Happy New Year’s Day

The heavy snow which fell in late December is by now only evident in the shadier parts of the garden. For a week and a half the garden was buried under thick snow – in some parts of the garden it seemed to be over a foot and a half deep.

On December 18, after hearing the weather report, I dug the clump of snowdrops shown above and replanted them into one of the cold frames. They have been blooming there since. The snowdrop shown is my “Christmas snowdrop”, a plant selected from a mass planting of Galanthus elwesii in the front lawn.

I didn’t photograph this one until about 4:45 P.M. today – the sky was by then overcast and the sun was setting. So I used a flash; the flash used at close range rarely produces good results, but the image above will at least give you an idea of what this snowdrop is like.

Winter sweet and witch hazels were blooming before the big snowfall, but the snow was so deep that it kept me out of that part of the garden. Tomorrow I’ll check the back garden for signs of bloom on these winter-blooming shrubs.

Snowdrops of late autumn

The nature of our winters here on the east coast is such that any plant which tries to bloom during the winter is up against huge odds. The winter-flowering plant game is a dicey one here. Winter here almost always eventually takes a big bite out of the garden. And that seems to take a big bite out of local gardeners’ enthusiasm for winter flowering plants. Recent winters have been so mild that new gardeners will be in for a nasty surprise if old-style killer winters ever return.

Decades ago I tried two of the autumn-flowering snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis reginae-olgae (as it was called back then) and something called Galanthus nivalis corcyrensis. Neither persisted for long in the open garden. It was a real bother to acquire these from UK sources (does anyone else remember Mr. Mars of Haselmere?), and I made no rush to replace them.
Now, years later, I have a renewed interest in the snowdrops which flower at this time of year. I've selected two here which I call my Thanksgiving snowdrop and my Christmas snowdrop. They really do flower on or near the dates suggested by their names.

The Thanksgiving snowdrop is a one-spot Galanthus elwesii sort. It has a largish, slender flower but is otherwise not very prepossessing. Its only claim to my attention is its blooming season.
The Christmas snowdrop (it's just beginning to bloom now) is a typical two-spot Galanthus elwesii, with softly rounded ample flowers smaller than those of the Thanksgiving sort but more substantial.

Both of these are clumpers, and with luck there will eventually be a nice patch of each. Each of these grew for decades in the lawn; it was only when I realized that their season of bloom was not an anomaly that I marked them for cosseting. They now grow in the cold frames where their flowers are protected should the weather suddenly turn nasty.

These Galanthus elwesii forms seem to be indifferent to our local weather: plants in full bloom don't seem to suffer when the temperature plunges into the single digits F; mechanical damage is another matter. Flowers are on rare occasions destroyed by severe weather, but the plants themselves seem not to suffer at all. I suspect that in the long run these Galanthus elwesii variants will prove to be much better autumn and early winter flowering garden plants than Galanthus reginae-olgae and similar forms in our climate.
　
I might have another group of late-autumn snowdrops on hand. A friend gave me some plants of Galanthus elwesii sorts which, when I visited her garden a week of so ago, were in full bloom out in the open. It will be interesting to see what these do when they settle down and bloom in my garden.

First week of January 2009

The garden has been good to me this first week of January 2009. Although it took some searching, there have been some things in bloom this week. And there are many things in “advanced bud”, so next week should be even better if the weather cooperates.
In the image above you can see some of the things now in bloom: Galanthus elwesii, Jasminum nudiflorum, Chimonanthus praecox ‘Luteus’, Hamamelis ‘Jelena’, H. ‘Feuerzauber’, Helleborus foetidus (with an unopened bud of one of the garden hellebores) and perhaps most surprising of all, Iris unguicularis: not bad for the first week of the year! There is also foliage of Arum italicum, Danaë racemosa, Hedera helix and Sarcococca humilis.
Crocus ochroleucus is blooming in one of the cold frames, and in the protected frame some of the white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are about to bloom, too. Out in the garden, Sarcococca humilis is heavily budded and the first Camellia japonica of the year are opening.

The image above was done indoors early in the evening: we've had no sun for days now. It was cropped and rotated and as a result the image quality has suffered. This softening of line and lack of crisp detail, which some might see as defects, nevertheless give the image the quality seen in early twentieth century color images. Think Gartenschönheit in the early twenties. I guess I've just snubbed my nose at nearly a century of technological advancement in photography.

Early January 2009

So, what does the garden have to offer this first week of January?

Nighttime temperatures have been regularly dropping into the low 20s F lately, so I had no hopes for a long list. And the short list is indeed short, but it includes some flowers which make a trip out into the otherwise quiet garden well worthwhile. Here it is: Jasminum nudiflorum, Galanthus elwesii, Chimonanthus praecox, Helleborus foetidus and Iris unguicularis. In one of the unprotected cold frames Crocus ochroleucus is blooming.

In the protected cold frame, some of the little white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are about to bloom, as are Narcissus tazetta ‘Ziva’ and N. pachybolbus. This last is a white-flowered daffodil of the tazetta group, smaller in all parts except its bulb than ‘Ziva’.

The handsomest of all of these, and – given the weather - the most unseemly, is Iris unguicularis, the Algerian iris. This grows in the open air planted right against a wall of the house. It gets covered nightly. Last year I discovered that it will reward this slight bother with intermittent bloom from November until April. At this time of year it's a real treat to linger over this plant and soak up the gorgeous color.

While walking Biscuit the other day I noticed that the buds of Acer rubrum seemed to be swollen a bit: it’s ready to go, too.

Plants of interest on New Year's Day

Crocus ochroleucus

Crocus pallasii

Dryopteris sieboldii



Polystichum polyblepharum

Helleborus cf. torquatus

Arum italicum

Arum italicum

The New Year began pleasantly enough. When I walked Biscuit this morning the sun was warm on my face, and the air had a bit of the scent of fallen leaves. Here and there patches of grass were still brilliant green in the low slanting light. The weather forecast had called for a progressively colder day, but even now at about 3 P.M. the temperature is agreeably above 50º F.

And there are still flowers in this New Year’s Day garden: one of the Camellia sasanqua is still full of shapely, colorful bloom. And in one of the cold frames, Crocus ochroleucus and C. pallasii are blooming. The latter is a surprise. Although I check the cold frame in question daily, I did not see this one coming. Crocus pallasii is not one of the more prepossessing species of Crocus; it’s a member of the saffron group, and as it usually blooms here it has a stringy, skinny look about it. But the plant blooming today has produced a fine, well rounded bloom which has the characteristic fragrance of its group.

In a season such as this one, marked as it has been by relatively mild temperatures, one would expect snowdrops of one sort or another to be in bloom. There is one clump of Galanthus elwesii in advanced bud; but the flowers, already hanging, have not actually opened yet.

Flowers are not the only source of interest today. Several winter green herbaceous plants are worth a look. The very unusual fern Dryopteris sieboldii will generally get the attention of garden visitors. It’s one of those plants which does not look real. First of all, it does not look like what most people expect a fern to look like. Then there is the texture of the plant: it looks as if it might have been made of plastic or rubber. It’s a good garden plant here, and that continues to surprise me. However, it never seems to have more than two or three fronds at a time.

Another fine fern now is Polystichum polyblepharum. This one looks like a typical fern, and has the added advantages of being evergreen and having a seemingly lacquered finish. I’ve seen more than one garden visitor reach down to touch it – to check if it is real?

Many of the hellebores are in fine shape now, too. Shown here is one bought as Helleborus torquatus. Many hellebores are worth collecting entirely for their foliage, and this one and similar forms are good examples. Another hellebore well worth having for its foliage is Helleborus multifidus; the forms I grow here have good foliage but do not seem to stand up to the winter well – and thus no image today.

This is peak season for the Italian arum, Arum italicum: the foliage has not yet reached its maximum development, but it has already reached that most improbably lush phase which makes it hard to believe that it can be a hardy garden plant. This is another plant well worth collecting for the variations in its foliage. Two forms are shown here; there are others in the garden.