A tough year for the garden last year. A very wet winter here. Then two bouts of snow, although nothing like as bad as it was for the rest of the country, and the cold Beast from the East gale which reached even this far west. Then months without rain through the summer. It is very hard for plants to be expected to cope with two such extremes. Primroses did survive the drought although they became very woody and have all needed dividing and rejuvenation. Cowslips interestingly didn’t seem to worry at all about the conditions and did very well.
The primroses flowered before the dry conditions set in and looked lovely. By the end of the summer however they had been badly set back and this year I shall be back to building numbers up again.
The heat in late June/early July caused me to stop trimming my box bushes and in particular the box parterre because newly cut leaves were getting scorched. This has meant some radical cutting back is going on now.
Some interesting things did happen in the garden however. After years of trying to get lily of the valley to establish in two different gardens, suddenly is seems I have success – but with the pink version not the normal white ones!
Meanwhile another corner of the garden is being brought in with something of a woodland feel; there are so many lovely shade and woodland plants to try.
A visit to the excellent Cedric Morris exhibition at the Garden Museum has inspired a swathe of the shrub walk. The mood in a painting of Benton End by Esther Grainger has led me to try the same sort of deep red planting with just touches of yellow and blue to lift it. Cedric had his blue meconopsis – I shall need to try other plants I think but the general feel is something to aim for.
The peonies are taking more space every year as I find more varieties to add to my peony beds. They are a delight from the first emergent growth in the depth of winter through to the autumn foliage. Early June is wonderful with new blooms to inspect every morning. This was my first variety into flower in 2018.
Now in January a walk around the garden shows hellebores looking superb. The recently released Barnhaven double primrose ‘Pink Star’ combines very nicely with hellebores and is proving a robust plant for me. Hamamelis ‘Pallida’ has been in flower for sometime and at its feet a single yellow primula with a polyanthus stem ‘June Blake’ has been in flower for even longer. It isn’t a very exciting flower, which is a pity since June and her lovely garden in Ireland deserve something more interesting, but it has been flowering continuously from late autumn which is something in its favour. Hamamelis ‘Diane’ always disappoints me since the red flowers don’t show up well and I often fail to notice when it comes into flower. I have Primula ‘Alan Robb’ planted around it. This is a double primrose I have thought to be not so strong in the past, but last summer strangely seemed to suit it and it is flourishing now. I thought its apricot orange flowers would go well with the hamamelis, and they do, or they would if the birds would stop pecking them!