Six on Saturday 25/01/20

It’s been a cold week with a frost most nights. In the mornings the Hellebores, Snowdrops and Primroses have had drooping heads and leaves. By lunchtime they’ve perked back up again. It always amazes me how resilient they are. Between fleece and some Celotex the plants in the glasshouse seem to have been kept warm enough. Sadly, the forecast is for more rain tomorrow and a fairly damp week to follow. It is still January after all. I’ll take cold and sunny over grey and wet any day. There’s been no gardening this week just daily trips up and down to the glasshouse and here’s six things I saw this morning.

1. These are some of the pots that I emptied last year. Planting out time is always full on so I left them to wash at a later time. That time doesn’t seem to have arrived yet! I’m not showing you the other mound.

2. It’s taken me years to slowly spread Snowdrops around the garden. This patch is visible from the back door and are so very nearly open.

3. Behind the above Snowdrops is Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’. It had got too large for its allotted space and so last year I gave it a fairly severe thinning out prune. I left some height so that I would get some flowers this spring, even though they’re all at the top. I’ll reduce the height after flowering. The perfume is lovely.

4. I seem to be full of good intentions to do jobs in the garden but sometimes never quite get round to them (it’s probably as well I don’t have a large garden). This Holly (‘Silver Milkmaid’) spent many years slowly filling up with Ivy. I kept meaning to remove it (the Ivy, not the Holly) but the years went by. By now the Ivy has grown through the top, become an adult and started flowering. The sparrows loved sitting amongst all of the foliage and  we’re encouraged to grow Ivy for the early flowers for bees. The trouble is that it really bugged me. Finally, last autumn I got stuck in and removed it all. I was worried that the Holly would look rather sparse (it’s quite an open variety anyway) but it’s alright. It was covered in berries and I love the way the sparrows and blackbirds eat their way very systematically from top to bottom.

5. The flowering stems are starting to unfurl on the Euphorbias.

6. Helleborus niger has been flowering for weeks but the oriental types are just starting to emerge. Most of mine are self sown seedlings, but I did buy this one several years ago.

I’m going to try to wash those pots and trays this week – I’ll be needing them soon.

Have a great week, enjoy reading the other Sixes courtesy of our host at https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/