JEARRARD'S HERBAL
Thats enough introduction - on with the plants!
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... out in the garden.
18th January 2009
Galanthus elwesii .
It has been a week of rain and rising temperatures. The trees I felled last weekend are strill waiting to be cut up and moved out of the way, but
it isn't a job for rainy weather. Snowdrops are bursting out of the ground all around the place. This is form of G.elwesii with the lower green mark
split into two. The bulbs are so easily and cheaply available that it is easy to overlook the variation in the plants when they flower. They seem to
like a bit more sunlight than the G.nivalis forms, and don't always increase well in the wood, so I am always looking for sunny little spots to
plant them out, and they always end up staying in pots for too long.
18th January 2009
Galanthus 'Merlin' (Bonds Form) .
'Merlin' was raised by James Allen at the end of the 19th century, but it hasn't been very well documented until quite recently. As a consequence there are a couple of forms about
that are very similar but not the same. This form is probably the original - it isn't the largest of flowers but it is still quite vigorous.
The inner segments are almost entirely green (on the outer face anyway), with just a thin white line round the outside. It is doing quite well under the trees and is
distinctive enough to save me worrying about losing the label!
18th January 2009
Helleborus x hybridus Yellow .
I don't know if the Hellebore beds will work better now I have taken down the pine trees that were drying them out, but it is nice to have some extra
light in there at the start of the year.
This yellow flowered seedling makes a big impact from a distance, and is the sort of colour I should be planting out. There are now quite a lot of seedlings reaching flowering size up
there, and the less interesting ones will be dug out and used in less 'select' parts of the garden (you can never have too many Hellebores)!
18th January 2009
Helleborus x hybridus Blue .
This blue seedling is exactly wrong for a bed beneath trees. The colour is too dark to show up. I saw it in flower yesterday and went out specially today to take its
picture, and I still had to look around to find it, it blended in to the leaf litter so well. Unfortunately, it is one of my favourite colours,
so I will be planting more of them, but I must try to keep them close to the path or they will be completely overlooked.
The original plan was to keep the colours in organised groups, to make it easier to hand pollinate the right plants and keep the colours pure,
but somewhere along the way it has all gone awry and I am going to have to perform one of those irritating pieces of performance gardening
with canes and labels marking plants and colours so that I can lift and move them in the autumn. Or maybe the autumn after...
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.
I have a lot of good intentions when it comes to updating this site, and I try to keep a note
about what is going on, if you are interested.
If you want to contact me, the address is infoMONKEYjohnjearrard.co.uk
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