Never lose an opportunity to see anything beautiful
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Reading an article recently in the Journal of " The
Hardy Plant" I chanced upon the phrase used in the heading to this
month's News Item. It was attributed by the writer to Charles
Kingsley an author of children's books in Vicorian times,
best known perhaps for "The Water Babies"
It struck quite a chord with me as I had just returned from a
morning in the garden when I had reflected that, even with precious
little colour at this time of year, there is always something,
however seemingly insignificant, to admire. The shape of a bare
tree, the structure of seed pods, patterns and leaf colours
of evergreen leaves, and other unexpected little
treasures, gifts of nature waiting to be
discovered by the observant.
Arum Italicum marmoratum
Spent seedheads of sedum (now hylotelephium!)
Spectabile. Colours have faded but the stems glow yellow in
sunshine -lovely structure and long lasting too. No rush to cut
these back!
The best fern for winter as it stays looking fresh
for ages. Polypodium "Prestonii". Plenty of others in this genus to
choose from
One of the best for long lasting structure to 7 feet
tall with lovely seedpods is Cardiocrinum giganteum. En masse in
bigger gardens than ours these look absolutely
spectacular.
Masses of seed packed like Weetabix in a box. All ready
to sow and start the long 7 year wait for them to
flower!
Glaucous blue lichen covering the bark of a
conifer.
Superb bark colour on acer Sango - kaku Aptly called the
coral bark maple. It gets even better with age.
More seedheads that need no introduction
Allium cristophii. The seedhead is even
better than the flower and marvellous with hoar frost on it.
This one had blown half way around the garden
In the garden the month for me has been one long round of
cutting back all the 8 herbaceous borders in the House Garden, and
carting all the dead material away. It certainly tidies up the
garden and gives early emerging plants the space to grow and show
themselves off. Of these, many snowdrops and daffodil pips
are already showing and hellebores are on the move already, much
earlier than last winter, thanks to a reasonably mild month with
plenty of rain.
The winter garden alongside the beech hedge walk after
cutting back. In 2 months time it will be full of colour from
hellebores, snowdrops and cyclamen coum just to name a
few
Cutting back in progress
Even the stream and woodland garden gets cut
back even tough they are not formal
borders.
All this cutting back produces a mound of waste which I
am calling Mount Cilgwyn!!
Thinking back over the course of the year for us
personally it has been quite a year, with my long bout of
chemotherapy and its after effects, and latterly Moira's knee
operation, from which she is slowly recovering, and is now driving
again. I am still relatively stable, able to do many of the tasks I
want to, which keeps me sane! I do not know how long this state of
affairs will continue, but as I have done ever since diagnosis, I
try to keep positive and as optimistic as you ever can be living
with a terminal cancer.
There were however many highlights thoughout the year with
the wonderful summer weather, many outings to enjoy,notwithstanding
the challenges of the drought,just about the best the garden has
ever looked I think, apart from the brassicas, and the thrill of
appearing on BBC "Gardeners World" in August. Best not to mention
"The Beast from the East" and the mini earthquake that occured in
February!
Weather
Readings cover the first 22 days to the
20th
For the third month in succesion December was
exceptionally wet, more so than the other 2 months, with 6.7 inches
of rain. More than 2 inches over the long term average for our part
of Carmarthenshire. Unsurprisingly there were 11 rain
days and 10 changeable days which of course included a lot more
rain!
There was only 1 fully sunny day!
It was incredibly mild with7 days above 10C with a max of
12.96C and just 3 frosts with a min of -3C on 2 occasions. Wind was
a regular feature with 3 gales but no damage thank
goodness.
Occasionally we had a start to a day which felt like a
December day.
On a misty cold morning the sun about to
break through was a bonus.
Garden Update and what's looking good.
As usual at this time of year I roll together the 2 headings as
there are not sufficient newsworthy items to justify individual
headings
Last picking of Little Gem lettuces on 9
December
One of the many emerging hellebore buds all over
the garden containing in excess of 250 plants
The first to flower is usually this little beauty one of
the first anemone centres to come onto the market many years ago
thanks to Ashwood Nurseries
One from the x ericsmithii Group. Lovely foliage
that in this group I don't usually cut back
When cutting back this large clump of a single
plant I counted 76 leaf stems!!
A lovely surprise on diervilla "Butterfly" was
this late leaf colour on 10th of the month. It is a compact nicely
formed shrub to 4 feet with small scented flowers in late summer. A
member of the honeysuckle family, caprifoliaceae
And a true honesuckle is lonicera purpusii.
Flowering through winter and wonderful scent in the graden on
warmer days and especially when cut for the house
Euonymus "Emerald n' Gold" always cheers me up
throughout the year especially in the depths of winter. It has been
with us for many years
One of the few fast fading flowers in the garden is
senecio polyodon a daisy relative
For a true daisy you need to look in the small
tunnel where argyranthemum "Chelsea Girl" has self seeded and
has been flowering for 6 months yet is still producing new
flowers
Nothing beats the Christmas cactus (schlumbergera)
at this time of year. This plant is at least 6 years old and
flowering better than ever after feeding regularly to encourage
it.
There are a few others in the large tunnel to
bring into the house to flower later
Some promising buds on euphorbia caracias
hopefully to flower (frosts permitting) in a couple of months
time
Cyclamen coum one of the many clumps in the
garden
Cyclamen hederifolium have done their flowering
this year but the leaves remain attractive all
winter.
This snowdrop, an elwesii cross that no one has
yet been able to name, is just coming into bud as are many others.
Julian a galanthophile friend of ours has given it the name Keiths
Korker!! I rather like that.
Another round of cutting back to come in the Paddock Garden
early next month when hopefully I will have my usual helpers to
cart all the waste away which is quite substantial because of the
size of the borders there. In the meantime I still have a range of
structural jobs to do such as repairing the Summer House doors,
some border edgings and steps, and there are also cold frames to
tidy up and repair. There are times when I feel more like an odd
job man than a gardener! but in some ways those jobs are just as
important, especially to get off to a good start when Spring
arrives.
My seed sowing also begins with the arrival of the New Year but
all my winter cuttings have now been taken and are growing away
well under fleece on their hot benches.
Wildlife and Countryside
All very quiet; some fields still have some
sheep but all the cows are now in barns for the winter. The most
noise and activity we have comes from the warbling sound of the
starlings which continue to descend in great numbers onto several
nearby fields and trees.
I have however yet to capture the perfect picture of a large
murmuration of starlings in full flight; althought they do form
into aerial groups which lack the photogenic impact of massed
larger groups. A bit like the unattainable shot of a
kingfisher I have been longing to capture for many years!
10 Green apples sitting on a hedge!
The bramley apples from store are beginning to fade now
and I use the worst of them to feed the birds in this novel
way!
When clearing the borders near the house I found
this large mound of leaves much larger than the
rest
And underneath it I found a hibernating hedgehog.
Whether it will come through the winter I don't know. Of course I
replaced all the leaves and added a few more.
I am sure that Kit Kat won't mind me showing you
this pic. of him sitting alongside his friend, a look alike door
stop cat. Kit is on the left!!
Visits
If you go into Carmarthen town centre any time of the
year, you will find Farmyard Nurseries selling their superb
range plants on Market days. Owned by friends of ours it brightens
up the town especially now when they have their Christmas wreathes
for sale. All made at the nursery.
No visits to report apart from our monthly HPS Group Meeting,
always enjoyable and a chance to catch up with fellow plant
nuts like us!! But in a month or so it will be time for visiting
snowdrop gardens which is always the eagerly awaited horticultural
kick start to the New Year.
Christmas Greetings!
At the end of another year we would like to thank all our
friends and other readers of our website for reading our monthly
news, especially all those who visited the website for the first
time when the "Gardeners World" programme was shown on BBC TV when
our hits went up five fold from our normal monthly rate!
All good wishes to everyone for a very enjoyable Christmas, and
New Year, the best of health, and a successful and enjoyable
gardening year with the most perfect weather - We wish!
Love from Keith and Moira XX
And finally a surprise treat -
As many readers will know, we used to open
the garden for the NGS for 16 years from the year 2000 and welcomed
somewhere in the region of 20,000 visitors in that time. We had
many goup visits including tour companies from Holland which were
always enjoyable with friendly, very interested gardeners who loved
Wales and the surrounding countryside. This u tube video that Moira
came across not so long ago is a brilliant tribute to the garden
and the person who filmed it, to whom we are very grateful. So much
detail in such a short timeslot. We hope you enjoy it as much as we
do.