fall did so over a decade ago when we had the ‘Great Storm’. And it’s been a revelation to see how some of our berrying trees actually look with snow on them – it really brings out their true beauty.

Labels: garden in snow, hydrangeas, pieris, winter plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:02 AM

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