JEARRARD'S HERBAL
22nd January 2023
The spring is advancing. Looked at from a distance, the week has been mild. The daffodils have buds pushing through the soil. N. 'Rijnvelds Early Sensation'
has already formed golden pools of sunshine in the grass and the Camellia are in flower.
Beneath the Camellia, Galanthus 'Brenda Troyle' has started to cover the ground with white flowers. In many ways it has been a Galanthus week,
'Moccas' is in flower at the top of the garden and 'Reverend Hailstone' is looking perfect under Magnolia wilsonii.
Galanthus nivalis 'Flore Plena' is on the move among the hellebores. The fat white buds have wriggled to the surface, knowing that it is time to get up but reluctant to leave the
warmth of the bed. In a broad sense, it has been a snowdrop week.
Then the snow dropped.
It hadn't been forecast, but in the very early hours of Tuesday morning the snow started to fall. By the time I got up it had stopped, and there were four inches of snow covering the ground.
The garden was unexpectedly transformed.
22nd January 2023
Acer campestre .
I spend a lot of time fussing over small details in the garden. I stood for ten minutes on Friday peering into a patch of grass in the hope of seeing the first foolish Iris bud
poking through. This will be their third year in the ground. If they come up strongly then they have succeeded, if they don't appear then I chose the wrong place for them.
These little details matter. Was their enough light, are they sheltered enough, will they survive the hungry rabbits? It is very easy to get lost in the details
and miss the structure of the garden. A heavy fall of snow made things much clearer.
Acer campestre is a homely tree that carries a wealth of useful attributes in its broad crown. It is fast growing as a youngster but slows down to a moderate size.
It has a dense crown, and resists frost and wind, but it doesn't inhibit woodland plants growing under it. Given a bit of luck it will even manage some moderate yellow autumn colour.
It is a very practical tree and I have a couple of rows of them through the middle of the garden as a windbreak. It is also very cheap. When I planted this row I couldn't have afforded
anything more. It is almost dammed with faint praise. Practical and cheap, like an ecomonical date on a Saturday night.
The snow transformed it. With sunlight rippling over the snow covered branches Acer campestre became the unexpected star of the garden. I have always liked it, it is comfortable and familiar.
Now I will pat its modest trunks affectionately as I pass, we will quietly share the memory of this moment of wonder.
22nd January 2023
Hamamelis x intermedia 'Brimstone'.
I have a number of Hamamelis in the garden. They aren't very happy. I had a burst of enthusiasm for the genus around the time of the millennium and planted too many.
More to the point, I tucked them into corners that were scarcely large enough to contain them. The surroundings have grown, the space has reduced and the Hamamelis
have not competed very well. I have learnt the lesson. They need space and light to prosper in this garden. They don't do well if they are moved, so many of the original plants are doomed,
but as I clear spaces I will replant. I cherish the flowers as one of the earliest signs that the darkness of winter is receding.
Hamamelis x intermedia 'Brimstone' has done better than many of the others. It was planted on the end of a windbreak and gets plenty of exposure. There are some large camellias
growing towards it but they can be moved. I slept through the snow falling, but it must have been a very still night. The snow had piled on the branches in a thick coating. It hadn't blown off of exposed
parts and it hadn't drifted on the ground at all. It had settled gently on the twigs and balanced there.
It only lasted for a day, but it was a very beautiful day. When the snow left it went as quietly as it arrived. There was no fuss, and no dirty sludge. The garden stood up, shook itself, and carried on
in the spring sunshine.
22nd January 2023
Dicksonia antarctica .
The snow had settled gently but there was a lot of it. It has been a long time since this quantity of snow fell in the garden. Looked at in overview, it has been a mild winter so far.
Spring is well established and although it is too early to relax, the thought that things might just trot along gently into March has occurred to me. In broad terms it has been a mild winter,
but the details have been extreme. At the start of December we had a series of hard radiation frosts, some serious damage has been done in the greenhouse. It is too early to say
if things will survive, it will certainly take a few years for some of them to recover.
The Dicksonia have developed a brand new aesthetic. I like the sea-urchin look. I worry about them. The larger they get the more I worry. A decade ago I skipped among them with scarcely a care,
they had established well and never shown the slightest sign of winter damage. I had planted a much larger group of sporelings to make a Dicksonia finale to the
herbaceous border. The sporelings had trunks about a foot tall. The "beast from the east" killed the whole lot in 2018. You can still see the stumps in the front of the picture.
So now I worry. I have been leaving the stumps there, planning to make use of them later in the greenhouse to grow Dendrobium on. Time will tell which of the Dendrobium
have survived. I won't be needing the tree fern stumps for a year or two.
In broad terms it has been a moderate year with a couple of really frightening incidents.
22nd January 2023
Camellia 'Winton' .
In 2011, Dahlia merckii flowered until the end of November, when the snow fell. It was strange to see the flowers wearing freezing white caps. This year it has happened on the other side of the season.
Many of the early camellias were in flower, the mid-season ones were just starting, and they have all been crowned with snow. It is a strange and beautiful look.
When it happened to the Dahlia it marked the end of the seasonal display. Temperatures fell below zero, when the sun rose the snow melted and the stems collapsed to brown mush.
It hasn't been the same with the camellias. Temperatures haven't gone as low as zero all week. Even on Tuesday, with snow covering everything, the garden stayed above freezing.
The camellia flowers have been undamaged. They were covered in snow, it melted, they were uncovered. By Wednesday morning the garden was green again. Small patches of snow remained
in the shady corners but it was tired old snow, fighting dissolution.
Camellia 'Winton' is a pretty hybrid between C. cuspidata and C. saluenensis raised at Exbury and named by Hilliers. In a week or two the branches will be covered
in pale pink flowers. It is usually later than this, the generally mild winter has moved things along faster than expected.
C. 'Winton' has a white flowered sibling that is better known, though I don't grow it. Raised at Caerhays and registered in 1948, I must find some space
for Camellia 'Cornish Snow'.
22nd January 2023
Narcissus 'Rijnvelds Early Sensation' .
The week ended as it had begun. The sun was shining, the garden warm. When I went to bed on Monday night I had seriously planned to mow the grass the next day.
That didn't happen, it will have to wait for a bit. On Friday I was working in a t-shirt clearing brambles. The sun was shining again, it was warm, there was no sign that the snow had ever happened.
It was a remarkably contained event. Tuesday was white and the rest of the week was perfectly normal. The snowdrops disappeared under snow, but they are back now.
The daffodils also looked hopeless. The stems were bent down to the ground. A large clump flowering through the grass in front of the house had vanished, nothing but some corrugations
in the snow to indicate that they were there. They have brushed themselves down and stood up again as though nothing had happened.
It was also a very local event. I took some pictures from the top of the garden on Tuesday morning expecting to see the white landscape unroll in front of me.
That isn't what had happened. The snow had landed on this hill, the distant fields were still green.
In the top left of the picture you can possibly see a yellow field. Narcissus 'Rijnvelds Early Sensation' in full flower. To be honest, it might be 'Tamara', or another of the Rijnvelds seedlings.
It is difficult to tell at this distance.