Winter, 2015

Needed a major restoration this year so lots of dug over well-manured ground waiting for plants. Thanks to Conor Hurst, whose two afternoons a week working with me has made all the difference.

Clematis nepalensis

Cleaning the soil

Ready and waiting

Front

and back

Snowdrops: large form

Snowdrop 'John Gray'

The green centres act as a kind of fingerprint.

Tall snowdrop rescued from excavations in a Victorian garden

Early daffodils

and rampant lesser celandines

A range of Harvington double hellebores

This imported soil is clay heavy and was full of noxious roots like nettles - always check carefully. We top-dress with sharp sand regularly to break it up.

and dig it in well

Clean bed beyond the snowdrops

Isabel's old boots

Jetfire

Iris Katharine Hodgkin

and friends

Bourganvillia, indoors

A new auricula theatre

The double hellebore bed

Lovely white ribes, flowering currant. Commercial names include Icicle White

A lime-tolerant rhododendron, just been moved, but seems to have survived

Pale blue grape hyacinths are named 'White'

Nice pink corydalis

Garden hellebores

Ornamental Japanese plum

Primroses galore

'Christmas box' smelling beautifully

Rosemary has been in flower all winter.

'Rapture'

Jetfire

Notice the small green petals at the base of the main flower

Clematis cirrosa

Clematis cirrosa 'Freckles' has been much hacked around

More soil

Clematis cirrosa  in the archway

Lonicera (winter honeysuckle)

and with new shoots

A saxifrage hairdo

In waiting

My shadow...

Space-saving cuttings.

Step one: choose plantpots which stack inside one another whilst allowing about a cm of potting compost. Here is a 5-stack.

Cuttings grow best when against the plant-pot side. So step 2, insert the cuttings, filling each layer. Water and cover with a clear polythene bag to produce a humid microclimate.

Here are some rooted cuttings. As the shoots grow away, they can be nipped off to make new cuttings.

Removing the second pot reveals the root system. The pots serve as root 'trainers' too so there is less damage from intertwined roots when transplanting.

This pot of deutzia cuttings produced 22 plants out of 22 cuttings (see photo of them all potted up). I don't use hormone powders or gel. The largest plants come from the outer layer. All these will be for sale. Often I put a mix of species into each pot so I have fewer numbers of each.

Step one

Into the new year

Fat balls attract all sorts, here a female blackcap, also sparrows, tits, robin and many others.

 Winter pansies offering colour

 Winter honeysuckle

 Double hellebores

 Winter box, sarcococca

 Winter jasmin

 early snowdrops

 primulas

 and for leaves, heuchera

 and pulmonaria

Happy New Year, 2013.

Inside

Amaryllis

 Orchid

 and coleus for leaf colour.

From the conservatory

A range of leaves and flowers flowering now in the conservatory.

 Fuchsia

 Kananchoe

 Arbutilon

 Mandevilla

 Pelargonium

 Streptocarpus

 Orchid (Phalaenopsis)

Christmas trees

Cheerful indoors, anyway. The Christmas tree, and a former Christmas tree 25 years ago, bought with roots.

Frost!

This is to mark 12-12-12 - 12th December 2012.
The weather for the past month has been atrocious, and we have had heavy frosts for several days now. What has not been put under protection may not survive - and even the greenhouses are not totally safe.
Here anyway are some frosty scenes from this morning