The Garden in February

It’s been a wild and windy few days in the garden with three named storms in quick succession, followed by major flooding in the County. We’ve been fortunate and so far have escaped any damage to the garden. As we head towards the end of February though it’s clear that Spring isn’t too far away. It’s lovely to have extra daylight hours each end of the day now, even if some days it’s been too wet and windy to actually work in the garden.

A wander around the garden shows that many plants are now starting to grow. I’ve been finishing pruning the roses and am happy to see strong new growth on all the bushes. Three roses have been growing in large terracotta pots for a few years but last autumn I decided that it was time to plant them into the ground. I’m pleased to see that all three are looking happy in their new positions with plenty of buds. Now that I’ve cut back the dead top growth on herbaceous perennials I can see that many are starting to grow. Before getting too excited about what’s to come in the garden though, there are plenty of plants to enjoy right now.

Snowdrops have been flowering for a few weeks, and even better they are really starting to spread around the area where we originally planted them. The hope was for drifts of them under the trees to the side of the house, and this is certainly starting to happen. They are mixed in with crocus and cyclamen coum, both plants that will self seed freely if they are happy with their growing conditions. The first daffodils are just starting to flower, sadly I can’t remember their names but that doesn’t really matter! This area of the garden that we refer to as The Spring Garden is also where I’ve planted most of the hellebores. These are all Helleborus orientalis hybrids from Ashwood Nurseries, they are lovely strong plants in such a good selection of colours. In fact they should be good – I spent ages carefully selecting each one! There’s a lovely mix of colours from pure white through to almost black, singles and doubles. They self seed too and although there is a danger that the resulting flowers will not be as good as the parents, so far we are lucky and still have good clear colours.

The greenhouse is the place to retreat to on colder days and is starting to fill up with trays of seedlings with plenty more to sow. I think I will soon run out of space, but will work that out another day!