I know it's tempting fate, and the cold is still due shortly but I was out in the sun this afternoon enjoying the springy weather (with apologies to the drowned, but I live at the top of a hill, deal with it).
How many miles away are you?! I have one camellia showing colour in the bud, I don't even have snowdrop or daff leaves never mind flowers! But you have prompted me to go and look as I am up to my ears in wall building and not paying the garden much attention at present.
I would have thought it was three or four miles at least Charlie, spring will get to you eventually!
And I have to admit that I select cultivars carefully to get early flowers - 'Rijnveld's Early Sensation' should flower anywhere in the UK in January, it is quite unique. The snowdrops are both super-early cultivars. 'Three Ships' was named because it flowers in time for Christmas and well worth the fifteen quid. 'Show Girl' is my favourite Camellia - in a genus of named cultivars that can be a bit too much in March, it generally manages a few flowers for New Years day just when you need them. 'Nobilissima' and 'Glenn's Orbit' are both early and just taking advantage of the mild weather.
The Fuchsia is from New Zealand - there are half a dozen species there that flower in winter - and I still have plenty of flowers on 'Lechlade Magician' , a red and purple hybrid from F.excorticata. Unfortunately the buds will all be killed by frost.
I get flowers almost every year, but don't always have them for long.
I'm no great lover of winter, so I have abandoned it. I stick with late autumn until Christmas, spend a week cleaning up the Sarracenia, and then go straight into early spring in the New Year.
Hope the Chinese aren't made too envious by your wall, it looks like it will give you a great space to work with when it's done.
Wow! I have nothing new in bloom, just the Salvias that have continued to bloom through the winter.
JohnJearrard wrote:
Fuchsia excorticata will carry on now until the first decent frost blackens all the buds.
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My F.perscandens is loaded with buds at the moment.
Thanks to a kindly soul (thanks Charlie) sending me F.excorticata my NZ Fuchsia collection is now complete. Here is a link for those interested to the NZ Fuchsia Society page on their natives.....................
Still nothing of note outside but a couple of things in the conservatory caught my eye, first something just starting which should have started last September sphaeralcea umbellata by charliepridham, on Flickr
I was checking the pots of tender/tenderish bulbs in the shed for mice or squirrel damage (I lost all my Gloriosa tubers last winter) and the Pleiones are starting to shoot! Too damned mild by far.
