Things are still quiet in our garden. There’s glimpses of colour, some not from where you’d expect like the geranium pictured below. It’s spent its winter nestled under the tree and is clearly quite happy. Elsewhere the ornamental quince is adding a dash of orange, along with the orange flowers of the berberis. Both are, for some reason, shy in photos never showing their best side.
As always the euphorbias and hostas are the main stay of the garden right now, having taken over from the snowdrops and cyclamen. The hellebores are starting to make themselves known, though they’re at the far end of the garden. Our neighbour’s camellias (both sides of us) are flowering, and as usual ours is a little way behind.
During the month I was able to get out and take some photos, despite the rain. Though the rain always helps make things look a lot more lush, especially the hostas, who seem to be repaying that with flowers. And yes, I know these are more than likely ‘Elephants Ears’ rather than true hostas, but old habits and namings for our plants are hard to give up.
These euphorbias have done well, not only have they arrived from the flowerbed a couple of metres away, they’ve also coped with the fence panel behind them being removed and then replaced during our neighbour’s building work. I’ve had several unsuccessful attempts at growing things here, including daffodils, mint and low covering ground plants, all of which tried for a bit but gave up in the narrow strip of poor soil. It seems the garden has taken things into its own hands, with the euphorbias marching on - these will be encouraged to continue their expedition along the length of the fence, as I like the way they soften the hard edge of the patio.
Our willow screening, which was a little fragile anway, has been a casualty of the building work next door. We’ve ordered a new roll and that should be arriving during the week. This time we’ve gone for a much shorter version, as it doesn’t need to reach the ground - in fact it’s better that it doesn’t, the last one rotted from the ground up. Neither does it need to cover the trellis, previously we trimmed it to the size we wanted, which was unnecessary work. This time we’ve just ordered a 1.2m version and will hang it from the top of the fence (not the trellis) and it will go, where it goes to.
The hellebores at the end of our garden are also starting to add some colour. I’d be keen to add some of these closer to the house too, so that we can enjoy them when the weather is really rum and going out into the garden doesn’t even cross our minds. Usually they self seed so I’ll hope to successfully move some into pots for planting on the patio.
Throughout the garden there’s signs of life. From the clumps of bluebell leaves, to the strawberry runners. The one below was trying to root into concrete, unsuccessfully. So the extent of my gardening this year has been to stuff its roots under the sleepers, to give it half a chance. It’s from the plant that grows between two paving slabs, so I’m hoping it’s made of strong stuff. Just not strong enough stuff to get through the concrete, silly plant.
In the sleeper bed the small Christmas tree looks to have lost it’s growing tip - and seems to be flattening out. I’ll take a closer look when we spend some time in the garden, but I’m keen on this to keep growing a little more to help screen some of the noise from another neighbour’s kids when they’re playing. There’s nothing wrong with kids enjoying themselves of course, but these are quite screechy and if we’re sitting in that part of the garden (or in fact in our front room over 100 yards away) it would be good not to hear them quite so much. Mostly because it makes me jump, every single time.
They are also growing some bamboo alongside the fence which will help, but which is also planning its route into our garden as bamboo does. It looks pretty, on that side of the fence though.
Another of our neighbour’s fences (yes another one, we have many garden boundaries) isn’t looking so good. Remember that over-enthusiastic pruning neighbour in the flat next door, well she’s moved out and there’s a new couple in there, and this is their fence. The previous tenant wouldn’t listen when we said the reason the ivy was covering this fence panel was because it was knackered, even the owner of the flat agreed this one wasn’t worth touching. When it’s less wet, I’ll climb into the fatsia and sort out as much as I can, but I’ve a feeling it may stay looking a bit bare for a while. An option might be to add some trellis over it, but I’ll know more once I’ve had a closer look. It may be we suggest they replace this panel, which was omitted from the big fence replacement programme a couple of years ago.
We also need to look at a fence panel on the other side of the garden with yet another neighbour - we share garden boundaries with five neighbours, and there’s another two who have flats in the house next door, but no garden boundaries at the back. I’ve no idea what happens to this fence panel, but it’s one we’ve replaced at least three times already, and it probably needs doing again. No other fence panel has been replaced so often, it’s very peculiar.
So while there’s been hardly any gardening this month, there’s plenty going on in the garden - not least the arrival of our first daffodil, which is something always to be celebrated. Let’s hope many more follow this one’s lead during March, then we’ll know that Spring really is on its way.