Warm November

I had to pinch myself the other day.  It is November, isn't it?  The Banksiae lutea rose and Leycesteria formosa  in these pictures - both summer-bloomers - have just coming into flower. 

One of my favourite jobs in the garden is rose care.  I love the versatility and resilience of roses and their enthusiastic response to pruning:  a few snips with the secateurs influences their growth for months ahead.  The roses in thise pictured suffered with blackspot and rust in the first half of the season but, with a mid-season feed and regular dead-heading, they've rallied and are now - in November - still flowering and looking really healthy. 

Salvia Elegans

I love this plant, Salvia Elegans (Pineapple Sage).  It's been on the patio since June and  just won't stop growing.  Just as the garden starts to look drab, these velvety red flowers appear - and keep on appearing! The leaves give off a lovely pineapple scent evocative of summer days.  It's a tender perennial, so will need to be brought into the conservatory when the days get colder, which is where it was when I took this photo.  

Bulbs and Coir Pots

 

I recently attended a course on planting ideas for spring bulbs. These coir pot liners (shown in photos) are great.  The large one contains 3 layers of tulip bulbs topped with violas, and the smaller one, again, layers of tulips.  I haven't used them much so thanks to Lynn of Horticolous Landscape and Garden Design for the suggestion and for running a great course. 

The Garden in Winter

Winter in the garden is often thought of as a time when nothing much happens, a time to be endured rather than enjoyed, as we wait for spring.   But winter in the garden can be a delight to the senses.  With summer flowering annuals finally succumbing to the first frosts and many flowering perennials the worse for wear, the bare form of the garden is revealed.  Texture, fragrance and colour are predominant and of course the ability of plants to withstand harsh conditions.

In winter there is a reduced number of pollinating insects so plants have to produce more perfume to attract them.   There are many fragrant  shrubs that come into their own at this time of the year. Viburnums, mahonias, and Sarcococca are among these.  Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ is an upright, deciduous shrub that produces pink, scented flowers from autumn to spring.  It grows to about 10ft (3m) and does well in most soils.  Mahonia japonica is an evergreen, medium-sized shrub which has fragrant yellow flowers in winter followed by purple berriesin spring.  But wear thick gloves when dealing with mahonias: they have very prickly leaves.  If you have a shady corner in your garden you could do worse than fill it with Christmas box, or Sarcococca.  The fragrance of winter shrubs is often subtle – get up close and the scent evades you, but move away and it hits you.   Sarcococca comes into this category.  There are many varieties of this bushy, clump-forming evergreen shrub, but Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis is a reliable choice. Its small white flowers scent the air through winter and are followed by black berries in early spring.

The colours of winter in the garden can be sharp and intense, just the antidote to the often uniform greyness of the sky.  One of the most reliable shrubs to grow for its coloured stems is the dogwood, Cornus, the bright red stems belonging to Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’.  These look striking grown en-masse, as a contrast to the white bark of a silver birch, or the silvery white stems of Rubus biflorus the white bramble.  Cornus sanguineum ‘Midwinter Fire’ has orange/yellow stems, while Cornus ‘Kesselringii’ has dark purple/black stems.  The way to keep those stems brightly coloured is to cut them down to 2” from the ground in March.

The white bark of silver birch looks great highlighted by Cornus, but the textured bark of some trees needs nothing to emphasise their beauty.  A case in point is Prunus serrula, the Tibetan cherry, which has very shiny, deep reddish brown bark which stands out against the winter landscape.  Many silver birches have ornamental peeling bark of pink or copper brown. 

A winter garden is well worth cultivating. When all else is damp and dark, it will give you colour, scent and interest. If you have mainly perennials you can still make your garden a winter haven just by leaving it alone – don’t cut everything down now, leave it til spring, and those tall stems will look stunning on a frosty morning.