JEARRARD'S HERBAL
14th January 2024
The garden is dithering in an undecided state. The first real cold weather of the year left a decent thickness of ice over the waterlilies
and added a frosty topping to the badger's excavations. For the first time in a long while the mud outside the back door
was firm and clean to walk on. I really must scrape it away and put some proper surfacing down. It is one of those irritations that remained
un-noticed until the frost improved the situation. I'm not going to hope for perpetual frost, I might just get some stone chippings instead.
The cold snap passed, the mud returned. From the top of the garden I get a view of the surrounding valleys. If we get snow the slopes will fill with
schoolchildren on toboggans, the outlook for winter will have changed. On the other hand, the temperature has gone up again.
We might escape another chill. The Hamamelis have opened and there are new shoots coming up all around. The bulbs are on the move
but there is still plenty of time for a cold catastrophe. The garden is undecided, to rush forward recklessly or take a more measured approach?
The outlook is unclear.
14th January 2024
Camellia sasanqua 'Paradise Vanessa'
Throughout the garden there are camellias signalling messages of indecision. The weather is not giving clear signals.
Autumn flowering camellias put on a great show last season. For the first time since I started planting them (about a decade ago)
they made a significant feature. A warm, moist summer and a long, frost-free autumn helped them to make an impact.
In the days leading up to Christmas they reached the summit of display. Even 'Yuletide' put in an appearance for Yuletide which I
had not expected. Usually the Santa-Claus-red flowers appear at the end of January when the weather is dreary and the dark days seem
to have had the optimism squeezed out of them. 'Yuletide' seems to choose the dankest day of January to start its sarcastic flowering.
Not this year however. This year everyone got into the Christmas spirit and celebrated the end of 2023. On New Years day all of the C. sasanqua
forms dropped their flowers with a dramatic thud. Season done, flowers done, lets move on. 'Paradise Vanessa' has produced one last bloom
but it looks a bit foolish, as though it didn't get the memo.
14th January 2024
Camellia 'Winters Interlude'
The autumn camellias are a diverse bunch. At the heart of the family is C. sasanqua but they have been cultivated for so long in Japan
that there have been plenty of other influences. Many of the group have dallied with other species along the way but they have familial solidarity.
On January 1st they laid down their petals and returned to their day jobs.
Western hybrids with C. sasanqua are less disciplined. 'Show Girl', a hybrid with C. reticulata has only just got into her stride.
The bush is covered with flowers and scattered petals adorn the ground. In the rest of the garden the Camellia flowers are resisting the cold.
White flowered forms like 'Nobilissima' have been touched with brown but the cold snap did not penetrate far.
Camellia 'Winters Interlude' was bred in the USA to stand up to the rigours of a cold winter. It is a hybrid involving C. oleifera
and it will sail untroubled through anything that the Cornish winter can throw at it. A mass of flowers opened after the
thaw and it begs the question 'is this just an interlude'?
14th January 2024
Camellia 'Debbie'
It was a surprise to find flowers on Camellia 'Debbie' this week. 'Debbie' flowers exuberantly, relentlessly, one might almost say remorselessly and
I find the colour a little difficult to take in the garden. It would be perfectly serviceable as a warning sign, or as an arrow pointing the
way to the public conveniences, but as a flower I find it a bit much. It isn't that it lacks grace, or indeed lacks anything else. It isn't a
shortage that is the problem, it is the excess. It has too much camellia-ness. It is the archetypal blunt-instrument of the genus.
This week 'Debbie' was a surprise. She usually saves her appearance for the warmth of spring when the garden has filled with sunlight and baby bunnies.
Out she comes and sets off on a course of blowsy bludgeoning just to remind us that tough is as tough does. Camellia 'Debbie', the gangster of garden decoration.
An early and tentative, possibly even coy, appearance is out of character. Perhaps 'Debbie' knows what the season holds.
Perhaps she has read it in the tea-leaves?