Daylily

White Cyclamen

The Gravel Garden

Last year’s planter

Dwarf Narcissi

Winter Honeysuckle

These photos are from Friday as the sun was shining for the first time in over a week! It has been dry, but oh, so dull and grey and depressing and all I have wanted to do is sleep…

But let’s take a quick wander around the garden to see what’s happening since I last posted at the end of November. Not much in the way of colour except for green and white, but we all know that white is not a colour!

1. Spring Bulbs. Nearly all the bulbs I planted in pots are already showing. And the Iris histriodes ‘George’ that I left in a couple of my blue glazed pots along with some tulips and Sweet William plants are almost open, though looking worryingly floppy.
   
   

   Miscellaneous bulbs

   

   Dwarf Narcissi

   

   Last year’s planter
2. My garden is pretty green all year round and this winter we have only had one frost as far as I am aware and that wasn’t severe enough to cause any damage. Of course winter is not yet over and I think we can all remember the “Beast from the East” that hit us in March 2018. But this Daylily is certainly late to the party as she should have flowered during the summer! I doubt whether these buds will ever open, but I keep looking.
   
3. In my new woodland border, which I created last autumn joining two beds together that exist under the Weeping Kilmarnock Willow tree and the Corkscrew Hazel, I planted a pack of white cyclamen and a few crocus bulbs. I need to weed this bed and remove stuff that just got put there simply to provide ground cover and I still have a couple of bags of bark that I was going to use to mulch it with, but the rain and wind have got in the way. I’ll wait until spring now and after the crocuses have flowered.
   
4. Another small tree/shrub that I inherited is a winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) which is supposed to be highly fragrant and a magnet for winter-active bumblebees. It bears cream-white flowers on almost leafless branches, but I can’t say the fragrance wafts in the air as much as I’d like, though if I sniff closely enough there is a sherbet lemony perfume. It’s also a divil of a job to photograph!
   
5. My Belfast sink is also full of greenery. Even the rocks in it are turning green! There is some life and I spy a stray Erigeron karvinskianus seedling and a couple of hairy bittercress weeds (supposed to be annuals, but they never seem to die). Again I need to get into this planter and remove the dross, but I quite like that moss that has formed. And the Saxifrage in the bottom left corner is looking healthy.
   
6. Last year I ordered some pretty Hellebore seeds of various colours and styles as I want to have a few different ones in my front courtyard. To buy reasonable sized plants is expensive so I thought I’d try the seeds. They went into individual pots and I knew they wouldn’t germinate until November at the earliest so it would be a long wait. And then the rain came. All the pots were flooded over and over again. They are supposed to be kept outside, but I feared that all the seeds would be washed away. Imagine my surprise when I saw this lot.  OK, there’s a long way to go, but at least all is not lost!
   

As always, if you want a peek over other people’s garden walls then please pop over to our host, the lovely Jon, AKA ‘The Propagator’ where you find links to many more wonderful garden enthusiasts from all over the world, though maybe not so many flowers at this time of the year.

See here for the participant’s guide.

Six on Saturday