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...