January. You can already tell, by the later date this month (half way through January) that this wet windy weather has delayed all things gardening for me in 2023. I have not ventured out. I have watched from the house as the ice and cold withered my tender succulent plants I had carefully nurtured into mature garden specimens. The echium plants (Giant’s Vipers Bugloss), now five feet tall and ready to flower in their final third year of life, have all turned black. Their lovely wing-like branching leaves have fallen. I still hope their core leaves at the top are alive.
Just. Until I finally prodded at the tallest plant (and also the most exposed to the westerly gales) and the whole of the top part of the stem fell off in my hand, leaving a cold, slimy, clearly rotten, core. Learning: echium hate the cold and they really hate this beastly wet windy cold weather. Supposedly they can survive down to -5 celsius. Of the seven echium in our garden, I think three may just be hanging on. Other victims this year include masses of sempervivum and echeveria succulents, which had gradually, over the last three years, covered various areas of our gravel-covered garden. They have also turned black- not a good colour to be if you are a plant. I have decided to hope, perhaps, they will find life again from their roots in the spring.
But there is also new life to be found all over the garden in January. First, the gorgeous fragrances. It is the season for Christmas /sweet box (sarcococca). Tiny white flowers waft and make you stop and search for the source. Elsewhere, a bit of an unkept bush called wintersweet (chimonanthus praecox “luteus”) is making me remember why we moved her from our old garden- lacey, light yellow flowers heady with perfume.
January means early winter flowers too. A speckled white hellebore, in full hanging flower, is ignoring the buffeting of our wind and rain. Last week, we saw the first snowdrops are starting to emerge and flower. As an experiment this year, I planted two kinds of paper white daffodils in various pots in the greenhouse in early December. They are all up, and I took one pot with the tallest plants into the kitchen. They are now in fragrant flower. We plan to keep switching out the pots, which should bring green and heady flowering daffodils into the house for the next couple of months.
I heard my first garden thrush singing recently. Time to locate two new nesting boxes for garden birds on our fencing. One has an extra-wide entrance to entice robins. The other is more like an enclosed shelf. Our garden has no tall trees, and I am hoping our blackbird pair (or thrush) will decide this is a better option than balancing a nest on our upturned wheelbarrow, which they tried fairly unsuccessfully last year.
One winter job finally achieved is tool sharpening. It is, embarrassingly, the first time I have bought a proper wet-stone (medium grade), watched a YouTube video, and sharpened the secateurs and other garden hand tools. I made a lovely cup of tea to motivate myself, then, in a rare non-rainy day, sat in the greenhouse and carefully sharpened and oiled each blade. Not only is this quite therapeutic, I found out, but it also forced me to sit and listen and observe what is happening in the garden. And that is when I realised our earliest snowdrops are already in flower. When we planned and planted our new garden four years ago, I asked a fantastic Swedish plantswoman her own top tips for planning. One tip was “plant the earliest bulbs near enough to the house so that in horrible weather you are still able to see them”. I am so glad I followed this advice, and all our snowdrops are within sight of either the kitchen window or the greenhouse.
Down on the allotment the main entrance gate is a quagmire of mud. Paths are flooded. Access is almost impossible. We need to prune gooseberry and current bushes into goblet shapes soon. Our gooseberry bushes get attacked by sawfly, so raising the canopy of branches seems to help ensure we could more easily detect and remove the larvae. Given the weather though, we are still waiting for a better day.
Image Credits: Abigail Cooper-Hansen .
Beautiful writing Abigail and very motivating, thank you. One of the few things I retrieved from my mothers house after her recent death was a whetstone that belonged to my grandfather, I must use it this weekend ….or maybe next, soon at any rate!
Lovely post, I can sense spring around the corner, although, like you, am disappointed to see the houseleeks and other succulents looking decidedly black. Also like you, I am clinging to the hope that they will pop back up from beneath at a later date.
On a walk last week I was amazed to happen upon a clump of daffodils in full bloom! And on another a clump of fully blooming snowdrops – they certainly lift the spirits!