JEARRARD'S HERBAL
11th December 2022
Camellia 'Narumigata' .
I am a season-denier, dedicated to the idea that winter is a fiction imposed by the authorities to oppress the gardener. It isn't credible as a conspiracy theory
but it provides some comfort at night as the wind rattles the roof tiles. This isn't winter, these are the birthing pains of spring!
Autumn in the garden had decayed with dignity. At the beginning of the week the sun was shining, the air was still and the temperatures remained high.
The forecast was for a fall in temperature, I imagine that has happened. I don't know, I came away for the weekend. The garden has probably been frosted,
the early camellias might well have browned and the hatching spring could have retreated back into its egg. I will find out tomorrow when I get home.
The excitement of the week was the discovery of Camellia 'Narumigata' flowering in the garden. It is a cultivar that I am very fond of.
I have tried to establish it several times without success. I have it for a while and then it dies. I was sure that I was currently in one of the 'dead' zones
and about to buy another, allowing optimism to trounce experience. Finding one in the garden last week, seven feet tall and in flower, was a delight. I have tried several times
and it appears that I have killed all but one of them. One is triumphantly enough.
Perhaps the flowers have survived the cold at home and I will have them for a second week. I will muse on it during the journey home. The truth will be poignant,
part of the secret emotional wealth of the garden.
This isn't my plant. This one is growing in Surrey after the temperatures dropped to minus 8.5 C at night. Poignant.
11th December 2022
Brugmansia sanguinea .
As I left home the sun was shining, and although the winter-whisperers were saying cold, the forecast was saying moderate. You might get away with it again.
Perhaps we have. In the sunshine, the Brugmansia was taking full advantage of a long hot summer of growth to flower with enthusiasm.
I took several pictures to celebrate the curious tone of December. Just one more week and real life will be suspended while Santa and his minions
take over. Perhaps we should ask him to take over the government for a couple of weeks, that seems to be the current duration.
More significantly for the garden, the winter solstice will be upon us. The light will be conceptually (if not quite detectably) increasing. Spring will be less of a conviction
and more of a promise. The Brugmansia can reasonably retire for the year, assuming it is still alive.
At the start of the week I took a picture of it from the far side of the garden, with daffodils and spring camellias in the view. They couldn't really be seen in the picture,
but I knew they were there and that was enough. This year may well be one that answers the inevitable questions of planting. Will it be hardy enough?
The Brugmansia has been in the ground for almost two years, it is well established and grew strongly through the summer. If the cold weather kills it now
then it isn't bad luck it is misplaced tenderness.
11th December 2022
Dahlia tenuicaulis .
Dahlia tenuicaulis has been building to a crescendo of flowers through the autumn months. I had hoped that it might flower from September.
There was a suggestion that it was the earliest and most reliable of the tree dahlias. It has been flowering for a couple of weeks now, the scattered
individual flowers were slowly increasing in number. The terminal inflorescences were filling with shiny buds. It could have been astonishing.
It might still be. Perhaps it has survived a degree or two of frost. Perhaps it hasn't collapsed into a brown heap. It will be one of the
joys of homecoming. Light the fire, put the kettle on, check the Dahlia.
This is the first time that it has flowered here. I have rooted a number of cuttings and was considering planting them freely around the garden.
If it has turned brown then I might reconsider the plan. A sparkling hedge of mauve flowers dancing in the sunlight at the end of the year
is a delightful idea. A border of slimy brown dejection has less appeal.
11th December 2022
Trachycarpus fortunei .
Over the years that I have been here there have been a number of cold events that have temporarily changed the face of the garden.
Heavy frost or snow can be remarkably stimulating. Suddenly there is pattern and structure where previously there was just
green enthusiasm. Trachycarpus fortunei is one of those plants that shine in adversity.
I first met it growing in Ellen Willmott's abandoned garden forty years ago. It was a gaunt, mature specimen growing in a regenerated sycamore woodland,
one of the last vestiges of a once great garden. They call Eryngium giganteum "Miss Willmott's ghost" because she would, allegedly, scatter seed
whenever she visited a garden. Like a vegetable calling card, the appearance of seedlings would record the occasion. However in the sycamore scrub of Warley Place,
a single mature Trachycarpus looked more haunted by her spirit.
In my own garden the pleated leaves articulate frost and snow into pattern and give a sense of order arising from chaos, an unlikely but heartening outcome.
Writing from Surrey, the splendour of this Trachycarpus has been revealed by the harsh cold. Order from chaos, the burgeoning delight of spring
bursting from the blasted bleakness of winter.
It is difficult to believe in spring, but it is getting easier. In a couple of weeks the evidence will be clearer. The first Crocus will recklessly
over-write the rigid geometry of the cold.