End of Month View – February

It’s been nice and spring like the last week here in London, a bit cold at night but really good at 10-12 degrees C (53 F) during the day. And we have had some good sunshine too, I always long for some sun when we get to this time of year. Still no snow in my garden, last time I had snow was February 2013 so I really hope Mr Winter doesn’t bite back with some silliness like a snowfall in March. It has happened before, and although snow and frost in March is rare and never long-lived, it is detrimental to my lovely huge camellia so thanks, but no thanks. No snow this year either please.

I have been concentrating on working on my new rose bed lately, the two Dregea sinensis were dug up earlier this month, and all the spring bulbs were dug up – a huge job! And I have been filling the bed again, plenty of plants waiting to get a space in the ground – too many actually, there is not room for all the roses I would like to plant there.

Here is my garden last September, and as you can see, the Dregeas became too big for the arch over the years. Even when cut down almost completely every winter they still managed to get to this size over the summer and I could hardly get through this tunnel of leaves. The flowerbed to the right was filled with too many tall plants and I wanted something nicer to look at from my seating area. I also wanted to get as many fragrant plants as I could in this bed.

So out they went, all of them! I kept the large rose ‘Crimson Cascade’ on the fence and also the Sarcococca up against the fence, everything else were dug up.

I bought 2 new roses to go on each side of the arch, 'Gertrude Jekyll' and 'The Generous Gardener' and they will look lovely when in flower. The roses 'Wildeve' and 'Scepter'd Isle' have also been moved from other parts of the garden and are now in this bed and so is ‘Ingrid Bergman’. My cat was absolutely enjoying himself while this work was going on, he loves freshly dug, bare soil and would go straight to this bed and walk around and dig every time he came outside. I normally have bark mulch in all the flowerbeds so he doesn’t get the chance to dig like this. I had muddy paw prints all over the house for 2 weeks!

Good to get a fresh layer of bark mulch back on the soil again! Most of the snowdrops and irises are back in the middle of the bed, at the front will be a row of daylilies but they are just emerging and won’t show for a while.

I have also planted a dark red peony at this end of the bed, next to the penstemons, it has been growing in a pot for a couple of years and will probably not flower for another couple of years.

And here are the new daylilies I am now awaiting delivery of from the nursery, they are going in the bed together with some I had from before.

The new bed will need some time to get established, but I hope all the roses will flower nicely this year and just get better and better. There is space for some smaller plants in between these plants, I have some more spring bulbs to put in, and some heucheras and hardy geraniums still in pots. I also would like to find room for some hellebores here as I have none growing in a sunny position, only in the shade at the bottom of my garden – but that might be pushing it a bit too much. By the time all these plants have come up there might not be much space left, not even for a few hellebores.

I have made a movie from my garden this month too, and although other parts of the country use the astronomical seasons to determine spring, here in London it is more appropriate to use the meteorological seasons, so from the 1st of March we are officially having spring! I hope my movie is getting you into spring mode, whatever weather you are having right now, watch out for the bee in the middle of the movie, having a meal on one of my Sarcococcas :-)

As always, my movies are best viewed in HD in full screen, change the settings using the icons in the bottom right corner.

The music this time was Vivaldi, The Four Seasons: Winter – Largo, and Celebration by Secret Garden from the album White Stones.

I am linking this post to Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog. Please visit her blog for many more February gardens.

Until next time, take care.