I start the new year looking back. Historians often do, but gardeners can also benefit from a double vision. Last year was a strange, very good day in my fields since the 1980s. Sun lovers in Britain complained, but gardeners had plenty to enjoy and save for the future in a year in which almost everything grew.
In Britain, wildfires were spared the devastation caused by wildfires in other parts of the world, from California to Greece, and they made the garden a memorable one. This was a celestial mix of the midday sun through broken clouds, freezing temperatures and regular rainfall, usually of a hurricane.
One lasting year-long study is still to be seen in 2022. The season of the ever-changing organization, the English garden, is now six weeks longer than in the early 1990’s. as its new foundation. What used to be in late October now continues until November and after a dark week, it starts again with winter flowering plants even before Christmas.
Some of them last until early spring, with the help of hellebores which are very important in any garden, even in the shade under the trees. What you should see here are the mixed varieties of Lenten rose, Helleborus orientalis. Christmas flowers, Helleborus niger, are not simple and temporary. In 2021 I had twelve hellebores that remained in bloom with the early cooling of April. Study this material, especially if you are a newcomer to the field.
Bring hellebores and flower-growing plants, especially near homes. Once again my winning price with a winter flower cherry, which is now so beautiful, is showing off the reddish pink flowers that repeat, frost tolerating, until March.
About five years ago, our college graduates wore a costume drama in a college lounge and needed the price of good and the price of bad soon. Evil was simple, the Judas tree, or Cercis siliquastrum, which has beautiful pink flowers at the end of May and is associated, unjustly, with the tree on which the treacherous Judas hung himself and “broke in half”. The branches are too thin to support the shaken apostle.
The good was very difficult, especially at the two-day detection. So, I bought my best, Prunus subhirtella autumnalis for the winter, even in the pot, in May. No one used it after the show, so I planted it, thin, in a familiar place near the entrance of the college, hoping it would last all night under arc lamps and sit hard in the bucket. It has gone from strength to strength and left the tree of Judas behind.
In maturity, winter cherries are not small trees. They need space, up to 20ft high and wide, but their high size does not block out more light and their roof can be fixed in smaller spaces.
Phlox David: ‘Perennial phloxes had the best year of my life’ © GAP Photos / Clive Nichols
Lenten Rose hellebore: ‘I had 12 hellebores still in bloom and early April frosts’ © GAP Photos / Mark Bolton
The first closure in 2020 brought millions of people to cultivate the garden. Their first move was to order summer flowering plants online and then buy some when the garden reopened. Last year showed how England’s large flower gardens respond to the warm spring.
Camellias and magnolias were godly, especially in protected London. Lilacs and peonies followed and irises had a good year. Likewise the flowers, which seem unaffected by frost in late April.
At the time, journalists and TVs were focusing on gardening under the slogan “No Mow May” or “Make Your Own Meadow”, as if only “natural” flowers could cure insects and butterflies. Farmers routinely spray wildlife to death, killing poisonous birds (“jenny wrens”) using small bait, called organic, and sometimes the top weed with a Roundup drop.
Maybe your uncut grass will still satisfy you in August, not bother you with flies and mosquitoes. In a small garden I think it looks confusing. Whatever you choose, do not let it confuse the frame, magnolias, flowers and so on, which provides a garden of many colors, not a combination of British nettles. In short, do not be ashamed of beauty. Start by planting its long-term framework, honoring the 2021 winners.
July 2021 had another good lesson for new farmers: Mrs. Nature cannot be identified. I loved the coldest of July, but the annual and dahlias did not, even when purchased at the last minute, ready to sell in stores. We all struggled to make them grow, so my dahlias bloomed well from mid-September. The young plants did not progress much and at this time it was a study of the extinction of slugs during the rainy season.
I had mixed results with many years of the year, tall tobacco plants were hard to promote good height, but the winner was phlox a year, especially the low blue Moody Blues, whose color is best at daytime temperatures.
At the time, perennial phloxes were the best year of my life, competing with the ones that are often the best in Scotland and the cold north. David’s long white phlox sprouted until the end of August, surpassing all the rest of me. I make perennial phloxes for my annual plants. My limits were delayed to reach the peak of summer which usually arrives in early July, but as soon as they arrived well, the phloxes helped them to last longer.
The spring began well, although it began to dry out, and its flowers grew well. However, Nature had a strong card in her hand: the rainy days at the end of September and October showed how wet flowers are mostly wet. They closed and turned brown.
Instead of my favorite autumn adventures were beautiful Guernsey flowers, or nerines, light bulbs that are easy for anyone to call for spring and planting and the bulb tips are still visible on the bed under a warm wall. In 2021 they sprouted again and again, until early November. I would love to see the pink colors between the red and white Salvia Hot Lips, under the white potato vine, a disc of Solanum jasminoides. Forty years ago the solanum would have been a little harder and the flowers on the nerines would have withered by frost in October.
Use long flowering; put the first foundation in the garden first; look through our few British plants; expect Nature to throw you the worst and do not despair if plants die. Death in the field is a privilege. My concern is that replacements are becoming more expensive. The increase in online billing in 2020-2021 has led new farmers to pay higher prices for plants that do not grow well. Since then those trees have remained.
Fertilizer and heat prices have also skyrocketed and the shortage of peat in the field compost raises the cost of compost, other peat methods are more expensive and heavier to transport. Garden prices are rising more than 6 percent a year. Pay, newcomers: it’s still important.
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