Spring. Not.

Garden news for 2013 so far. After a few pleasant days in Feb, January returned. March was a story of frost and bitter east winds.  No change so far in April.  Some roses are beginning to sprout a little and that's all. No sign of a leaf on a tree.  The daffodils have struggled up, brave souls they are.  In an average year, mid April sees all the shrubs and trees in leaf except the oaks.
The camellias at the top of the garden are flowering though. We're waiting for them to grow 8 feet high and wide like the ones at Bodnant. Fine feathers rhodo in that same border is looking well also.

Rhododendron 'Choremia'

I bought this Rhododendron maybe 30 years ago and it has grown slowly to about 3ft and the same across.  It flowers in February most years but is early this year. The silver indumentum is a feature and the deep scarlet-crimson is particularly good when the sun catches it. This clone came from Bodnant and is a cross of R. haematoides and R. arboreum ssp. arboreum. I don't know if it is the Tower Court clone that has an AGM.

Christmas Posies

Did the usual Christmas harvest of flowers for the dinner table.

From top left, clockwise: Winter jasmine with Setterwort (Helleborus foetidus) and Arum italicum subsp. italicum 'Marmoratum'; Camellia susanqua 'Narumigata', Hesperantha coccinea ''Major', Rose 'Irene Watts', Dame's Violet (Hesperis matronalis) Setterwort flowers; Agapanthus 'Headbourne Hybrid' Sarcococca (flower buds not cold-primed to open yet); Bergenia cordifolia - old pink cv.; Prunus subhirtella autumnalis 'Rosea'.

Late December

I went to Uppsala just before Christmas.  I was invited to examine a thesis on P. infestans as it attacks potato in Sweden by my colleagues Jonathan Yuen and Bjorn Andersson. Sweden was in the middle of a cold spell with maybe 20cm of snow and subzero temperatures for seeral weeks.  The snow was still decorating the trees with white tinsel.


Jonathan Yuen's garden

My Hotel room was very quiet and looked out on to the garden of the real Carl Linneus

 

When I landed in Mancester, it was still raining and a balmy 8C.

 

Our topiary holly at the front door is a male and needs a bit of adornment for the festive season so Lorna took this year's harvest of Agapanthus umbels and gave them a coat of red paint. La voilà



Merry Christmas!

Today was the day for digging up dahlias and noticing that the labels didn't really correspond very well to the flowers we had last summer.
The unlabelled light orange cactus-flowered plant gave us by far the greatest number of flowers through to mid-November. Karma Sangria seems to be the name of the Karma type we had. Flowers were in general a bit smaller than previous year, and I think I need to put in more food for them when I take up the tulips.
Which have now all arrived and it is time to plant them, pronto. Hope for some decent weather for that tomorrow.
November must have been yet another month for record-breaking rain. The A55 was flooded by the Ogwen at one point.

Dahlias

I'd say the star of this year was Karma Fuchsiana, exciting magenta and gold colouration and good long, strong stems. New Baby, the vivid orange pompom, hasn't such strong stems but is very pretty.  Autumn Lustre (described as orangey) was a good yellow with long stems, but I think Glorie van Hemsteede is better as a flower.  The big dark crimson pompom has good stems but not great numbers of flowers. Chat Noir had a few flowers but is not so interesting to me as that pompom.  Taratahi Ruby, so I thought, was nothing like as red as the one with that name last year. Hillcrest Royal, dark red cactus, was a bit disappointing. However, the plants didn't grow very well in the wet and cool summer. Actually, they grew a lot of leaves but the flowers were slow to open.

Willow, part three

The two willow structures got off to a good start this summer, the wettest of the last 100 years. I've just finished bending and tying in the long shoots from the top of the willow arbour in the new garden. It seemed best to place them where they would naturally bend to,  giving a random appearance to the roof. The shoots from the sides turned out to look best and work most comfortably if they were brought down to the horizontal. I've started several horizontal bands of woven-in shoots. I hope they will sprout well from the horizontal plane next summer. If growth continues as it did this summer, it won't be many years before I shape the whole thing with a hedge trimmer once or twice a year.

There was at least one occasion when we sat in the shade of the willow arbour not wearing winter clothes.

I want to make the willow trellis a couple of feet higher, but haven't figured out how to do that yet.