winter garden

This week’s Making Light theme is the winter garden. This gives me an excuse to share one of my greatest pleasures since moving to the mill: that of discovering its garden in all seasons. Winter has been no exception!

As I potter about and check things in the garden on a bright winter’s day, I’m always accompanied by my robin friend, who I can hear singing now, as I write these words, in the lightening sky outside my window. I have so appreciated his clear voice over the past few months: a cheery bell ringing through the winter darkness.

The mill’s former owners have truly created a garden for all seasons. Here, for example, is Rhododendron “Christmas Cheer” lighting up a corner which stands underneath a tall sycamore. By spring, the leaf canopy makes this corner very dark – winter is its time to shine!

In fact, the under canopy of every tree in the garden has been liberally planted to make the most of the year’s dark months.

Underneath this acer, there are hellebores, crocuses and narcissi, winter aconites and snowdrops (more of those tomorrow).

These luminous dwarf irises have just come into bloom . . .

. . . alongside this leucojum, which I know as St Agnes flower.

Last autumn, I had something of a bulb frenzy, planting several hundred tulips, lasagne style, in pots. Spikes of growth are already starting to appear.

When I was planting up my bulbs on days of freezing rain, I told myself that these were my insurance against February – which can often be a difficult month for me. And oh, what a joy it is now to see new life springing up in the pots outside my front door!

My bulb frenzy included one special amaryllis, a plant which I have never grown before. I chose Amaryllis “Carmen” and placed it in a lovely small blue pot that had been left here at the mill. I put it by the boiler, waited for the spikes to appear, then moved it to the living room, where Tom and I enjoyed watching it grow.

Both of us will swear we could hear the Amaryllis growing, while we sat by the fire, absorbed in our festive films.

There were two spikes, and I measured the height of the tall one daily – it grew to 71cm.

On New Year’s Eve it finally began to flower – four gigantic, blousy trumpets . . .

. . . with huge velvet petals . .

In the most glorious, deep, saturated shade of red.

If ever a flower shouted, look at me, here I am, surely it is Amaryllis Carmen?

In the company of this joyous colour on dark winter evenings, I felt that foolish pleasure that is common to all gardeners of just making something happen.

All I had done was to place a bulb in a dark warm place, then move it to a cooler, lighter one. . .

. . . yet when a plant like this flowers for you, it can really feel like you are the agent of some kind of magical change.

Who can argue with that feeling? Who doesn’t want to feel that magic, that promise of growth, in the dark days of midwinter?

A powerful reminder, surely, that these months are full of change and transformation too.

The first spike of Amaryllis Carmen was blooming when we took the decorations down. The second began to flower in the middle of the month, and lasted until its end. Four whole weeks of glorious, luminous colour, bringing some much-needed light into to January!

I’ll definitely be repeating the amaryllis experiment this autumn.

Which plants do you enjoy in winter?