Diary of a weekend gardener: January 2007

Distractions galore

It seems ages since my last post here, but I do have a good excuse. I've been at the new nursery 2 or 3 days a week transforming weed-riddled, pot-bound plants like these:

to clean, repotted ones like these:

I've worked my way through about 1,500 pots so far. It's proved to be a superb way of finding out what stock I've got, what condition it's in and also what I need to propagate. It now looks like we'll be completing within a couple of weeks so then I'll really be able to get stuck in.

Added to that I have my RHS exam in 5 days and we are probably moving the week after. Plus I've found a superb mobile mechanic to get the Merc back together (see other blog for the sorry tale) and I'm in Birmingham at a seminar for RHS Tatton exhibitors tomorrow. So I'm a bit busy. But the garden at home still looks quite good with hellebores, snowdrops, jasmine, irises, pulmonarias, witch hazel, sarcococca and winter cherry providing plenty of cheer, despite my neglect.

Wind, rain and more rain

Our garden was mercifully unscathed by Thursday's storm, but less than a mile away several huge beech trees came down, one right next to a bungalow which now looks like a doll's house compared with the vast tree-corpse which lies next to it. At the nursery we've lost a couple of small oaks near the stream and one eucalyptus in the garden. I'm not bothered - the garden actually looks better for it. Astonishingly the polytunnels were almost completely unscathed.

Between 1st November 2005 and 31st January 2006 we had 136mm of rain here. For the same period this year but only up to today, i.e. 9 days shorter, we have had 347mm of rain. Even with our light sandy soil it's been close to impossible to get outside much. Perhaps even more significantly it has been warmer this year than last year for 63 days out of the last 80.

I mentioned the nursery. Yes, it's getting closer - hopefully the purchase will go through in Feb. I'm there three days a week now, just tidying, organising and getting my head round it. I going to have to take some plug buying decisions soon as the nursery re-opens in 8 weeks. Just to add to the pressure I have my first RHS Advanced exam on the 6th Feb and since we have now sold our house we need to clear out 10 years of accumulated stuff. It's going to be a very, very busy few weeks. No pictures today - maybe tomorrow..

Wild thing...

Three of my four best winter scented plants are in full flower now. If the wind would only die down a down a bit, they would be softly filling the garden with their perfume. As it is, any scent they are giving off is being blown across to the east coast. Yesterday we notched up a two year record high gust of wind for this garden. Only 38mph, so not exactly hurricane force, but then the anomometer is only 10 feet off the ground and behind some trees so it significantly under-records.

The only casualty of the high wind was the 'For Sale' sign in front of the house which blew down. Not that it will make the slightest bit of difference. The estate agents are suddenly deserted after this week's interest rate rise. Enough whinging about economics. Below are the three scented delights, plus my cherished winter flowering cherry. Much to my amusement a picture of this tree was published in the Grauniad yesterday to illustrate how unseasonably mild the winter was. Well it is remarkably mild, but this tree flowers in January anyway.

Sarcococca confusa or 'Christmas box'. A sweet, strong scent, capable of filling the area around a doorway. Slow growing and great in a pot.

Virburnum bodnantense 'Dawn'. A soft, sweet scent which perfectly matches the sugary looking flowers.

Hamammelis mollis. A hard-to-describe scent. Sweet, but sharp too. Heady and powerful.

Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis' flowering quite normally in January, despite the papers listing this as evidence of an unusually mild month.

Little moments of joy

What a gardener needs on a chilly, damp and sunless day is a little moment of joy and today there were plenty. A song thrush sang all day from a nearby treetop, my witch hazel, Hamamellis mollis, is finally unfurling its reluctant buds and I potted up about 40 tiny, pearlescent cyclamen coum bulblets which have grown from the seed I collected in summer. They should flower in a couple of years. It's a slow process but that's amateur horticulture for you.

Cyclamen coum seedlings. They are ready to pot up - very carefully - when they have two leaves.

Hamamellis mollis just bursting into flower. The scent will fill the garden in a few days

It's hard to think about summer...

...when it's midwinter, raining and gloomy outside. But I've applied for a back-to-back show garden space at Tatton for 2007 and need to get my planting plan in next week. Now if only I'd started thinking about this last summer I could have worked out my plant combinations while everthing was at its peak instead of trying to remember the precise shade of a leaf colour from 6 months ago. Still, it'll be my first time and if the judges don't rate the garden I won't mind too much. Much.

Tulip bulb shoots and lily beetles

With GOTY over, life is back to normal - for the moment. The first gardening session of the new year always feels good, even if it's just an hour. It has been incredibly mild so far this winter - we have had no proper frosts at all yet. Weeds and the lawn have continued to grow slowly and today I uncovered an active lily beetle and tulip bulbs with shoots above ground level. I have no doubt that a good spell of cold weather will happen eventually, but it is late.