JEARRARD'S HERBAL
Thats enough introduction - on with the plants!
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... out in the garden.
26th October 2025
Liquidambar styraciflua 'Worplesdon' .
Spring bounces into the garden like a hot air balloon making a dodgy landing and it demands complete attention. It seems overwhelming. I look at the pictures taken in the garden through the week
and it is bewildering.
Autumn shows the other side of the coin. Something has left the garden, and it may as well have been a hot air balloon, certainly it was the hot air. The wind was cold this week.
Not bracing, not even chilly, it was cold. This week the pictures seemed impoverished at first glance but somehow they are all important, filled with stentorian significance,
unlike the flippant gossip of spring.
Liquidambar styraciflua 'Worplesdon' trapped the last sunlight as the clocks went back. It this wind keeps up then next week will be leafless darkness.
26th October 2025
Camellia sasanqua 'Paradise Blush' .
The week has been dank, the garden has buried its head in a duvet of sycamore leaves and clearly wanted to be left alone.
A bright spell yesterday drew me out there to celebrate Camellia sasanqua. A late friend used to say that she has 250 cultivars of Camellia sasanqua in her garden.
I can understand that sort of dedication, it is a delight when the closing door of autumn relents and allows a camellia-beam of spring light to shine through.
I don't have space in the garden for 250 cultivars but you never know, I seem to squeeze in a couple more every year. They are accommodating.
I walk past 'Paradise Blush' on the path up into the garden. Throughout the year it is delightfully homely, bustling with the labour of enchantment being prepared.
There was nothing visible as I passed it yesterday but I wasn't convinced. I fought my way through the shrubbery to see it from the south and sure enough
it was flowering. The path-side of the plant is full of buds as well, I take these hidden flowers as a dress rehearsal for delight.
26th October 2025
Crocus sativus .
Autumn flowering bulbs and manic cackling laughter seem to go together. Certainly when I planted Crocus sativus I was laughing in the face of futility.
I harvested the stigmas of the first flowers, made a saffron cake and feasted like a king. Last year I nearly threw out the tub they are growing in.
Crocus leaves are delightful I am sure. There will be a specialist somewhere who grows a huge collection just for the delight of the leaves
but it isn't me. Cornwall would be the perfect place to grow a collection for the sake of their leaves, there is little chance of being distracted by flowers.
However a hot summer, a determination to confound expectations or perhaps a combination of the two has produced an unlikely result.
It is enough to keep me trying for several more years. I think I had two flowers, wind and rain took their toll.
I took a chance first thing one morning and photographed this tattered lilac flag of defiance, by lunchtime it had gone.
26th October 2025
Galanthus corcyrensis
Galanthus corcyrensis is stronger in the face of inclement weather. It also seems to be getting stronger in the garden.
I have been growing it since it was actually G. corcyrensis, nowadays it is included in the spectrum of variability labelled
G.reginae-olgae. I haven't adapted, I prefer to drag my heels. This collection from Corfu seems to differ from the classic G. reginae-olgae in some ways.
There is much talk about flowering with or without leaves but I have a simpler distinction. G. corcyrensis flowers in a sunny spot in the garden,
G. reginae-olgae doesn't.
Now, snowdrop leaves have the same degree of interest as Crocus leaves, perhaps even more. I have no doubt that there is a recondite galanthophile
making a name for themselves by their study of snowdrop leaves. Perhaps we might call it galanthofolia and crack the serious snowdrop faces with
a smiling pun. Better not, they do take things very seriously.
For my part, snowdrop leaves exist in the shade of snowdrop flowers. No flowers, no purple prose.
26th October 2025
Iris unguicularis 'Walter Butt'
I staggered into the house on Monday thrilled by the wonders of the modern transport system and ready to slip into a meditative bath to ponder
the rhythmic magic of tarmac (I had just driven back from Surrey). There, beside the house, was Iris unguicularis 'Walter Butt'
flushed in the twilight with unexpected flowers and it was too good to miss. I spent a few moments with a camera before the bath claimed me.
It was a good thing, by the morning the flowers had gone and there haven't been any more.
Walter flowers in the autumn and keeps going until the spring, handing the torch of joy from one season to the other. We don't need to talk about winter.
Autumn will continue until Christmas, Santa will eat too much, sleep until New Years Day and the snowdrop-spring will burst.
Iris unguicularis 'Walter Butt' will take the journey with us.
26th October 2025
Mahonia japonica
Autumn colour is a difficult thing in this garden. The Liquidambar is reliable and there are some Acer palmatum forms that show willing.
Otherwise the autumn leaves are ripped from the trees and dance over the hills in the breeze. Bright red is delicious and rare.
I have a lot of the newer Mahonia in the garden, I felt that I should. I haven't been wildly impressed for all the oozing of the commercial press. In
my garden they haven't really delivered on the initial promise.
Mahonia japonica has been with me for much longer. Every now and then I get fed up with it, yank it out of the ground and plant it somewhere less obvious
in the confident knowledge that obscurity brings out its best features. I have been looking at it for a couple of years and thinking that the time may again be coming.
There is a space under a pine tree. Not a very choice space I will accept, but a space for all that. A vigorous moment in September might have seen the deed done
but for all the languid passage of September there wasn't a suitable vigorous moment. I am glad.
It has horrible stems, the flowers are dull and pale enough to be missed completely. However when it is in the mood it has a scarlet tantrum and lets the whole world know it isn't messing around.
It's dull and prickly, with deeply ingrained overlookability but for these sporadic scarlet banners I will cherish it.
To find particular groups of plants I grow, click on the genus name in the table above. Click on the "Index" box at the top of the page for the full list.
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