Thursday 30 January 2014

Hellebore flowers

Our hellebores are just poking their heads up into the cold and wet January. I did a search for hellebore flowers on Google images and got a glorious display - all colours and shapes photographed by garden-lovers everywhere.

Take a look >> 

Hellebore photos from Google images

They sow themselves and cross pollinate so I'm looking forward to seeing what we get this year. Here's some of ours from previous years:




Tuesday 21 January 2014

Winter flowers

After a couple of weeks of rain and grey, but mild, days we've had two frosty nights (-2 C) and glorious sunny mornings.

The mild weather has brought forward the spring bulbs which are now pushing through and the robins and blackbirds are singing like they think its spring already.

There are flowers in the garden, mostly winter bloomers like mahonia, winter jasmine and heather and the rhubarb is sprouting nicely.  


Winter jasmine flowers
Winter jasmine
Yellow Mahonia flowers
Mahonia flowers
Primrose
Primroses
Purple heather
Heather





Monday 6 January 2014

Garden WiKi

Found this site while searching for advice on how to look after an El Cope plant given to Mum for Christmas.

http://www.wikihow.com/Category:Gardening

Lots of ideas and fun articles on things other than gardening. Like all wikis you need to be wary because not everyone who contributes is an expert, but there's opportunity for people with more knowledge to comment and make further suggestions.

Here's our El Cope plant, not surprisingly it's in the same family as a pineapple - bromeliads.



Saturday 4 January 2014

New Year

The New Year has continued with the wet, windy and rather warm theme although interspersed with some fine sunny moments.

Not a lot happening in the garden just small shoots from the rhubarb, bunches of yellow flowers on the mahonia and little yellow stars of winter jasmine. Surprisingly - few spring bulbs are shooting. Usually by now there are little green shoots and maybe the odd snowdrop showing some white. I wonder if this is warning of a long, cold winter to come.