February is the month for ‘just’ and ‘nearly’. The days are lengthening, with light until about 1845 depending on the day, and this, plus some suspiciously warm days, after buckets of rain, is conning quite a few plants to give it a go. Not altogether wise, but they are wired to work to the conditions, so precocious Spring activity is starting early. Last April, we had a night of slushy snow and hail, so they had better watch out. But I love to see first shoots and the bulbs that can be early, like the Crocus. This is the only orange Crocus, aptly called ‘Orange Monarch’, it’s a newish variety whichI tried last year, but got nothing at all from a potful of bulbs. This year’s bulbs come from the brilliant Cathy Portier in Belgium, and have flowered, albeit they are tiny flowers. Also, they really are much more orange than the photograph suggests!
The thing about hellebores is that they mostly protect their flowers by holding them downwards. So you either cup them with your hand, or lie down full length and look up. I myself like my hellebores cream or white, and fairly simple in flowering terms, so this pretty lime-green ruff is about as fancy as I want my hellebores to be. There are breeders going nuts with very fancy flowers and also varieties that hold the flowers up. But I like them like this.
But ‘Mrs Betty Rannicar’ is a new one for me, and is, shocking for me, a double! Or maybe triple or quadruple, but otherwise she is quite plain. Apparently a prodigious flowerer, she was discovered by an Australian breeder, John Dudley, who handpollinated Betty as a stock plant for developing his new double strains at his Tasmanian nursery. Betty never quite took off as a variety in the UK, but I think she’s a bit of a gem in her own right, and I will be watching her closely to see how she does.
The first Euphorbia to burst out was this great, stringy, crawling plant, one of my favourites in the ‘garrigue’ garden at the front. Euphorbia myrsinites really is a sprawler, so rocks or border edges are best for it, but the zingy yellow is a knockout.
I adore this Salix. But I nearly killed it off last year. The first year in Oloron suited it fine, and I was congratulating myself at growing a thirsty Salix in a garden that I don’t water at all. Fast forward a year and a bit, and I realised that I was indulging in plant torture. It was seriously not happy and produced no lovely pink catkins at all. So out it came, into a pot, and into a shady corner of the courtyard where I do water pots in the summer. By October, it had shot out several very happy looking stems which were reaching for the sky, and this February we have the return of these sumptuous raspberry coloured catkins. So it will stay in a pot, and I will just let it get to it’s approximate 2-3 metres tall at the max. It will give that shady corner a bit of a green-over in the summer months. People cut the catkins for Valentine bouquets, but leave them on, they will last longer and create more joy on the plant than off.
Colletia cruciata has to be the spikiest plant ever, and what’s more, it even carries two kinds of spike, the ones you can see in the photograph and then, as well, other more fern-like foliage which carries…well, smaller, thinner spikes. I have planted it in the front garden, in the corner produced by our surrounding drystone walls, and a good 2m away from the bench that we often sit on to have cups of tea in good weather. So we should be fine, and not be spiked. I shall simply hope that it likes it there, and that we get the tiny fragrant flowers in the summer. It will be my equivalent of the Victorian monkey puzzle tree.
My Cornus mas is doing fine. It was a mere twig when I planted it 3 years ago and now, it’s just over a metre high and wide. Last year we had maybe 4 or 5 of these brilliantly yellow flowers, which smell gorgeous if you get right down onto them. This year, 2 big stems have the fat buds followed by the flower breaking through. No fruits yet, but you have to be patient.
Myriam, our lovely neighbour, gave me a big piece of what she called ‘the peanut butter bush’ or ‘Melianthus major’, and I was delighted, as this had been a plant I had had two shots at growing in Tostat, but both had failed. So, third time lucky, and last year it really did well and this year, joy of joys, there is already new growth on it- and this despite that fact that I moved it at the end of Autumn. I hadn’t picked the best spot the first time around, and it had been fairly sat upon when the Colquohounia coccinea got decked to 45° by the July storms. So, I have moved it so that it has the drystone wall behind it, which should help it hopefully this year.
A big clump of very frilly, double orange hemerocallis was inherited when we moved to Oloron. They flower just outside the front gate, and are much beloved by passers-by, so much so that the flowers are regularly picked! So, despite my great support for human enthusiasm expressed in almost any way, I dug them up and have moved them into the Barn Garden, and at the same time, I split the big clump into smaller chunks, and have popped them in around and about. So maybe this year, I’ll get to see some of them!
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