That sweet smell of winter

Let's face it, progress is slow in the veg garden even in the mildest of winters - those little plants know that they’re better off snuggled into a protective blanket of soil, slugs notwithstanding. But if there’s nothing much for me to see, at least there are lots of lovely smells at this time of year.

It wasn’t a day to be outside for long on Friday (or any day this past week) but, walking back from dropping off my recycling, I found myself drawn into the garden by a delicious smell wafting over from the stand of Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'. And as I tugged a branch towards me to better appreciate its scent close up, I heard the angry buzzing of a disturbed bumble bee. A positive sign as bumbles are the first bees to wake up in spring and good to know that there's food for them.

Someone (not me) planted two of the shrubs a long time ago and their scruffiness irritates me hugely for most of the year. They haven’t been maintained by the contract gardeners so have grown in height and width to cast deep shade over the border until their leaves drop in late autumn.  This shrub should be maintained by thinning out the old wood at the base, thereby allowing the new shoots room to grow; I frequently harbour thoughts of heading out with my pruning saw - my type of guerrilla gardening.

But with the appearance of their dainty pink flowers in early winter, all is forgiven.  The perfume is delicious but strangely doesn’t work indoors (for me, anyway), much better to appreciate it wafting on the wind.

The next border along is a thicket. Our community gardening group (as was) were given this area for food growing but resisted clearing it straightaway; it was a jungle even then but we told ourselves that at least tenants overlooking the gardens had some greenery to look out onto until the food garden was less bare earth. Now I worry that by sorting it out I’ll be destroying a perfect habitat for this urban garden’s wildlife.

See what I mean? Thicket.

It’s now been taken over by Petasites, another (very invasive) winter flowering plant with a strong baby-talc perfume. Staring at it, I started to think about winter plants that brighten up the garden with their scent.

I wrote about Petasites in depth five years ago, in January 2015. At that time I had plans to conquer it, dig it up and relocate a few plants.  Needless to say, that's still on my to do list.  But there's an idea tickling my thoughts - how would it be if the Petasites were transplanted into the Viburnum border?  Good, eh? There might be a bit of sensory overload on the olfactory front, and I'd have to rescue my beautiful ferns first (a very lovely bronze Dryopteris erythrosora), but it’s a plan. When the weather is warmer though.

It's would be a massive challenge as the plant has spread the length of its 30ft long home border.  That whole area needs culling; it's a thicket of tangled dogwood, hebe, Elaeagnus, Choysia, ivy and honeysuckle ... which brings me to my next winter smelly.

This, I love. Like roses, I find it impossible to pass by without a not-so-surreptitious sniff of the scent. The flowers are edible with a sweet burst of nectar at the base; they’re not known as Honey suckle for nothing!  This is a bog standard honeysuckle which has flowered courtesy of a mild winter but there is a winter flowering honeysuckle - Lonicera purpusii-  that has highly scented white flowers from early winter onwards.  Duly noted for when this border is conquered.

And finally (thanks for bearing with me), I have to mention Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’. The clue is in the name, a most beautiful shrub with a not-to-be-ignored intense perfume.

I walk in olfactory heaven past a clutch of these most days, planted in a long roadside border outside council flats. I can’t help but marvel at this municipal border as it’s planted up with the most desirable of plants - the above mentioned Daphnes, a swathe of large pale green Hellebore foetida, Euphorbia rigida, grasses, Brachyglottis (aka Senecio or Daisy Bush) and Sarcococca, another excellent shrub for scent and wildlife.

Sweetly scented flowers and berries for birds - what’s not to love!

Both Daphne and Sarcococca are shrubs that are sadly lacking in the gardens here but I’ve Google searched for a supplier several times and my fingers are creeping closer to the ‘click to buy’ button, paid for with my jar of babysitting money, saved for exactly this purpose. Watch this space .... !

It's tulip time!

Hallelujah! Winter is almost over, she shouted.  Okay, that may be stretching it a bit but there are definite sightings of tulip buds rising above the leaves in the veg patch and mini tulips in flower in the car park garden.  This is most unusual, even if we are only days away from March, the meterological start of the spring season.  It all seems a bit too soon, to have tulips in February; I mean, the snowdrops are barely bowing out and daffodils have just hit their stride. So these tulips are most unexpected - but after a long wet winter, I'll take whatever signs of imminent spring I can get.

One of the tall tulips in the Fruit Tree border of the Veg Patch.
Hmmm, thought I’d dug all the yellow ones up ... 

A fact I discovered just recently was that short tulips flower earlier than their taller relatives. Please tell me I'm not the last to know! This I find eminently sensible (even if they do normally wait until late March/April to bloom). Wintry weather, and certainly the wild weather we've had this year, would ravage the taller tulips (the ones the foxes don't trample first!) but I was still surprised to see several of these red/yellow mini tulips ready to open at the weekend.  Especially as I planted only tall tulips in this bed last year and most of those were transferred to pots when I needed the space for my gooseberry bushes. Maybe, like me, they've just got shorter with age.

Springing up in the veg patch

There hasn't been a lot to crow about in the winter veg patch but with the sun shining this morning, I found myself muttering 'This is a lovely day' (despite a 'fresh breeze' as the Met Office like to call it).  A little bit of sunshine makes everything look more promising. Making my way towards home, I diverted my steps for a quick look at the veg garden; every day makes a difference especially after the two recent storms. Plants were noticeably doing their planty growing thing and, with a spring in my step, I resolved to spend an hour in the garden before lunch.

Somewhere between the veg patch and home (only a few minutes walk), I switched to thinking about doing a bit more work on the hedge in the car park garden. (I really must think up another name for that space, Car Park Garden doesn't quite do it justice.) The Euonymus hedge needs some very severe restorative pruning to encourage it to bush up from the base and I need to tidy up the space to see if there's room for a mini greenhouse.

What started as a sunny but breezy moment of pruning soon turned into a battle against a gale force wind. And then it rained. Time for lunch, I told myself, and packed my tools away. I had managed a couple of hours but, admitting defeat for the day, I headed back indoors and turned my thoughts back to the veg garden - surely spring can't be far off, if only the weather would make up its mind.  I'm wondering if I should sow some chilli seeds.

Despite the changeable weather, the UK winter has been kind to us namby-pamby Southerners. On my earlier walk round the veg patch I'd snapped a few photos:

I was surprised to see wild garlic already well under way ...  Wild garlic has such a reputation for spreading that some might think me foolhardy for deliberately growing it. Not to worry, so far it's been remarkably self-restrained and seems happy to occupy just a few feet of soil under the cherry tree. Possibly the lack of regular watering (no nearby hosepipe) makes things inhospitable for new seedlings.

And so to broad beans. A bit of an experiment this as it's the first time I've tried over wintering beans. I set them out next to support sticks last December; tying them in now that they've grown is on the to-do list, although not being secured to stakes might have saved them from being ripped in half during the strong winds of Storms Ciara and Dennis. What I did notice (with not a little excitement) was that flower buds are starting to form on the plants and not a aphid in sight. Hopefully I'm not jinxing things with that last observation.

Kale is one of my winter veg patch staples, a vegetable I add to stir fries, soups, smoothies and, when the mood takes me, an omelette. It keeps going even in the harshest winter and it looks pretty. Even if it's covered with an ugly trellis to keep foxes off.  The Cavolo Nero plant that has kept going for so long has started to form flower buds - these are still edible but this is the second time the plant has run to seed; it has served me well. It feels very fitting that new plants will be raised from last summer's saved seed.

Looking ahead, the weather forecast is looking predictably gloomy (possibility of hail tomorrow!). So any gardening will be in short bursts while I go back to planning my seed sowing calendar indoors.

So let me leave you with this thought - aren't spring flowers just awesome?

Self seeded and so pretty. 

Tulips that I thought I'd dug up last year. Can't remember how many years these have been in.

First forget-me-nots are starting to flower. Some blue, some pink. And in profusion.

Ever reliable cowslips. 
Now I'm thinking I should move some of these to the Car Park Garden