Hellebore foetida

A frosty morning. Several plants of Helleborus foetida are looking splendid at the moment.

Snowdrop update

Not fully out yet, but here is a taster of things to come

Iris

This little iris has just come into flower.

Black Beauty

Here is a black double hellebore - had to be coaxed out of its habit of holdings its face down.

Conservatory

Thursday Jan 26th, a white flowered Sollya (usually the flowers are bright blue, hence its nickname 'Bluebell Creeper')

Friday Jan 27th, abutilon megapotamicum

pulmonaria, 'Lungwort'

Once though to cure lung disease, hence its medicinal name 'Lungwort', here are two tatty but still flowering pulmonarias. Some varieties have red or white flowers.

Winter honeysuckle

Winter honeysuckle, lonicera purpusii, well covered with fragrant white flowers. Look carefully and a bumble bee is feeding in one of them.

Vibernum

Just noticed the viburnum in flower - pity you can't smell it too.

The Spring Garden

The spring garden is beginning to show some colour. Nice sunny day this morning.

Primulas

Always good to have some colour in winter...

Parsley...

What do you do with the used up parsley you buy from the supermarket?  Well, plant it, stupid.

Cyclamens today

Ivy leaved cyclamen, striking leaves and dainty flowers.

Foliage

Where flowers are sparse, I will go for foliage. Phormium at the front, coprosma behind..

Native Primroses

Very frosty again; but here is one of our stalwarts, the native or 'true' primrose primula vera. This seems around the garden, seems to die back, in scorching summers but still comes back the following winter.

Fieldfares and redwings

The frost has brought a lot of birds to the apples, mostly blackbirds but a few fieldfares (bottom picture) and a single redwing (top two pictures, seen with blackbird below. The red is particularly clear in the middle picture. Click on the pictures to enlarge.
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Cool but rosy

Still a sharp frost, finishing off the fuchsia flowers, but still there are roses.

Frost

Hard frost last night, ice on the pond, and a magnolia stellata in the middle of frosty grass on the front lawn.

Vinca

Frost this morning. Today's flower is a good value vinca minor used for ground cover. A couple of times a year it needs a severe haircut, or it will clamber everywhere; but if kept in check it will reward.

Hellebore viridis

The green flowered hellebore

Delicious!

The winter honeysuckle, lonicera purpusii. I watched a white-bottomed bumble bee feeding happily on the bush yesterday

Eating Up

We let the fallen apples lie as a food source for birds in January-February. The blackbirds are making the most of them now. If it becomes frostier, the fieldfares will take over.

Dafs and snowdrops

Time to revisit those Christmas day daffodils, and the snowdrops

And more roses

More out of season roses

Hellebore x hybridus

Two shots of a single self-seeded hybrid hellebore.

Two shots of

Christmas Rose

 Beautiful sunny calm day after days of rain and wind. Here is the Hellebore Helleborus Niger, commonly called 'Christmas Rose'.

And the rose is still in flower

8 months of constant flower now, 'County' groundcover rose 'Hampshire'.

-First Snowdrops!-

Great excitement - the first snowdrops of the year - those first noticed by today, anyway. Top, galanthus elwesii; bottom  galanthus 'John Gray'.

Great

Penstemon Stapleford Gem

Still managing to flower, this is a subtle lilac blue penstemon. Neither picture really does justice.

The Christmas Camellia

Camellia sasanqua, in a pot as our soil is too alkaline for them to grow in the soil. This is a baby but in the wild will grow to 5 metres - 17 foot in old money.

A double-flowered hellebore, pinkish white. Most hellebores are single flowers but doubles are becoming more common now (and hence cheaper!). Bred by Hugh Nunn of Harvington, near Evesham. Seed is also now available.