(I am sure that I have a stinking cold, but it’s not blurring my judgement or making me see things. Much.)

I have two gorgeous camellias in the bottom garden.

The larger of the two is this double, and it must be – oh, about 2.5m tall at least. It is sheltered from the worst of the wind by the Portugal Laurel and a perfectly ordinary buddleia, and it’s always been fine. Gorgeous, in fact.

Until now.

Bleagh.

Initially I thought it was camellia yellow mottle virus but it’s not yellow, more of a cream, and yellow mottle really is yellow – or at least it is in all the pictures I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot recently. Also CYMV – according to the books – doesn’t weaken the plant, and this whole plant is looking a bit peaky. Also, I’ve been told that it leaves the veins green – not a hint of green there, though there is on some of the bleached leaves.

Fortunately most of the leaves are still a happy (um, a bit droopy, actually) camellia green.

I did wonder about chlorosis, but we’re on exactly the right soil for camellias and they grow like weeds round here. The other one is fine, and it’s only a couple of metres away, slightly lower down the slope. But this double does not look good, and that’s even allowing for the natural tendency of camellias to look as though someone has scattered them with old paper hankies as soon as the flowers begin to turn brown.

The other thing that occurred to me was waterlogging.

It has been very wet – there are damp patches in the house where there’s never been damp before and all this talk about drought is making me feel envious, but water issues round here are deeply political and it’s my water* – and this camellia is very close to the soakaway. So is the other – but not quite so near. The soakaway is in good condition for a 200-year-old waste management system, but its whole purpose is to let water soak away (dur). Could it, I wonder, be permitting this particular camellia to sit with its feet in water? Or maybe the (eco) washing powder / washing-up liquid I use has altered the soil’s ph? Maybe it’s time to find the tester and check it out. I should also mention that an Acanthus mollis nearby is also looking a bit on the yellow side, or maybe that is me and my head full of gunk.

(In the meanwhile, P and I have dumped a whole load of acidic red cedar chippings at the camellia’s base.)

And I’m immensely grateful that the other camellia, the single, has just started flowering. It’s always later, but it’s usually overshadowed by its blowsy companion. Not this year,

which just proves my theory that there’s always a silver lining if you look hard enough.

If anybody has any suggestions, I’d be very interested. I’m going to cut a chunk off and send it to the RHS nasty things identification service, but I’m not sure I can do much about it if waterlogging is the problem. And it’s so big, I’m not sure what I’d do if it was yellow mottle (er, cream mottle in my case). Hire a cherry picker, perhaps. P would love that – boys and their toys – but ladders would probably be just as good. Big ladders.

*Though I could probably supply Liverpool with water single-handed at the moment, politics or no politics. Mind you, we’d need lots of buckets.

They are beautiful in almost any conditions that the weather can throw at us:

with the possible exception of the fog, where they are just likely to get stepped on. That would be cruel…

They also give me the most splendid excuse not to get involved in the all-Wales weedathon that is my garden: ‘I’ve just got to photograph the snowdrops before the sun goes…’ This also means that I haven’t been able to get involved in lifting heavy slate slabs to see why the level of the paving has dropped (broken pipe is best bet, probably caused by cedar roots in search of a drink). Shame.

And, of course, the snowdrops are giving me a perfect opportunity to finally work out how to use my new camera properly, rather than just keeping my fingers crossed, my finger on the button (difficult, given the state of my hands – operation soon) and my metaphors mixed.

I’m relieved to see that my earlier fears about short stems have been proved unfounded. They’re fine. Stems as usual. Not that I pick them, mind – but I do like them to stand a little taller than the grass. I still end up crawling around, though.

There are plenty of galanthophiles out there who have many beautiful and rare varieties in their gardens, and who monitor them closely and even keep count, and fair play to them: I applaud their involvement. I’m afraid I’ve only got two – ordinary singles, and ordinary doubles. And counting? I’ll settle for ‘lots’.

I’ve planted maybe a hundred or so in the green, the last about six years ago, and I’ve let them get on with it. I did think they’d like it here as there were already a couple of small clumps, even though I didn’t think the garden was an ideal snowdrop home. But it evidently is. The sheer number I now have – big clumps, medium clumps, random singles springing up apparently spontaneously across the top and middle gardens – is testimony to what they can do when they’re happy.

I’m sure they’re happy (and so am I)…

One of the things you’re supposed to do with a VB award is share seven things about you, but I thought I’d have a little snapshot of my seven favourite plants in the garden instead. That’s favourite this minute, mind, not tomorrow or the day after, or even yesterday, and not just those in flower now. And, in the spirit of the thing, I’ll try and vary the pics as much as possible…

First, the birch trees:

Beautiful even in winter, magnificent in autumn or when the little baby leaves are first uncurling. Delightful to sit under on a hot day. Please let’s have some hot days in 2012. Pretty please.

Then lilies. I adore lilies and their decadent scent.

The white ones almost light up in the evenings; they seem to hold some of the sun even after it has gone down and this shot was taken late in the evening. I have to grow them in pots, though – I’ve tried putting them in the garden, but they don’t do well. I keep expecting mine to deteriorate because I don’t repot them enough, but they seem to thrive on neglect.

Now for the best leaves in my garden:

Melianthus major. Mine even flowered the year before last, but it may have knackered itself by doing so, because I lost it in the hard winter (well, I suspect it was the slightly more prosaic bad weather that did for it). I have got a replacement, and the old one did throw up a couple of shoots. Not completely dead, then.

Next, and rather more ordinary – calendulas, good old pot marigolds.

Uncomplicated, but I defy anyone to be anything other than jolly in their presence. There’s such a range of colours available now, and almost any mixed packet of seeds will throw up some wonders. I even had stripes last summer.

Sunflowers. They’re often a favourite round about now, but I also often forget to plant any. But this year I will remember.

A few years ago one of my neighbours commented on my huge sunflowers. She’d had some bad news and had been feeling low, but she saw my giants grinning at her over the wall and they quite cheered her up, so I will sow more this year. And the birds like them too.

I must have irises, too.

I’ve just been looking at the iris bed, and all this rain seems to have left me with a bit of rotten rhizome syndrome. I think they’ll be fine – they’re tough buggers, mine – and I’ve got some new ones to introduce. We’ll see.

Finally, and this is a bit of a cheat, the meadow. All of it.

I have a tendency to ignore sound in my garden, so here I’ll make a plea for including the noise of the meadow in high summer (assuming we have one – ed.). The birch leaves rustle and the small branches rub against each other in the wind, the grasses whisper and the whole place is full of crickets. I must add, in the interests of truth, that there are also rowdy birds and passing walkers, plus the sound of the sea, trains and a coast road in the background.

In case that lot isn’t versatile enough, here are my seven favourite things to do in the garden (other than weeding), in no particular order: reading, eating with friends, spinning wool, planting new things, indulging my obsessive photographic tendencies, drawing / painting, and washing fleece. Really. Well, you certainly can’t do the latter – effectively – indoors.

I made myself a cup of herb tea this morning and it had a tag on it with an uplifting thought (I know, I know – ergh…). Normally I ignore these things but something made me look, and the inspiring thought was ‘Life starts when we start growing a garden’ – thanks, Yogi Teas.

(Well, life and swearing, but then we have been doing some major seasonal clearing.)

Going by that slogan – I can’t bring myself to call it an ‘inspiring thought’ again – my life began pretty much as soon as my life began:

My parents were very, very keen gardeners; at one point my mother had even taught gardening – gardening and French, in a rather exotic combination. My father was probably more obsessed with photography, but it was a close-run thing (I’ve inherited that obsession too). Fine weather inevitably meant being outside and usually in a garden, wherever we were living. Unsurprisingly I – and a little bit later, my brother – were encouraged to join in. There was never any idea of giving us our own part of the garden; we just stuck our trowels in wherever we were allowed to do so.

Mind you, even our parents realised that there were some tasks which were better supervised than participated in by two-year-olds:

Chunky thighs and a wee hand-knitted tam. Some things never change. And I still prefer to supervise the lawnmowing, though that has more to do with having a sloping garden and a heavy mower. Honestly.

Raking through the old photo albums in search of evidence, I was brought up short by this, captioned ‘Katharine and her favourite flower, a– ‘ – well, let’s wait for the reveal:

I remember loving them, but I didn’t remember any actual proof, and yet here it is.

And I still love them, and was delighted last year to find some and introduce them into my garden, despite the fact that they are terribly, terribly out of fashion.

They’re Pyrethrums - and I still like them in red. Or maybe it’s more of a crimson. Don’t care, love it whatever it is.

They’re so uncomplicated, so cheerful, so bright. They almost look like a child’s drawing, and maybe that was one of the things that appealed to me – I have found an even earlier Pyrethrum pic in which I must have been about 9 months old – or maybe I just loved wild colours (I was never a pink person, even then).

I’ve always had strong views on fashion in gardening, and how it can lead to the eclipse of perfectly good plants… I think I’m going to have to start the Rehabilitation of the Pyrethrum as a Border Plant Society, otherwise known as the RPBPS. I’m hoping we can pick up members from birding types who can’t type ‘RSPB’ properly.

How about other people’s early experiences? Was anyone else equally thrilled by a particular plant, and if so, what?

I’d forgotten how good some of them were (and how battered – my Well-Tempered Garden has fallen apart). Then I got out all my gardening books – almost needed a forklift – and cheered myself up by revisiting some favourites.

Here’s The Compleat Squash, by Amy Goldman. I adore this book, but then I do adore squashes, even if they have been crap in this garden lately.

I saw this briefly reviewed in The Garden, I think, in 2004 and was onto Amazon.com faster than a rat running into my soakaway. Here was someone as bonkers about squashes as me – in reality, as I realised when I got my copy, far, far, far more bonkers.

But there are worse things to be potty about, and this book’s true joy is its photographs.

They are magnificent, with the squashes positioned elegantly, like fine china (or even supermodels). Why can’t I grow squashes like this? Probably because I’m in wet west Wales and not the US. Ah well.

I have been known to use The Compleat Squash as a guide for what to grow – Amy Goldman’s quick description of each one can be very revealing. There’s a ‘fiber’ category, and often the most beautiful to look at are described as ‘unacceptable’. There’s also a ‘best use’: ‘livestock feed’ or ‘exhibition’ are useful indicators, and then there are her comments. ‘Great white whale’ is how she sums up the German Sweet Potato Squash, and she says of the Valencia (described as ‘top notch’) ‘Need a butcher’s chopper and a mallet to open.’

Well, I can dream.

Another really inspirational book for me is – surprise, surprise – Meadows, by Christopher Lloyd (also 2004). Of course, for me he is god anyway – I even met him once, at Great Dixter years ago before I had my own garden and was rendered almost speechless (he recommended a clematis for me, when I did get my garden – Bill Williamson).

I got this book at about the same time as I decided to let my grass grow and see what happened, and it has been essential in creating and maintaining the ‘carpet of jewels’ effect I have, particularly in the early spring.

My decision, I am sure, has led to the massive increase in primroses, violets, cowslips, anemones and all the other inhabitants of my early spring meadow, and it has really helped the health of the hundreds of daffodils. Yes, I could have done it without this book, but it has kept me focused on getting the best from the meadow and not just ‘letting the grass grow’.

I refer to the sections on particular plants – bulbs and corms, mainstay grasses and perennials – a lot of the time, and the practical parts on meadow management have helped me work out when to cut it and how to maintain it at its best. That’s best for me, best for the meadow and best for all the invertebrates who populate it in the summer.

Looking at the photographs makes my heart sing. There’s a spread across two pages of the fritillary meadow at Magdalen Oxford which is sensational, for instance, but it’s often the quieter ones which have the most impact on me, like the grasses in the spread above. Beautiful against the dark hedge of the topiary lawn at Great Dixter.

Ah, summer, summer!

So what books do you reach for on an winter afternoon like this, when it’s beginning to get really dark and it’s still raining (or snowing, as it soon might be if the weather forecast is anything to go by)?

and then, and then, and then the sun came out and the garden – well, it basked. That’s the only way of expressing it; you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief and happiness. And it wasn’t just me:

The crocuses are coming up all over. Early (but of course), though I’m not complaining. Not at all. They’re springing up in amongst fallen leaves,

and materialising in the grass of the meadow. Some of them no sooner came up than the birds pecked their tops off, but hey.

I have friends who don’t like crocuses (you know who you are; I will spare your blushes in the face of such celebratory loveliness, but how can you?).

I’m really glad I don’t feel like that, as most of these were inherited and it would have been nightmarish to try and remove them. They’re completely naturalised now.

And then there are the snowdrops which are just popping up. They don’t seem to be developing long stems this year, but it’s early days. I know of snowdrop-counters – not criticising; I count daffodils, after all – but how do they do it? You deadhead or pick daffs, so it’s easy. This doesn’t look quite so straightforward:

There are many, many clumps, mostly less than two inches high. What’s going on? A response to the mild weather?

And talking of responses to the mild weather, I’ve got a hebe flowering. See:

Admittedly, there are only a few flowers, but this is wrong. Also wrong – in my opinion – was the fact that my huge Helleborus foetidus decided to give up the ghost last year, but I noticed that it has thrown up a solitary flower spike. So far I’ve taken about twenty photographs of it, just in case this is its last flowering.

I do love hellebores, but I haven’t got many. Now there’s something I’d like to add to my new bed.

Another reason to be cheerful is the Viburnum x bodnantense. It’s been flowering madly and scenting the lane behind the garden for months. Months. I can hear passers-by sniffing appreciatively sometimes, and there’s the occasional comment.

One of the major weaknesses of t’internet is that you can’t smell anything. Shame. And it’s even more covered with flowers now; I keep thinking it will stop soon, but I do hope it doesn’t. I know I’m not normally a pink person, but this is making me change my mind – it’s so soft and comforting, like a light but snuggly fluffy jumper. I think I may have to introduce a little more pink.

What am I thinking?

I knew as soon as I began that line of thought that it was time to do something else, and there’s another reason to be cheerful – walks on the beach in something other than a howling gale and drizzle.

Magnificent. Blue sky, blue sky!

(I can’t bear to categorise this post as ‘winter’, so it’s spring. Definitely. Because I say so.)

From snow to – hmm. Mud.

In just one year, blogging has taught and brought me a lot, and I’m so grateful. Primarily, it has made me really look at my garden, and at the plants in it.

I’ve made friends and been in touch with gardeners all over the world, which constantly amazes me; I’ve had tons of really sound advice from tips on dealing with early blight on me spuds before I have to trash the lot to suggestions for plants to go in my new bed. A bed I probably wouldn’t have created without my new perspective…

Because I’ve rediscovered my passion for plants which had been somewhat overwhelmed by growing things to eat.

I’ve also rediscovered my passion for photographing my garden, and that’s why this post is largely photographic – a celebration of the past year in my garden.

Hm – primarily a celebration of last spring.

It’s raining again, I’ve not been well for ages and I need cheering up. And it won’t be long (maybe next week, the rate some things are coming along in this unseasonal mildness) before some of the real joys of the garden appear.

Maybe I’ve got a case of SAD? It wouldn’t be surprising; I’d love some nice, crisp, sunny winter days; get those walking boots on and get out into the hills without needing waders. Full body waders. Wellies will do for the garden.

But spring flowers are always cheerful, and I defy anyone to be glum in the face of spring gorgeousness, like the fritillaries which come up in the meadow.

The season may be haywire, but at least there’s no sign of these quite yet. I think: I haven’t actually looked in the spot where the earliest ones usually appear.

Nor are the tulips showing, but they won’t be long.

And then very soon I’ll be able to take a cup of tea and a book and sit on the bench, looking down the hill towards the dunes and the sea, and relax and enjoy the sun.

Oh hang on, no I won’t be able to. I’ve planted a damson (well, an eirin bach, the local wild plum) near here which will block the view a bit, and the wood of the seat has rotted away in all this wet. Reality intrudes – but I can lay my hands on another chunk of wood, and who knows if the eirin bach will survive? And if it does, I’ll trade part of a view for lots and lots of jam.

Here’s to the next year, and to all the great gardeners and plant lovers who have visited my garden – in both the real and virtual worlds!

and I make a list of everything that’s in flower.

At least there were a few moments when I could actually see things this year (when exactly does mist become fog, and what’s the difference between either and low cloud?), even if I did get a bit wet and sink into the squishiness that is now my garden.

Ahem. No moaning. New Year’s resolution.

This is, to my astonishment, my ninth Christmas here, and I’m always surprised by what I find. And then I come back inside and warm up / dry off / do both, open up my old garden book, look at the lists from previous years and realise I’ve spotted my surprise before. But I’ve never had honeysuckle,

and this year I’ve got several.

There have been reports in the press of daffodils, and there are a few in flower on the drive of an old house near here, but none of mine are out yet. Some are quite tall and will probably flower fairly soon, but there are already lots of primroses out. Everywhere!

Admittedly, most of them are a bit scrappy and battered – as indeed is this one, but it’s better than most – except where they’ve got a little bit of shelter.

Other things seem to be impervious to the weather, like the vinca I found up by the bonfire heap. Checking out my notes, I see that it was in flower for my festive round-up in 2007, but not before or since.

Some things always flower for Christmas, like a few daisies – except when the ground has been covered in snow, that is. The biggest of my rosemary bushes (it’s huge, and I’m not sure that ‘bush’ really does it justice) is also reliable, possibly because it’s fairly sheltered and protected from the blast by the big cedar and the side of the house.

Another regular is in the bottom garden. The old cherry, which is in a perilous state – a great branch had to be removed in the autumn – is flowering its socks off. It always does this, so I don’t think it’s reacting to the stress of its amputation and I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for its survival.

It’s also always difficult to photograph without the use of stepladders, hoists, a cherry picker, excessive zoom lenses, hooks and a team of bearers or at least a photographer’s assistant. Given the weather, the holidays and the desire of most people to sit by the wood stove and eat huge amounts of Christmas cake rather than prat about in the garden, this is the best I could do solo:

It would, of course, look much better against a blue sky – but hey (not a complaint, note, Resolution Monitor, just a comment). I like to think of it as the west Wales equivalent of the Glastonbury Thorn, but this year there are reports of cherries in flower all over the place. At least mine is supposed to flower now. I’m not so sure about the camellias, though; they don’t normally get cracking until January.

Er – I know, it is January, but only just.

And the double camellia is going mad. It is covered in huge open blooms and big fat buds just waiting to burst.

The very first flowers to appear were a bit wind-burnt at the edges, but either the weather has improved (er, no) or the ones that are coming through now are a bit tougher. Possibly they are less surprised to find themselves in flower than those which appeared earlier in December. I couldn’t stop myself and have taken about eight million shots – thank heavens for digital photography. If I’d used my Leica the processing costs would have bankrupted me!

I love the rather wax-like quality of the blooms, or perhaps they are more like a very heavy satin, the type that doesn’t snag on battered gardening hands. Every year I think that I should cut a few for the house, but I’m not really a fan of cut flowers – they always seem so sad and out of context. Beautiful, yes, but sad. I prefer my flowers in the garden, so I’ll leave them where they are.

And it’s raining again. I was going to go out and finish trimming off the lavender – better late than never – but rats to that now. Maybe a walk, well wrapped up. If the weather is better than this, from the Christmas Day walk, that is:

Who cares? Days like this are the reason for waterproofs. By the way, there should be Snowdon in that shot. Hm.

And happy new year, and all the very best gardening good wishes for 2012 (can’t see the world coming to an end this year myself, Mayan calendar or no Mayan calendar, just like it didn’t end – twice – in 2011).

Finally, very many thanks to Helen at The Patient Gardener for hosting the EOMV meme. I often forget to thank her, and I apologise for that – but it’s a great meme and an excellent way of making you look at your garden in a considered way. I haven’t really done an EOMV round-up this time (there’s a limit to how many rainy, misty pictures I can tolerate, and I will soon need duckboards), but it’s been a great exercise throughout the year. Thanks, Helen!

My eye had fallen on the letter from the editor, and its assertion that ‘Pick up any magazine, watch any television programme, read any blog – the most inspiring time to garden, one could assume, is between February and October.’

Hrumpf. And tosh. Especially this year, when there’s been plenty of gardening-media emphasis on the usefulness of winter as a time for planning. I’ve even heard some media gardeners talking about how lovely it is to look at branches and bark, how you aren’t so distracted by flowers. It does make you wonder which blogs the editor had been reading, too. Everyone I know is cogitating, planning, thinking, assessing. Some – and that includes me – are even planting.

See those smooth areas?

They’re my autumn – well, OK, winter – plantings of garlic and onions (the onions were a freebie – thank you, Marshalls, for over-ordering and giving some lucky purchasers a nice surprise).

I was about to say ‘of course, it’s not so photogenic a time’, but these are so cute.

And so it all begins again, round and round, because there’s really only a brief break – I think it was about three weeks here – before the clearing up after summer slides almost imperceptibly into preparing for next year. Of course the weather can be a problem. Rain, rain, rain, rain – but at least this year the meadow looks like this:

and not like this (which looks like a painting by one of the nineteenth-century Russian Itinerant artists – snow and birches, how very Russian):

Same date, same time.

We had to virtually dynamite the ground last year to get the garlic in, and the traditional (round here, anyway) Solstice planting date went by the board – mind you, it did this year too, but that was because the garlic started sprouting too early and had to go in or get thrown out.

At this time of year I can see that the bones of my garden really are sound. This becomes blurred later on as my dissatisfaction with some of my planting – and some of the things I can’t do much about, like being in the direct line of every single storm lashing in off the Irish Sea – starts to get to me. I also tend to compare my garden to other gardens, completely different gardens, gardens which look gorgeous but which have a different range of problems. But now I can also see, when I look back, that my garden does have a certain unity and a coherent style. OK, a rather dishevelled style, with a lot of wildflowers and rampant growth, but it is often lovely and it is a style and not an accident. I may need reminding of this later…

In the meanwhile, how about a little seasonality?

No holly, I’m afraid, because my holly – which is just above this ivy – is a boy and doesn’t do berries.

and
NADOLIG LLAWEN / HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Have a lovely time, however you spend or celebrate it.

It’s got to be done judiciously, otherwise every house uphill from me – and there are some – gets it in the neck. Of course, just because you start building a bonfire when the weather is calm, you should never assume it will stay calm. Cough, gasp, wheeze.

But I have a limited space in which I can have fires; the only possible spot is at the top of the meadow and if I wait too long bulbs start popping through dangerously close to the bonfire spot (I have been known to protect clumps by covering them with upturned galvanised buckets before now).

I like bonfires. Despite the smell which clings to everything and permeates the entire house; despite the fact the wind inevitably suddenly decides to whirl the smoke round in circles and sneak it up on you before you realise; despite the fact that it’s a heck of a lot of work – I like them.  Guess I’m just an arsonist at heart, or maybe it’s the potatoes: there have to be baked potatoes, you see. And maybe it’s the clearance of all the old crap – rose prunings, privet trimmings, great sections of Old Man’s Beard – which has been taking the bonfire heap almost up to wall height.

But there are some things that I have insisted on keeping in the general clear out. I do love my seed heads, and they look spectacular in snow or frost. But just in case enthusiasm got the better of me I took some shots earlier of the ones I wanted to keep. Some have even survived the recent stormy weather, like the agapanthus:

I suppose they’re robust enough to cope. They are looking somewhat tattier than this now, of course, but they made it through the snow last year. And – evidently – so did the clump, even though it did a very good impression of being completely dead.

A few things have survived on the edges of the meadow, and I intend to keep them. Or let them stay until they decide they don’t want to, and dry out sufficiently to be blown away. The fleabane is one, tucked under an apple tree.

and close by are some remaining aquilegias, though I’m sure both of these will soon disappear. There were some clover heads too, but those did end up on the bonfire with some lawn clippings. Earlier, the ladybirds had loved them; I never knew that about ladybirds, but every time I looked at the dead clover heads, there was at least one ladybird crawling on them.

And of course there were lots of spiders’ webs everywhere – and those all seem to have been blown away. Or maybe it got too cold? (It’s ridiculously mild again now, but scheduled to get more appropriately seasonal soon.) Spiders’ webs are, for me, one of those things that you appreciate a lot – especially backlit, with raindrops or dew on – but hardly think about once they’ve disappeared. Er – disappeared from everywhere outside, that is.

And then of course there are the ubiquitous clematis heads, again suddenly stripped in the last couple of days. Don’t know how they’d held out until now, mind you, but they had.

Except for the Old Man’s Beard, which was stripped a while ago. Expect that means I can look forward to a whole lot more appearing everywhere next year. Sigh.

I have, of course, been saving seed like mad, and the kitchen is full of little dishes containing seeds. There’s only one problem – can’t remember what some of them are. Garlic chives, I think, but I guess we’ll see. And I couldn’t resist these:

Anyone ever grown a paeony from seed?