JEARRARD'S HERBAL
Thats enough introduction - on with the plants!
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... out in the garden.
5th January 2025
Helleborus x hybridus .
I have just been told that the weather averages for the year have been fairly ordinary. The weather never feels ordinary. Every year seems to be outstanding
in one respect or another, but perhaps that says more about the nature of averages than it does about the weather. Today it is very warm, yesterday it was very cold.
It is, if I may be permitted to trot out the classic description, spring.
For all of the ordinary things that have happened, the absence of icicles in June for example, the weather has seemed remarkable. Autumn and winter have seemed remarkably mild.
Those things that respond to warm temperatures have flowered early, those things that require a cold spell have been delayed. Up in the hellebore border
the plants seem to have followed the averages. Perhaps it is because the crowns are buried in the ground and less exposed to the vicissitudes of temperature.
Whatever. The hellebores seem to be exactly on time.
This pale pink flowered plant is often the first to bloom. It is unexceptional in every other respect but for a few days it will be the best thing in the entire border.
It is to be hoped that the border will deliver a bit more yet. During the summer last year I planted a lot of hellebores from pots into the ground here.
If they haven't done well then I have just killed a lot of very cherished and beautiful things. This interesting year has opened with a fragile pale-pink preface.
5th January 2025
Pleione Barcena .
The greenhouse has finally slipped into its winter rest. It seems back-to-front to expect the greenhouse to deliver the least through the winter.
Surely the protection should be used to deliver some sparkle in the dark days? I am happy with a quiet pause. I use the greenhouse to grow things that
wouldn't quite make it in the garden. I am happy that when conditions are at their hardest outside, my winter refugees are having a snooze.
However, after a winter snooze, spring comes early in the greenhouse. The first of the Pleione has come into flower before I have started
repotting and weeding the rest of them. Fortunately Barcena is an autumn flowering Pleione that generally waits until the new year
before celebrating autumn. I had a couple of flowers a month ago, then the slugs had them. Now I have another.
Slugs are becoming a greater menace in the greenhouse. In past years an occasional pellet would keep numbers to a manageable level,
with modern pellets that is no longer the case. I have been applying them, the slugs have been laughing at me. I may have to learn to do without dahlias
completely.
5th January 2025
Camellia 'Reigyoku' .
The mild weather has thrown up some surprises. I always get an odd bloom or two from spring flowering camellias to adorn the rump of the old year.
C. 'Nobilissima' is a reliable producer of unseasonal flowers. I don't know why, the majority of buds will wait until they have a sharp frost
before they start to move forward. A serious freeze yesterday will have triggered them. One or two buds, however, will jump the gun
and proclaim the arrival of spring before the garden has entirely dispensed with autumn.
Camellia 'Reigyoku' has been more of a surprise. I had noticed that the buds were swelling but since I don't expect to see flowers
this early I had put it down to the slow process of development. I was wrong, there was no slow process a work. The first flowers opened
before the new year, now there is a good scattering of them over the plant. I put it down to the constant inevitability of
atypical weather.
5th January 2025
Galanthus woronowii .
Snowdrops have also felt the urgent tug of spring. A couple of weeks go I decided that I should probably stop walking over the borders
to protect the new shoots. This week the ground is erupting with the new growth of 'Brenda Troyle' and she is telling me to keep off
with unexpected directness.
In the snowdrop border my early flowering Galanthus woronowii has emerged very suddenly and burst into flower.
It isn't a named form, I got it years ago when the first stocks of wild-dug G. woronowii appeared in the garden centres.
I think the trade has ended now, certainly the variability of the plants has reduced and that generally means that commercial production has stepped in.
At the time, every G. woronowii in flower seemed different. I have a couple of early clones from that period, the second will flower in a couple of weeks
and then there will be a gap before the usual ones flower at the end of February.
Or at least, there would be a gap in an average year. You can't rely on those.
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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