Seduced by snowdrops

Too late: their spell has worked. I may not be a full-fledged galanthophile yet, but I have definitely stepped over the edge of the slippery slope. This one is G. 'John Gray'

I can't help it. I have tried to resist: but I am being bewitched by little white flowers.

I think it's something to do with the fact that I've never been able to grow snowdrops before: in the dry acid sand of my previous Surrey garden they just turned up their toes and died.

But in my current damp, shady, chalky garden they're coming up all over the place, and I really had never realised how utterly captivating they are. They may be tiny: you may have to get down on your hands and knees and do complicated things with the petals before you can see inside (you end up blowing air at them and all sorts) but ah: they are so charming.

G. 'Warham': it's the leaves that make this particular variety so special (and a good thing too: the flowers don't turn up for a while)

It wasn't helped this year by a visit I made to a snowdrop-lover's garden for work in late January (which is where all the photos in this post were taken, explaining why only the very earliest are in flower yet).

It was early in the year, on a rather uninviting and cloudy day; many of the 34 different varieties were still well underground. But I hadn't realised, before I went there, that snowdrops did flower at different times of the year; in fact you can pretty much have a snowdrop somewhere in the garden from about October till March.

You have to look closely (of course): but see those little yellow-tinted humps? G. 'Sandersii': possibly the snowdrop I covet most of all

On the differences between the varieties: well I can see the point of doubles versus singles, and I also was very taken by the yellow ones (they're that particular shade of buttery yellow that just looks delicious). But like Victoria, mostly to me a snowdrop is a snowdrop is a snowdrop.

G. gracilis, with smaller, strappy, glaucous leaves, rather like a grass with attitude before the flowers emerge

I can also just about see the attraction of some of the rarer 'novelty' snowdrops like G. elwesii 'Grumpy', whose markings make it look as if it's got a face on it, though not £60 worth of attraction - the going rate for a 'Grumpy' bulb these days. And I don't think I shall ever feel that £357 on a single bulb of G. plicatus 'E.A. Bowles' was money well spent.

G. elwesii: in flower in late January

However: the idea of having snowdrops of a host of different leaf colours, widths and sizes followed by flowers fat, slim, green- or yellow-tipped, over several months at the bleakest time of the year: now that I can understand.

G. 'Barbara's Double': you'll have to take my word for it, but this is a good choice for a late-ish double flower that's not too fat and ungainly

I came away from my visit to Dr Lloyd's garden with a shopping list, of varieties which were coming out then (late January) and which would be out over the next month or so. They are, in order (more or less) of appearance:

Galanthus 'John Gray': reliable, vigorous and emerging when few others were: and the flowers are large to the point of being top-heavy

G. 'Dionysus'

G. 'Dionysus': another double: and a rather finer one than the overstuffed-cushion of many double snowdrop flowers. These have fewer inner petals and a more elegant flower shape all round.

G. 'Ophelia': one of the best doubles, richly-coloured green splashes and huge heads: this was emerging on my visit, no doubt open by early February

G. 'Atkinsii'

G. 'Atkinsii': Another larger-flowered snowdrop: highly thought-of for its vigorous habit and its long, elegant petals

G. nivalis 'Sandersii': oh I fell in love with this one. Butter-yellow ovaries, for want of a more romantic name, are such a surprise and delight emerging from the ground in January: for this snowdrop I would get down on my knees every morning.

G. nivalis 'Scharlockii': a later variety, probably early to mid February: this one has green tips to the outer petals too and is a slender, elegant flower

G. 'Warham': Slightly later than most, but you forgive it everything for its foliage: I never realised snowdrops had such varying foliage. This one is broad, a glaucous silvery grey with a pale silver stripe. Fabulous from January even though the flowers don't turn up for a month after.

G. 'Straffan': another vigorous one, emerging early to mid February so one of the later varieties

And just as a postscript, the varieties I rejected:

G. reginae-olgae: this flowers in autumn. I'm sorry but there is something in me that rebels viscerally against a snowdrop in autumn. I could not bear to have it in my garden: it would offend my very soul.

G. ikariae latifolius: purely and simply on the recommendation (or anti-recommendation?) of Dr. Lloyd, who has been pulling out the stuff for years as it's vigorous to the point of being invasive. I've got enough weeds: don't need any more.

And a post-postscript: any mis-identifications of photos in this article are purely the result of my somewhat hit-and-miss hearing while scuttling around behind Dr Lloyd on a chilly day in Exeter, and no reflection on her own expertise.

January flowers

This was the post I was meant to write on Saturday, but British Telecom put paid to that. However this morning their nice young man came to fix our telephone line, blown down in the cobweb-clearing gusts of horizontal rain and warm but blustering wind we've had lately. So I can, at last, and only two days late, join in with the first Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day of the year, hosted by May Dreams Gardens.

Actually after all that lengthy preamble there aren't really all that many flowers to talk about this month. I used to be a on the committee of a dauntingly energetic branch of Plant Heritage - a charity which has much to be proud of and without which the range of plants in our gardens would be a pale shadow of their current splendour - and they did a competition each year for the most plants in flower on January 1st. The record currently stands somewhere around 30. I can manage three.

Erica x darleyensis 'Kramer's Red'
one of three heathers flowering heroically in a container just outside my back door

Mahonia x media 'Charity'

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'
recovering gingerly from its winter battering
There's a nearly-flower and a dead flower:

Skimmia japonica 'Rubella'
is it a flower? or is it a berry? Never could make up my mind. Pretty, though.

And who knows what this was. A member of the carrot family, obv, but angelica or Queen Anne's Lace? Or even a carrot? Who knows. But I'm leaving them there: rimed in frost they are sublime.
But the limelight at this time of year, in my garden at least, goes not to the flowers but to the berries, so if you can indulge me a little I'm going to cheat: here are the stars of my show this month.

Rosehips

The berries on my lovely mature variegated holly tree

And snowberries: Symphoricarpos albus. So happy here they're growing wild in the hedgerows.

Happy GBBD to all. I've got a little way to go to match my Plant Heritage colleagues: but I now have a goal, this time next year, to bring you four flowers. I feel an iris fest coming on...

January ex-flowers, non-flowers and would-be flowers

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day? In this weather? To quote the effusive Mr Gervais, are you 'aving a larf?

Regular readers may remember I rarely have flowers around in winter even in the best of years, so it's even more unlikely in my spring- and summer-flowering garden. I've planted a winter-flowering clematis (C. cirrhosa 'Freckles') and a Viburnum davidii this year to up the quota, but they're still establishing themselves and resolutely refusing to flower. And one of the little tragedies of my year has been that the Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata' I planted last spring - one of my desert island plants - really, really hates my acid soil and is languishing sorrily in my front garden at the moment with only a few miserable-looking leaves left. Must dig it up again and put it in a pot before it turns up its toes altogether.

However - a little walk around my garden with my camera, more in hope than expectation, and look what turned up:

the slightly spooky seedheads on my Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne'

Camellia flowers looking promising

Pyracantha 'Saphyr Jaune' - the only one not stripped by the birds weeks ago

Helleborus argutifolius

beefy puffballs of cardoon (Cynara cardunculus)

the promise of ceanothus blooms to come

under the snow, the violas are stirring

...and poking their cheery little heads up


more spookiness from blackened rosehips

and the first of spring's hellebores (mainly Helleborus orientalis) are emerging from the ground.

And there was I feeling grumpy and cabin-feverish and thinking I had nothing to look at. Feeling much better now, thanks!

Winter wishlist

The moment has come - I'm going to have to opt out of Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day for this month.

This is because there are actually no blooms in my garden. Well all right, that's a bit of an exaggeration as the winter pansies are still struggling through, and the heliotrope in the greenhouse is in exactly the same state as when I put it in there in October. The pyracantha berries are still looking great, but that was kind of cheating last month anyway. Otherwise - zilch. Nada. Rien. Even the leycesteria which has been soldiering on right through since June has finally dropped its leaves and gone to sleep. To be honest I feel like joining it. I don't do houseplants (they take one look at me and die) so no joy there either.

So I thought I'd cheat. Here are the blooms I would like in my garden this month:

Clematis cirrhosa var. balearica 'Wisley Cream'

Garrya elliptica

Chimonanthes praecox (I do actually have this at the end of the garden but it's extremely shy to flower, so this isn't so much one to buy as one to cast a spell on)

Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata' (just)

Coronilla valentina subs. glauca 'Citrina'

No pictures, of course, as these are the flowers that are not blooming in my garden today.

I'll stop at five for now, though I'm sure everyone else has suggestions here. But let this be my lesson for 2008: by this time next year there will be no excuses!