JEARRARD'S HERBAL
Thats enough introduction - on with the plants!
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... out in the garden.
21st December 2025
Dahlia (australis x tenuicaulis) .
A week that promised heavy, relentless rain. Fortunately the promise was broken. We got rain (and wind and gloomy howling) but it pattered along lightly like a midnight mouse foraging.
I was able to do some potting but the combination of short days and cold winds meant that I wasn't out there for long. The garden has been dark with anticipation of the solstice
and now it has arrived the garden is dark with the shortness of the day while the rain and wind jig between the trees.
The light is returning. Dahlia (australis x tenuicaulis) celebrated the survival of flowers against the grey sky. A touch of low sunshine illuminated it briefly
and I was able to get the picture. It grows about 10m from the back door and I was wet before I got in again. It was a brief sunny spell.
We haven't had a frost yet but the Dahlia has been battered by the wind, this may be the end of flowering for the year. In front of the house, Musa 'Tibet'
has bronzed and blackened from the same relentless stress. It's still in full-on banana mode but I doubt it can stand up to much more.
21st December 2025
Galanthus 'Three Ships' .
Walking around the garden on Friday, it was clear that the sleeping bulbs had responded to the increasingly urgent call of spring. There are daffodil noses poking above the ground to show
where the daffodil bodies are buried. The first hellebore buds are untangling themselves from the detritus of the woodland floor. In the new herbaceous border
there are long tulip shoots showing and the first Anemone coronaria flower, which I had been so careful of last week, was bitten off by a rabbit.
Snowdrops are pushing through the ground everywhere. During the summer I get lazy and wander across the beds with impunity. I wanted to get closer to a camellia this week to get a good picture
- 'Glenn's Orbit' doing an early turn - and had to stop myself walking all over the new shoots of snowdrops.
In the top woodland there are a few flowers on Galanthus 'Three Ships'. I would like more, but three clumps are establishing and I hope they will prosper. A few years ago
I planted a dozen spare bulbs from a congested clump up there and had high hopes for a dozen new plants but I haven't seen them yet. Perhaps they are just producing leaves ready to surprise me next year
with flowers.
I will hold on to that cheerful thought.
21st December 2025
Camellia 'Yuletide'.
With the arrival of the shortest day it is clear that the new season is blowing into the garden. The camellias have taken a huge leap forward. Fat buds that were hanging on the branches like exotic fruit
have all started to show pink tips as they open. There are a couple of autumn flowering Camellia sasanqua forms hanging on but they aren't making a show any more.
They had a very good season, but it is over now.
In their place the spring flowering Camellia japonica forms are flowering. It is the earliest season that I can remember though I should also note that my memory
is famously fickle. Notwithstanding, it is an early season and it seems like the earliest for recent decades.
Wedged between the autumn and spring camellias comes 'Yuletide'. It has a promising name and a seasonal colour so it is easy to overlook the fact that it doesn't usually flower here until February
when Santa is nothing but a distant memory. This year it has managed a decent show in time for Christmas (and at the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I'm not dreaming of a white one
and I certainly won't be in February).
Perhaps, like Christmas street decorations, it is getting earlier and earlier and going on for longer and longer.
Despite the slightly foreboding evidence of the passage of time, it is a good thing.
21st December 2025
Nerine 'Christmas Dreams'
I like to think that I can remember the days when Christmas was a season of pure delight but my memory is not a reliable record.
Now I tend to notice the workings. Santa's sleigh is just a wooden box, it doesn't have runners. A garden centre I visited recently had a choir of animatronic penguins singing Christmas songs.
I was most aware of the thick black cables supplying the power, wrapped in tinsel. I don't recall the traditional role of penguins in Christmas but I suppose things evolve.
As the year ends there are one or two Nerine hanging on to flowers. 'Christmas Dreams' encapsulates the sleight of hand that creates the magic of the season.
It isn't a good flower but it comes at a good time and it has a good name.
Santa, sitting on his box, surrounded by his penguins, would be proud.
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