JEARRARD'S HERBAL
31st March 2024
Anemone nemorosa 'Dee Day'
I remember the perfect summers of my youth that started with the song of the first cuckoo and didn't end until the snow fell on Christmas Eve.
It didn't happen like that of course, memory has removed the perturbations of reality. This has been a similar perfect spring in every respect save the
uncooperative facts. The sun has shone enough to leave a memory and the rain has been abundant enough to wash away all record of its presence.
In the real world of the here-and-now it has been exceptionally wet but I have seen good patches of Anemone nemorosa flowering as it should
in the last week of March. It is enough the ensure that the season will be remembered as a perfect spring filled with bird-song and the bright faces of
Wood Anemones.
I saw A. n. 'Dee Day' looking good in the garden several times during the week but I had to go out with a camera half a dozen times before I got a worthwhile picture.
The sun has shone in bursts of spectacular spring glory, but it hasn't shone very often and the bursts haven't lasted for very long. A couple of times I set out from the back
door in perfect spring weather to photograph the anemones and found them closed and nodding under heavy skies moments later. Those things won't be remembered,
it was a perfect sunny spring. I have the pictures to prove it.
31st March 2024
Erythronium umbilicatum
Erythonium umbilicatum teases me in the changeable weather. The unopened buds are red-brown and concealed in the speckled undergrowth of its leaves.
The bright yellow flowers open in the sunshine, it's difficult to see how they could be missed. Somehow I managed it.
At the start of the week I could see no sign of the plant and was convinced that it had died. I meant to transplant a section to a space under the trees where it can romp around
with reckless liberty but I didn't do it. Suddenly it was in flower. I don't think the plant did anything suddenly, the sunshine transported it from overlooked to unmissable.
I am nervous about transplanting it. It seems to spread by runners, new growths appear several inches from the original plants. Internet sources say that it has large bulbs.
I am frightened that I will snap them if I move it or disturb its clumping intentions. I did nothing about it last year, I must be sure to act this time.
Failure to act when the moment seems right is a mistake.
31st March 2024
Fritillaria meleagris
Action arrived in the meadow, and it arrived quite by chance. The fritillaries have attracted my attention in the past couple of years, not because they were good or
impressive, but because they were there. I say 'they', there were two of them. They flower at a perfect time, once the gaudy daffodils have left the scene and
before the bluebells take over. I wanted more fritillaries but I had limited success planting them as bulbs in the autumn. I had missed the chance to buy them
in flower in pots in the garden centres. I looked a couple of weeks ago and the only plants available had already shot their bolt.
By good fortune I was able to buy three pots of bulbs in peak condition at the AGS show at Rosemoor last week and they are just the thing. I planted them into
the meadow immediately, it will be interesting to see if they establish any more reliably. In the long term I will rely on them increasing by seed.
If they can't do that then they aren't going to succeed. In the short term I am happy to add a few new pots of bulbs every year and boost the population
artificially until they can look after themselves.
31st March 2024
Fuchsia 'Lechlade Magician'
Sharp radiation frosts over a couple of nights in December defoliated all of the fuchsias. If it hadn't happened, F. 'Lechlade Magician'
might have continued to flower through until spring. As it is, the stems have been bare for a couple of months.
As soon as it started to regrow, it produced flower buds from the bare stems. It is a useful habit that it inherits from F. excorticata,
which flowered here in January every year until the winter of 2018 killed it. I have a couple of other cultivars in the same group,
all raised by John Wright. All of them start flowering very early in the year and then continue until winter stops them. 'Diana Wright'
is flowering in the shade at the moment, the 'Whiteknights' cultivars are dragging their heels a bit, and 'Lechlade Amethyst' dropped dead a few years ago.
They are all early, all flower for a very long season, but 'Lechlade Magician' is the one that inherited hardiness.
I have fuchsias in flower but it is too early to start thinking about autumn, even for me. I have trimmed the growth on the hydrangeas to prepare them for a new season. A couple will have to
be pruned quite hard but they should still perform later in the year. Autumn is still a long way away but it nice to have the first Fuchsia as the last snowdrops
are fading.