JEARRARD'S HERBAL
28th January 2024
Camellia 'Cornish Spring'
Isn't it strange how the season is always strange. It's as though the weather was unpredictable.
The forecast had suggested a sudden change from the icy temperatures of last week to something much milder.
Delightful and unexpected accuracy was something of a shock. At the end of the last storm a single Leyland Cypress came down over the
Hedychium border. It wasn't a big problem, but it has taken a couple of days to clear it away. I hitched the trailer to the lawnmower
to move the logs about. On the steeper sections of the garden the mower came to a halt, spinning its wheels with frustration on the wet ground.
That is how the garden responded to the change in temperature. The last frosts flattened all the snowdrops and browned all of the camellia flowers.
The warmth arrived and for a day or two the garden spun its wheels and got nowhere, seeking some traction in the warmth that wasn't to be found.
By the end of the week it had got a grip, even the pale sunshine seemed stronger.
Camellia 'Cornish Spring' is a hybrid between
C. cuspidata and C. japonica. It will grow far too large for the space I have it planted in but I'm not going to worry about it.
Something usually happens to sort these things out. It shed its last brown flowers and opened a few new buds as the minimum temperature rose ten degrees.
It is indeed a strange Cornish spring.
28th January 2024
Galanthus elwesii 'November Flowering'
In the period that, for the sake of argument, I will call autumn, I felt that the earliest of the snowdrops were looking rather sparse.
There may have been something that they didn't like about last year. A few flowered well, which disguised the reality that several didn't flower at all.
Sometimes I can put this down to hungry slugs or curious birds, but this year there were a few cultivars that just didn't try. Leaves have come up now,
they just skipped the hard work of flowering.
Galanthus elwesii 'November Flowering' was one of the absentees. It is a selection from Bob Brown at Cotswold Garden Flowers
and it fits into the loose G. elwesii Hiemalis Group. They can be erratic in flower, sometimes appearing in autumn and sometimes
not bothering to show up until spring. My original Hiemalis, from Broadleigh Gardens, has settled into a fairly reliable autumn flowering
habit after a decade of dithering. 'November Flowering' is still in the 'can't be bothered' bracket. It's unfortunate because it's a good plant when it's in the
right mood. Autumn or spring, it is one or the other.
28th January 2024
Maxillaria rhombea
When the cold weather threatened I leapt into action and covered the orchids in the greenhouse with a thick blanket of fleece and black plastic.
Radiation frosts last winter did a lot of damage and the plants that survived are still recovering. I didn't want a radiation repeat if I could avoid it.
In the event it was a good thing I acted, we had a couple of severe radiation frosts when plants would have been hit quite badly.
In the middle of the week, with some warmth returning to the greenhouse, I removed the covers so that the plants could have some light.
Sheltering in the dark, I found that Maxillaria rhombea had come into flower. The bud isn't exactly spectacular at the moment,
but the temperatures aren't exactly tropical either. The species comes from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, its mere survival in an unheated greenhouse in
Cornwall is astonishing. The production of flowers at the coldest time of the year is little short of miraculous. Warmer weather is coming
but there may be some serious bumps in the road. I have kept the fleece handy.
28th January 2024
Narcissus 'Bowles Early Sulphur'
The snowdrops have taken advantage of the warm spell. Clusters of leaves and buds have pushed through the ground in most of the places they
are expected. G. nivalis 'Flore Pleno' has produced its annual surprise, the flowers appearing at the surface without any apparent
plant to support them. They lie around for a few days like exotic stones on the ground before the flower stems push up and raise them.
Daffodil leaves are also bursting up, the flower buds nestling in their midst until they are ready to rise on their own.
N. 'Bowles Early Sulphur' has opened and in the mid-week sunshine I managed to take an entire series of atrocious overexposed photographs
of it. This picture came from Myddleton House yesterday where the Enfield sun was moderated by low cloud. I was there for the annual snowdrop sale
and enjoyed seeing 'Bowles Early Sulphur' (or something very like it) still growing in Bowles garden.