A very slow spring

Posted on May 10, 2013 by kininvie

It’s still cold. Nine to eleven degrees, and a chill wind from the north-west. We’re at least four weeks later than last year (which was a disaster anyway, with its vicious late frosts).

As I’ve said before, I’m not unhappy. With everything held back, I’ve got on with a lot of things without the usual rush to clear weeds and mow grass. Turned the compost heap, dug new drains in an effort to make the bog garden less of a swamp, cleaned out the strawberries, manured the raspberries. And re-soiled the blue poppy beds, lifted and split their inhabitants. They are looking much happier than they were last year:

The early primulas are in full flower: Primula rosea enjoys having its roots in running water, but is equally happy in a damp bed.

I’m especially pleased that my primula melanantha survived the winter. I’ve kept it in its pot (I don’t normally like doing this) and sunk it into a fairly shady spot. It spent the months from September to March in the greenhouse, with only a tiny drip of water once a fortnight. Now it’s pushing out its velvety-black flowers.

On the subject of black, about five years ago, I stuck a black hellebore (helleborus niger) into the remains of a rotten tree stump under beech trees. The odd leaf appeared, but little else, and I wrote it off as a stupid error. But, lo and behold, the Christmas rose, flowering in May!

As I feared…

Posted on April 6, 2012 by kininvie

Even for a garden caught at the edge of competing weather systems, the reversal from summer to winter over the past ten days has been spectacular. Hot sun and shirt-sleeves a week ago; driving snow and thick gloves on Tuesday. Follow that with seven degrees of frost on Wednesday night – and the devastation is complete:Apart from the inevitable frustration that goes with seeing the spring colour wiped out overnight, it’s interesting to see what is robust enough to withstand the extremes of climate. Alpine plants, on the whole, rapidly bounce back, while many herbaceous plants such as delphiniums and peonies pull themselves together again with a resigned shrug. It’s mostly the rhododendron tribe that suffers – presumably because once the frost has gone from the lower slopes of their mountainous native habitats, they don’t expect to see it back. Which is why they flourish on the frost-free west coast of Scotland, but struggle here.Some plants just get on with life. Primula rosea (again), enjoys the flood that follows the snow melt:And the tougher shrubs are unaffected. The catkins on salix hastata wehrhahnii always look good at this time of year.You often find this sold as a ‘dwarf’ willow – but it’s more a medium-sized shrub, quite capable of growing to five or six feet if you let it. It’s an extremely useful space filler, very attractive in its bowed growth habit, and with pretty, fluffly young foliage. Cuttings taken in autumn root like weeds, so you never need purchase more than one plant. The only thing to watch out for is an infestation of willow beetle – plants can be stripped of their leaves very rapidly.

Update on Veronica wormskjoldii: In this post, I queried whether I had the correct name for this summer-flowing creeping plant. The nursery that sold it to me now agrees that whatever it is, it is not wormskjoldii. Wrongly-named plants which are passed from grower to grower and sold on to gardeners are a real irritant (I constantly see wrongly-named primulas for sale). Few nurseries appear to have the time or inclination to verify the names of their stock. Short term, it may not matter, but in the long term it leads to confusion. I’ll try to get the Edinburgh botanics to identify the veronica and report back. Meanwhile, I see Google has put my photograph into its image bank…..does anyone know how I can get it removed?

Springtime panic

Posted on March 31, 2012 by kininvie

It has been warmer in Scotland this week than it was in Sicily last week, but I’m not planting any lemon trees yet. In fact it’s not unusual for us to get ten days of sunshine in spring, although it often happens earlier in the year. What is unusual is the warmth, and it is deeply troubling, because all the deluded plants are rushing into growth. I know exactly what will happen. Sometime between now and May there will be a killing frost, and all the young growth will be burnt out. This happened last year, so this year I have no flowers on the early species azaleas (rh. schlippenbachii, rh. albrechtii). It’s going to happen again: snow is forecast for Thursday. However, at least this rhododendron has escaped:It’s very old, but continues to cover itself in flowers when its buds aren’t frosted (about one year in three). I don’t know the variety. Behind it you can see my cloud-pruned juniper, somewhat ragged after the winter winds. With luck the rhododendron will now spread to fill the hole.

The cause of the springtime panic is simple. I can’t cut any grass (which needs it) until I have somewhere to put the cuttings. Which means I have to get the two-year-old compost onto the borders and turn last year’s heap. And I can’t do that until I’ve forked over the ground. So it has been hard manual labout this week. But it is done.It’s satisfying to have a border which, for a couple of weeks, appears to be free of weeds. The trouble is that I know what horrors lurk beneath that nice brown covering of fresh compost.

Another priority is to weed the scree, as this is where I get some of the earliest colour, and if I don’t get rid of the moss and the meadow grass which has seeded itself in the gravel, it soon won’t be a scree – just a weedy lawn. Here’s another cushion saxifrage which cheers me up as I brush moss out of the phloxes:And here is androsace carnea ‘Brigantica’ which I love for the simplicty of its tiny white flowers:Saxifrage ‘Haagii’ has only managed one flower stem this year. But it is young. Next year, I shall expect more:And finally, primula rosea, the best early primula for the bog garden. I’ve been lucky enough to see this in the wild, growing all over gravelly islands in Himalayan rivers where it can’t be grazed. What grazes it in Scotland is slugs. The birds like picking the flowers and throwing them around too. Life can be hard.