JEARRARD'S HERBAL
17th November 2024
Camellia 'November Pink'
It has been dark. I got up rather late yesterday and the house was dark. Outside the sky was dark, shaded by a thick blanket of dry cloud.
I switched the hall lights on and the yellowed, dog-eared glow from the bulb was the most cheering thing in the house. By lunchtime the
cloud had thinned to create the illusion of daylight, the garden was marinated in a feeble mist and green became grey.
It wasn't the most auspicious start to a look around, but the garden had some surprises. Progress is slow in the coolest months of the year
but it is determined.
Camellia 'November Pink' is the least vigorous of the first C. x williamsii seedlings introduced but it is also the earliest.
There are probably other early ones now, but I don't know them. My first attempt to establish it in the garden failed. The second time I tried
the plant grew in a tub in the Hedychium house until it was a good size before being planted out. Under cover it was early and floriferous.
It has taken a few years to return to that state outside but the plant is covered in buds and the first flower has opened in November.
Things are looking good.
17th November 2024
Iris unguicularis 'Walter Butt'
I have grown lots of Iris unguicularis forms over the years. I like the suggestion that they will flower in winter. Perhaps they do.
We don't really get a winter here and I don't really get Iris unguicularis flowers.
I. 'Walter Butt' grows on the south wall of the house
where it gets warm and dry through the summer. I don't know how it feels about that, but I get a few flowers and in the really good years
I get to photograph them before the slugs move in. I have a couple of dwarf forms of what is now called I. cretensis growing in the same space.
I have hardly seen a flower on either of them. After yesterdays gloom, the sun has come out. Perhaps this will be the year.
I have some other I. unguicularis forms in the greenhouse, they would all come out into the same border if there was any space. Hot dry beds are a rare
thing in this garden and I am reluctant to make space. I might try growing them in a tub of gravel on the same terrace and see how they do.
A pot of tousled dead leaves would be a charming addition to the domestic space in summer.
17th November 2024
Galanthus corcyrensis
Down in the greenhouse the last of the autumn snowdrops are dangling merrily on thin stems. Out in the garden the first of the spring snowdrops have started.
'Remember Remember' isn't going to flower this year. It put on a brave performance last year and then the slugs removed its foliage. It is allowed a year ot two to recover.
It has made a small clump in the last few years so things are moving in the right direction.
G. elwesii 'Hiemalis' (Hiemalis Group really) is getting ready to flower,
but G. corcyrensis has beaten it into bloom. In the latest taxonomy, this is just part of the variable G. reginae-olgae, and so it is really an autumn snowdrop.
However, it doesn't behave in the same way for me. I can't flower G. reginae-olgae outside, the plants survive ("grow" would be overly generous) but they never flower.
My G. corcyrensis comes from a very old stock, collected in Corfu. It has grown in the garden here for thirty or more years and flowered every year. My old notes are
imperfect, but this could be the plant I bought from Wisley garden centre in 1981. It has been a survivor.
17th November 2024
Camellia 'Takanini'
I was standing transfixed in the garden, enjoying the distant prospect of Camellia 'November Pink' shining out from the darkness at the back of the herbaceous border.
It only has one flower, and it is a sharp, unforgiving pink, but it is November. Gardeners can't be too precious about these things.
There are several autumn flowering C. sasanqua
forms in full bloom now , and they are delightful, but 'November Pink' is the first is the first glint of spring sunshine. Like the first spring snowdrop, it is a thing of special delight.
I was probably striking a rather pretentious pose as I surveyed the distant wonder, but I was transfixed. That much was entirely genuine.
When I un-transfixed myself I turned around and 'Takanini' had produced half-a-dozen flowers, unnoticed, behind me. Joy upon joy. I felt as though the first subtle flavour of spring
had been snatched from me untasted and the main course plonked on the table in its place. I don't mind, the main course is delicious and it goes on for a very long time.
Rushing the starter is probably wise.
'Takanini' is astonishing. It seems to get better every year. There are a lot of camellias in the garden that I would miss if they weren't there, but not lament. If I lost 'Takanini' there
would be a hystrionic rolling of eyes, wailing and gnashing of teeth. It would be rather theatrical but entirely genuine.